Location information is emerging as one of the hottest commodities in the tracking industry–the field of companies that are building businesses based on people’s data.

Some companies are using the data to build better maps or analyze traffic patterns. Others send users advertisements for services near where they are located. Some insurers hope to use the data to provide discounts to better drivers.

On Tuesday in Washington, D.C., a Senate Judiciary subcommittee plans a hearing to consider whether a federal law is required to protect consumer privacy on mobile devices. The hearing was spurred by the public outcry over recent findings that Apple Inc. and Google Inc. gather location-related data from iPhones and Android phones. Both companies are set to testify.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments in Chicago, spoke with The Wall Street Journal’s Rebecca Blumenstein. Julie Louise Gerberding, president of Merck & Co.’s Merck Vaccines unit, sat down with the Journal’s Laura Landro. Marissa Mayer, Google Inc.’s vice president, consumer products, talked with the Journal’s Julia Angwin. And Debra L. Lee, chairman and chief executive of BET Networks, a unit of Viacom Inc., spoke with the Journal’s Alessandra Galloni.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

So it would be unfair to expect him to make more news today, when he appeared at Columbia University’s journalism school for an hour-long talk.

But Dorsey’s mannered, thoughtful responses to my Dow Jones colleague Julia Angwin’s questions are still worth studying. This is the guy who had the original vision for Twitter, and this is the guy now charged with helping it navigate from a tech toy that a lot of people feel passionate about to a mainstream product that everyone uses.

Oh. And he’s going to do it while he simultaneously running a second start-up, too.

Here’s an edited excerpt of Dorsey and Angwin’s Q&A:

Julia Angwin: What’s going on with Twitter and its ecosystem of developers? Isn’t part of the problem that there’s a lack of clarity around your intentions and what your business model will be?

Jack Dorsey: We do have a business model right now, and we do have a revenue stream right now. You see [it] on the service, with promoted products, which give really, really useful introductions to content that you would not otherwise discover. They’re doing fantastically well.

I think we can be better at communicating exactly where we’re going. In terms of the ecosystem, I think it’s up to any good platform company to really guide its developers in the right way, and to inspire them to create very interesting and useful applications.

I think when someone looks at Twitter–as a developer myself, my first instinct is to build a client. And that’s why we have 100 clients out there. And they’re all doing different things in different ways, but it doesn’t necessarily provide the best user experience.

As a developer, there’s far more interesting things to build on top of Twitter than just a client. That’s been done. That’s a problem that’s been solved. So how do we inspire our developers and our ecosystem to really work on the tougher problems, and to work on more interesting companies and products?

Like what?

The best part of that is, I have no idea. You can’t build an electricity grid and say, “You should go out and invent vacuum cleaners. Or keyboards or toaster overs.” You have to give the right tools and primitives to folks, so they can build what they want, and what they want to see in the world.

The interesting products out on the Internet today are not buildling new technologies. They’re combining technologies. Instagram, for instance: Photos plus geolocation plus filters. Foursquare: restaurant reviews plus check-ins plus geo.

There’s a lot of sensors on the mobile phones that we’re all carrying with us, and there’s a lot that has not been explored, that one could use Twitter to push even faster. So that’s what would excite me as a developer: “There is this great unknown. And I don’t know what to build, but I’ll play with the data and I’ll figure it out.”

So are you saying there shouldn’t be all of these other clients out there? I love TweetDeck, and I like it better than Twitter.com. Is your job as product director to make Twitter.com as good as TweetDeck?

I think the biggest challenge is to build a cohehesive user experience, and at the same time, enable and allow for multiple views on the same thing. TweetDeck is a very interesting client, because it presents a view that no other client in the world presents, which is this multicolumn, massive amounts of information in one pane. And people really, really enjoy that.

But I think that’s maybe five percent of the Twitter population. That five percent of the Twitter population are some of the most high-value publishers that we have, and they’re using the service at extreme velocity. So of course we have to pay attention to that, and I’m not saying we need to rid ourselves of interfaces like that. We have to embrace them.

But, we also need to speak to the 80 percent that will not be using an interface like that, that don’t really understand what Twitter is and that see Twitter as mainly a consumption experience. We spend a lot of time on people tweeting but a lot of the value that one gets out of Twitter is being able to follow their interests, and not necessarily tweet about it. But just consume it. So we need to put a lot more effort into the consumption experience and the consumer experience.

