We as users of internet visit tons of sites, add feeds to our readers, buy certain products, comment on news and views and so on. There is nothing new about any of these. However with billions of websites around, whatever gets our attention is of course very valuable. The data gathered about the web users implicitly pretty much identifies their “personality”, interests etc and can be used to profile them. It has enough value that many sites would “kill” for. It has enough value that we should have complete control over who has the access to this information.

The concept of Implicit Web has been around for a while, e.g. Amazon has been serving user specific recommendations based on previous purchases, product search history for years. Google has been showing targeted ads, search results based on what it knows about users from the sites they visit. The implicit data can be a very powerful tool to enrich users experience on web, however it comes with added responsibility.

Implicit Web and User Privacy

The idea is simple - the information you generated about yourself based on the sites you visit, products you buy, feeds that you subscribe, should be information that you own. Others still need to have access to this information - or else this is of no use - but only you should be able to grant this access to others. Building trust around implicit data is pivotal to the success of “Attention economy”.

There have been dissatisfaction with the way Google and other search engines have been using implicit information about users. The bad news is that, if recent developments are any indications, things can get even worse from here.

With more information comes more responsibility

I think one of the biggest dangers comes from social networking sites. They already have a lot of information about the user - information like user interests, age, sex etc that’s very difficult to infer for search engines. And as if that wasn’t enough, sites like Facebook and MySpace, which are used by millions of users, are partnering with other sites to learn more about users. But it seems they haven’t realized this so far - with more information, comes more responsibility! Facebook’s Beacon for example gathers information about what people are buying on other sites and sends it back to Facebook. There are indications that more and more websites are trying to (mis)use the information they have about users. As you would know, there are few groups who are concerned about user privacy and are campaigning against Facebook.

Irrespective of how Facebook responds to this, one thing is clear - we must have standards and governance model around how websites use our implicit information. The role of organizations like AttentionTrust.org is going to become very important in time to come in ensuring that the websites must respect user privacy and let users be in complete control of their information - this is in best interests of both the users generating implicit web data and those intending to use it. Your thoughts/opinions?