I'll give you two personal examples, and they're just two in that multi-layered spectrum of the universe termed "social media":
1. My ISP is BT and they're teamed up with Yahoo! who provide me with an email service too. I have the Option 3 package for broadband - full bells and whistles unlimited - with firewall, virus and spyware protection...all that stuff.
While in the US I setup a Yahoo.com email account and I've continued to use that for personal US friends, etc. For UK purposes, I use the BT Internet Yahoo! account. There is also a Europe one which includes UK to my knowlege but I can't login through that with my BT Internet Yahoo! one.
When I'm using Yahoo.com and login to email...this is so called "personal communication", BT Internet slice in the middle of my email with a pop-up (even though I disable the pop-ups?) informing me that I have a BT Internet Yahoo! email account. Well, don't I already know that? And, do I want to be informed in the middle of an email just because BT have teamed up with Yahoo!?
It's all about marketing.
2. What I've also experienced while paying a student loan online with an international finance institution is that "in the middle of the transaction", a pop-up appears for another finance institution trying to sell me a loan product (?). What's going on?
3. I've always used Google as my default homepage. Well, Microsoft have apparently tried to take dominion a number of times because Google have warned me...another pop-up saying something to the effect that Google has blocked Microsoft from changing my default settings. Do I want to know all this?
It's all marketing, advertising and competition - using social media as a form of "predatorship". We all know it exists, but when it extends to financial products and online capabilities - shouldn't we ask questions?
Who do we ask...the ISP (in this case BT)...Yahoo!...the creators of the IT & infrastructures...the marketers advising these firms...who?
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2 comments:
Thank you for the nice post. I enjoy reading your posts. Thank you for the
time and effort you spend for keeping blog lively and attractive and that
makes it worth visiting and re-visiting.
Thank you Sue. I've just recently "re-activated". I find it enjoyable raising questions and engaging others in debate...no wrongs and rights necessarily - debate is good.
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