Surprise, surprise! I didn't know a whole heck of a lot about this topic, I have had experience with these things but didn't realize it at the time. For the sake of this blog post I will focus my research on aggregates. I learned a lot about this topic and found out that I use aggregates almost everyday. In the article What Are News Aggregators, and How Will They Change Public Relations? I learned that there are 6,000 unpaid bloggers, or news aggregators, working for the Huffington Post. I found this very interesting because, first of all that is a lot of information coming from many sources. Like the article said, that is a huge source of controversy, bloggers are able to contribute information that they find important and they can insert their opinion. There are a lot of eyes that look at the Huffington Post's site everyday, allowing these 6,000 bloggers are able to get their opinions out to a large number number of people. This article also used the example of Perez Hilton, I never would have thought of him as a news aggregate but it makes perfect sense. He pulls news from other sources and delivers it to the public. That is the easiest way, in my opinion, to remember what an aggregator is.
I also looked into tracking, I found this information to be very interesting. I have noticed that when I google something, or am online shopping and look at something in particular, it appears in ads on the side of my screen or other places. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but thankfully, I caught on an realized that my searches and what I was looking at online was being tracked. An article on wsj.com talks a lot about a new way companies are tracking information, it is called a "Supercookie". It would be interesting to learn more about this because it is causing some debate and controversy amongst companies and consumers.
You do a fantastic job of presenting the information to someone like myself that knows little about any of this type of thing. But after reading your post I am able to figure out where I can go and what other questions to ask in order to learn more about the topic. I was surprised to learn how much we use aggregators as well. I knew nothing about the Supercookie either but found myself in another article learning more about it before commenting. Thanks for the post!
ReplyDeleteAggregators are amazing tools and it is incredible to think of how they are changing marketing and making marketing more effective in general. However, I hate the Supercookie, because I find it Superannoying.
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