So is that what you’re focused on?

One of my first acts will be to really listen to what’s happening in the company and what needs to be fixed. We’ve been around for five years now and we’ve built a lot of interesting technology. I think we need better lines around the products, so it’s more approachable, so that people can get into it immediately, and it’s extremely relevant right way.

We have a lot of mainstream awareness, but mainstream relevancy is still a challenge. It’s something that people can’t immediately get their head around: “Why is Twitter valuable?”

The answer is it’s not that Twitter is valuable, it’s that you can follow what’s unfolding in Egypt right now. That’s valuable. You can follow your favorite company or organization. You can also mix that in with your family and your social network and talk about all these interests in real time. That’s the value, not the brand “Twitter.” Twitter just provides the venue for it. So we need to refocus on the value. That’s my goal in the next few months.

It seems like you could really use some filters for all this information that’s on Twitter.

I think it’s the technology challenge for the next five years. We built very easy ways to input information. But extracting that information in a relevant way, in real time, is still a big, big challenge. So we need to build technologies that immediately surface what’s most revelant and most meaningful to you.

And that’s still a very, very large challenge, and difficult. You have to follow all of these accounts, and sometimes you miss some tweets that were extremly relevant to you. We can solve that through technology,  and we will solve that, but it is going to be quite difficult to do.

You left Twitter in 2008, when you were asked to step down as CEO. You’ve said that felt like you were punched in the stomach. Now you’re back. Have those feelings changed?

I have a greater context for it. But I would not change anything. Because one amazing that happened out of that was we created this amazing company called Square. And I think it has the potential to have just as large, if not larger impact, than Twitter does.

And in that process, I’ve learned an immense amount about building products, and building something that’s approachable to consumers. And more importantly, managing teams and managing humans. And making sure that we’re focused on the right things.

Microsoft’s decision to include the tool in Internet Explorer 9 means Google Inc. and Apple Inc. are the only big providers of browsers that haven’t yet declared their support for a do-no-track system in their products. In January, Mozilla Corp. said it would include a do-not-track feature in an upcoming version of its Firefox browser. Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser.

The moves by Microsoft and Mozilla reflect an unusually fast adoption of an idea—the do-not-track system—that was first officially proposed by the Federal Trade Commission only three months ago. It highlights the pressure the industry faces to provide people with a way to control how they are tracked and targeted online, as lawmakers and regulators threaten to rein in the practice.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, and Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, are backing a bill that would require companies to seek a person’s permission to share data about him with outsiders. It would also give people the right to see the data collected on them. The bill is expected to be introduced ahead of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing next Wednesday on online privacy.
The move comes amid widening scrutiny of the tracking industry. In the past year, The Wall Street Journal’s “What They Know” series has revealed that popular websites install thousands of tracking technologies on people’s computers without their knowledge, feeding an industry that gathers and sells information on their finances, political leanings and religious interests, among other things.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Companies including Microsoft Corp., McAfee Inc.—and even some online-tracking companies themselves—are rolling out new ways to protect users from having their movements monitored online. Some are going further and starting to pay people a commission every time their personal details are used by marketing companies.

“Data is a new form of currency,” says Shane Green, chief executive of a Washington start-up, Personal Inc., which has raised $7.6 million for a business that aims to help people profit from providing their personal information to advertisers.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The bill is the first in this session to specifically tackle the creation of a do-not-track system, according to a spokesman for Ms. Speier. In December, the FTC issued a report recommending the creation of a do-not-track system and suggested that lawmakers use the report as a template for legislation.

Since the FTCs recommendation, Mozilla Corp. has said it will include a do-not-track feature in an upcoming version of its Firefox Web browser. But so far, no tracking companies have publicly stated that they will participate in a do-not-track system.

In its newest Internet Explorer browser, Microsoft will allow users to stop certain websites and tracking companies from monitoring them. And Google last month began offering a tool that lets users of its Chrome browser permanently opt out of ad-tracking cookies.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The tool, called uProtect.it, works like this: Users get the app and activate it on Facebook with a bookmark. Then they write a comment and choose which of their friends can see it. Instead of the comment being posted normally on Facebook, uProtect.it posts a message saying that the comment is encrypted and can be seen by clicking on a link. Only those friends who are allowed to see the message can decode it when the link is clicked; even Facebook doesn’t have access.

