MySpace offers personalized advertising

 After a six-month test phase, the community platform MySpace can now tailor advertising to the personal interests of its 110 million users. According to those responsible at MySpace owner Fox Interactive Media, which belongs to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, personalized advertising increases the chance of contact with the user by an average of 80 percent. According to analysts, the new offer could lead to a monthly increase in turnover of 40 million dollars. In addition, the new advertising strategy could represent an opportunity for MySpace to make up lost ground against its competitor Facebook. The new system searches the profiles of MySpace users for certain keywords, which are then used to classify them into one of ten categories. But not only those who openly claim to be interested in finance are placed in the corresponding category. Anyone who names Donald Trump as a personal role model or Wall Street as their favorite film is also taken into consideration.
Data protectionists are concerned about this development. "The problem is that personalized advertising can be manipulated in a very targeted way and most people are not aware of this. The question you have to ask yourself is how freely you want to control your own information flow," Christian Leitner from the data protection organization Quintessenz told Pressetext. The great freedom with which users publish personal data on their profiles is incredibly valuable for the advertising industry and can of course also be abused.