eBay
I Just Realized How Zealously Facebook Tracks Me And Sells That Info To Advertisers (FB)
Even without using PII (personally identifiable information) advertisers can track you in “creepy” ways and try to sell you stuff.
The point is whether consumers will revolt at some time in the future and not let advertisers collect anything and everything they want and trample individuals’ privacy at will.
See my related slideshares:
Social Logins Are Bad For Consumers Privacy
Facebook Default Privacy Settings History
ORIGINAL BLOG POST FROM BUSINESS INSIDER BELOW
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/i-didnt-know-facebook-tracked-me-2013-4
“Earlier this week, I decided to buy a fossil.
This was a pretty impetuous decision.
I had never demonstrated any interest in fossil acquisition.
I knew nothing about the market.
The decision to buy a fossil stemmed from some combination of:
- Seeing a guy hawking fossils in Union Square on Sunday
- Going to a dinner party earlier this month at a fossil collector’s home and subsequently thinking the host was outrageously cool.
So Tuesday I started looking into the market.
I decided I wanted a trilobite — for all intents and purposes, a common, early Cambrian cockroach — as it seemed like a good, inexpensive specimen to begin amassing a collection.
After thoroughly checking out the market — Etsy, EBay, a handful of specialty sites — I realized that pricing was pretty confusing and I’d revisit it later.
Then yesterday — one day after the initial search — I start seeing these ads everywhere on Facebook:
That’s Etsy trying to sell me a trilobite, one day after I spent an evening Googling trilobites. Creepy.
But most importantly, we can ascertain a couple of things:
- Facebook knew I went to Etsy
- Facebook knew I wanted a fossil, specifically a Trilobite.
- Facebook somehow coordinated with Etsy to produce a picture of a Trilobite on the ad for Etsy.
I’m not a tech writer, so this was news to me. I’m told that Google, and Amazon, and others track my behavior.
Anyway, it was a pretty big wake-up call to the extent that Facebook tracks my activity and hawks it to advertisers.
Also, if anyone knows a reputable fossil salesman feel free to contact me.”
In A Dangerous Sign For VMware, PayPal Chooses Rival OpenStack (VMW)
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-dangerous-sign-for-vmware-paypal-chooses-rival-openstack-2013-3
PayPal and eBay are yanking VMware software from some 80,000 servers and replacing it with the free and open-source alternative known as OpenStack, Boris Renski, OpenStack Foundation board member told Business Insider.
Renski is also a cofounder of Mirantis, an OpenStack consultant company backed by Dell and Intel. Mirantis worked with PayPal on the project, he says.
PayPal used a set of tools from Mirantis called Fuel, a PayPal spokesperson told us.
Today Mirantis released Fuel for free to the public. (In geek speak: it was released under the open source Apache 2.0 license). It’s a collection of scripts and software that helps companies deploy OpenStack.
Initially, PayPal is replacing VMware on about 10,000 computer servers. Those servers will go live this summer, Renski said. “The grand vision for project is, over time, they will replace all of their virtual infrastructure with OpenStack, not just PayPal, but PayPal and eBay, together,” Renski said. That’s about 80,000 servers across their data centers, he said.
PayPal has been a big supporter of Open Stack for a while. But this project is still dangerous territory for VMware, as PayPal could become an example of how other enterprise can replace VMware with OpenStack, too.
To be sure, enterprises are not dying to get rid of VMware, even to save money on software license fees. Most of them really love VMware’s software because it’s a reliable way to run lots of different applications on the same! compute r server.
But cloud wars are coming between different so-called “cloud operating” systems: VMware is up against OpenStack (backed by IBM, HP, Rackspace, Red Hat, others) and CloudStack (another open source project, backed by Citrix).
A College Dropout Turned Her eBay Page Into The Fastest-Growing Retailer
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/nasty-gal-founder-in-the-new-york-times-2013-3
Sophia Amoruso started selling vintage clothing on her eBay page in 2006.
Here’s The ‘Irresistible’ Pitch Walmart CEO Mike Duke Used To Woo His Most Important Engineer
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-ceo-mike-duke-walmartlabs-2012-11
Walmart may be the king of retail in the physical world, but on the internet, it’s still a challenger.
Jeremy King, a Silicon Valley engineer who built key parts of eBay’s infrastructure, joined global retail titan Walmart in the summer of 2011 as CTO of Walmart.com.
Farhad Manjoo interviewed King for his great story on Walmart’s evolution at Fast Company, and the engineer described the “irresistible pitch” that CEO Mike Duke gave him over a videoconference call, luring him into the job.
Duke wanted to become more experimental — and he was making the moves to prove it. From Fast Company:
After years of seeing his company lag online, Duke swore that digital was now a priority for Walmart. Duke had restructured the company, placing e-commerce on equal footing with Walmart’s other, much larger divisions. He had made serious investments in high-tech talent, acquiring several startups. One, a 65-person social media firm called Kosmix with expertise in search and analytics, was the impetus for Walmart rechristening its Valley operations “@WalmartLabs.”
Duke was looking for people who would revive the company’s sites and services, and energize its entire culture. He hoped to turn a company famous for rigid, coldly effective business processes into one that’s flexible, experimental, and entrepreneurial. In other words, Duke wanted to inject a bit of Silicon Valley into Bentonville, Arkansas. In the summer of 2011, King signed up as CTO of Walmart.com. “We’ve hired hundreds of incredibly talented peop! le, in S ilicon Valley and around the world,” says Duke of his aggressive moves. “We are playing to win.”
King now heads @WalmartLabs — the company’s skunkworks. He has been tasked with bringing Walmart into the rapidly morphing world of e-commerce. That means reinventing the shopping experience — both in-store and online — and facilitating Walmart’s digital transformation.
And, judging by Duke’s pitch, it looks like he has his CEO’s full support.
Read Manjoo’s full story at Fast Company >
NOW SEE: Black Friday Shopping Hysteria From Around The Country >
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Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights. 
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