From the category archives:

consumer web trends

    

I received the email below from the Chief Marketing Officer of Best Buy recently.  The key takeaway?  If you are responsible for customer data, please make sure you are being careful with said data.  You never want to send an email like the one below but you might have to one day.  It’s a dangerous world out there and, while this is probably not an issue for Best Buy in the long term, it sure does sting a little bit.

Dear Valued Best Buy Customer,

On March 31, we were informed by Epsilon, a company we use to send emails to our customers, that files containing the email addresses of some Best Buy customers were accessed without authorization.

We have been assured by Epsilon that the only information that may have been obtained was your email address and that the accessed files did not include any other information. A rigorous assessment by Epsilon determined that no other information is at risk. We are actively investigating to confirm this.

For your security, however, we wanted to call this matter to your attention. We ask that you remain alert to any unusual or suspicious emails. As our experts at Geek Squad would tell you, be very cautious when opening links or attachments from unknown senders.

In keeping with best industry security practices, Best Buy will never ask you to provide or confirm any information, including credit card numbers, unless you are on our secure e-commerce site,www.bestbuy.com. If you receive an email asking for personal information, delete it. It did not come from Best Buy.

Our service provider has reported this incident to the appropriate authorities.

We regret this has taken place and for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We take your privacy very seriously, and we will continue to work diligently to protect your personal information. For more information on keeping your data safe, please visit:
http://www.geeksquad.com/do-it-yourself/tech-tip/six-steps-to-keeping-your-data-safe.aspx.

Sincerely,

Barry Judge
Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer
Best Buy

    

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UPDATE: Almost 3 years later from the original post below (July, 2008) and AT&T took the lead on location-based shopping alerts in partnership with Placecast.  It took 3 years and AT&T to make this happen?!!?  Really.  Really!  I’m either way off base on the power of location-based marketing or the revenue model just isn’t there yet.

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Security and privacy implications aside (see the NSA reference in the title of this post), July 11th is set to be a day that brings a renewed focus to mobile marketing.  What am I talking about?

  • July 11th is the launch date for the new 3G iPhone.
  • July 11th is also the launch date for the App store in iTunes.

From an internet marketing perspective, you should care about this date even if you do not own an iPhone (only a few million of us do at this point).  You should care because the launch date of this new phone is likely to place a renewed emphasis on the GPS chip that is already in many smart phones today.  I’m not giving Apple credit for putting a GPS chip in a cell phone……hardly……but I am giving them credit for putting the tools required to take true advantage of this functionality in the hands of developers.

Keep your eye on the ball.  Here are a few trends to watch:

Geoblogging: location-aware blogging adds a new layer to one’s posts and comments on the internet.

Location-based Advertising (Are we calling this something else yet?): You are in a new city…….say, Seattle…..and you really want a cup ‘o joe.  Power up the GPS enabled cellphone with Google Maps loaded on it and off you go.  Oh yeah….and Google Adsense will be adopted to provide coupons/discounts to those stores closest to you.  Location based advertising will be HUGE.

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Are You a “Straight”?

by Greg Tirico

    

During a recent recording of This Week In Google, Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) pontificated about people that get it vs. the people that don’t.  People that get it, he argues, understand how to use the internet and the change it has brought about to propel themselves, their businesses and their industries to new levels of success.  Those [...]

    

The entertainment industry is having a hard enough time as it is trying to keep up with emerging technology.  This should really throw them off… http://bit.ly/2WXsBG Posted via email from Greg Tirico – Tirico.net

    

UPDATE: Since posting this article Google has updated their terms of service for the Google Chrome product. Still not entirely consumer friendly it is *much* better than the original and even carries a Google apology along with the terms of service amendment. Is it just me or does that new model car on the road [...]

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