Reading with interest this article on the front page of NYT – To Aim Ads, Web Is Keeping Closer Eye on You.  The article is about large Web companies learning more about people than ever from what they search for and do on the Internet.

I’m glad that this has got on the front page…I have been protesting for a long time.

As an individual in the WWW, I don’t see any easy way of using my “user behavior data” to better serve myself.  Simply, I’m frustrated that I do not own data about ME.

I quote below interesting numbers from the article:

• Five large Web operations — Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, AOL and MySpace — record at least 336 billion transmission events in a month, not counting their ad networks.
• The number of searches that American Web users enter each month has nearly doubled since summer of 2006, to 14.6 billion searches in January
• Yahoo came out with the most data collection points in a month on its own sites — about 110 billion collections, or 811 for the average user. In addition, Yahoo has about 1,700 other opportunities to collect data about the average person on partner sites like eBay, where Yahoo sells the ads.
• MySpace, which is owned by the News Corporation, and AOL, a unit of Time Warner, were not far behind.
• Google also has scores of data collection events, but the company says it is unique in that it mostly uses only current information rather than past actions to select ads.
• Condé Nast magazine sites have only 34 data collection events for the average site visitor each month. The numbers for other traditional media companies were 45 for The New York Times Company; 49 for another newspaper company, the McClatchy Corporation; and 64 for the Walt Disney Company.

It’s no secret that large Web companies are gathering user data to analyze our behavior. But the point is these data are now “owned” by a few Web companies, and they are using computer algorithms to, like what the article say:

gathering clues about the tastes and preferences of a typical user several hundred times a month. These companies use that information to predict what content and advertisements people most likely want to see. They can charge steep prices for carefully tailored ads because of their high response rates.

It is clear that in the near future, techniques for analyzing online data will be increasingly sophisticated. My bet is that one area that has been overlooked and where there are tremendous incentives for developing innovative technologies — catering  to the average consumers, companies and their customers to understand and analyze their data. 

OK, we exchange our private information to get a bit of better of service in the World Wide Web e.g. faster and better search results etc.  

But isn’t it time that we as consumers be empowered to “use” and “own” our behavior data?