“Essentially you’re creating an encrypted atmosphere on Facebook, and Facebook can’t control it,” said Michael Fertik, the founder and chief executive of Reputation.com Inc., which makes the app.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The U.S. Commerce Department’s report stopped short of calling directly for specific privacy legislation. Instead, it recommends a “framework” to protect people from a burgeoning personal data-gathering industry and fragmented U.S. privacy laws that cover certain types of data but not others.

The report marks a turning point for federal Internet policy. During the past 15 years of the commercial Internet, Congress and executive branch agencies have largely taken a hands off approach to the Internet out of a concern that a heavy government hand would stifle innovation.

The report cites comments from some major technology companies, including Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc., expressing concerns about the current patchwork of rules and guidelines governing online privacy.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

“Industry must do better,” the FTC staff report states. “Many companies–both online and offline–do not adequately address consumer privacy interests.”

David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection, said in a speech Wednesday at the National Press Club that it is too hard for people to avoid being tracked online, particularly as tracking companies are constantly developing new methods.

“We will not tolerate a technological arms race that aims to subvert consumer choice,” Mr. Vladeck said. “We have to simplify consumer choice, and a do-not-track option can achieve that goal.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

He’s off to a good start. So far, Mr. Norris’s start-up company, BlueCava Inc., has identified 200 million devices. By the end of next year, BlueCava says it expects to have cataloged one billion of the world’s estimated 10 billion devices.

Advertisers no longer want to just buy ads. They want to buy access to specific people. So, Mr. Norris is building a “credit bureau for devices” in which every computer or cellphone will have a “reputation” based on its user’s online behavior, shopping habits and demographics. He plans to sell this information to advertisers willing to pay top dollar for granular data about people’s interests and activities.

Device fingerprinting is a powerful emerging tool in this trade. It’s “the next generation of online advertising,” Mr. Norris says.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Pixels are bits of software that tracking companies install on Web pages to monitor user behavior. These pixels, also known as “beacons” and “tags,” can install cookies–or small tracking files–on a user’s machine, or they can simply send information about a user’s behavior to a tracking company.

However, tracking has become so pervasive that some Web publishers are increasingly worried that the pixels on their pages are slowing down the performance of their site. Several companies have cropped up to help companies manage all the pixels on their pages.

Akamai’s solution to the pixel problem is unique. Akamai’s core business is to store copies of popular websites and applications on its computer servers around the world and speed delivery of this information.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The effort comes just months after Firefox’s creator, Mozilla Corp., killed a powerful and new tool to limit tracking under pressure from an ad-industry executive, The Wall Street Journal has learned. Mozilla says it didn’t scrap the tool because of pressure, but rather out of concern it would force advertisers to use even sneakier techniques and could slow down the performance of some websites.

Meanwhile, online advertising company Lotame Solutions Inc. is also supporting efforts for an industry-created do-not-track mechanism. Lotame’s powerful tracking technologies were featured in a front-page article in the Journal earlier this year.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The strategy is expected to be unveiled in a report being issued by the U.S. Commerce Department in coming weeks, these people said. The report isn’t yet final and could change, these people said.

In a related move, the White House has created a special task force that is expected to help transform the Commerce Department recommendations into policy, these people said. The White House task force, set up three weeks ago, is led by Cameron Kerry, the brother of Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.) and Commerce Department general counsel, and Christopher Schroeder, assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice.

The initiatives would mark a turning point in Internet policy. Recent administrations typically steered away from Internet regulations out of concern for stifling innovation. But the increasingly central role of personal information in the Internet economy helped spark government action, according to people familiar with the situation.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

BlueCava hopes that its device identification system may eventually replace online tracking tools such as cookies. Instead, BlueCava hopes companies will track users based on their device IDs. Consumers will be able to visit BlueCava to see how they are being tracked and to choose not to be tracked.

“We represent a brand new way to disclose to consumers how they can receive targeted advertising,” said BlueCava Chief Executive David Norris. “Some people view us as the next generation of technology that will extend beyond what cookies can do.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site