Data for Services

I think any data that helps companies to better understand how to influence you, such as demographic info, interests, consumer patterns, etc., is the most valuable. My Amazon Prime account is a perfect example of this because it has all of this information in one place. If I had access to this sort of data myself, I’m sure I’d do exactly what these companies are doing and use it for marketing or to develop a product that would be most interesting to the user; for instance, if I were to go into publishing, I might use consumer habits of books bought through Amazon to better understand what kinds of books are selling, in the same manner as Netflix did when creating House of Cards.

Additionally, I think that these companies are justified in collecting data in exchange for providing a service, but only if their users are aware of this data collection and are consenting to it. Many people do not want to pay full prices for services, so they do not mind taking surveys or giving up data to get those services for free. In that case, companies should take advantage of this resource, but they shouldn’t be sneaky about their goals and intentions; they should make their consumers explicitly aware of what they are doing. This is important because if the company were to go too far and ask for more data than their service was worth, then the consumer could make the choice to stop using those services; only then can there be a fair trade.

I personally use many apps every single day including: Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Pinterest, Snapchat, Spotify, GMail, and Maps. These apps get the most out of my electronic activity because they are useful for social networking, communicating, listening to music, and getting directions, which are all services that I require daily. All of these valuable services are free for my use, but in exchange these businesses take a lot of my data. From these apps, one could know my friendship network, my relationship ties, my interests, my hobbies, my demographic information, my location and I’m sure much more. All of this information would be very valuable in determining how to market to me, how to use me to market to my friends, or this information could also be used in a research project.
I think there is probably a high value on my data production simply because I produce so much of it every day; from this data you could understand a lot about me as an individual, which can be very useful for companies that are trying to utilize this information.