Mining your narrative
There is no doubt about it: as Frédéric Filloux writes in The Guardian, folks are likely to begin paying a high price soon enough for yielding their privacy online. The new data mining services, he posits, will not be about tracking core competencies.
“The firm is more into character and personality analysis. … What they basically do is data-mining the social internet: blogs, forums, Twitter, and of course Facebook.” Filloux is particularly concerned about GenY users, and he is making the bold assumption that there will actually be jobs out there for them. In the short term, I imagine the vulnerable might include the more naive Internet users among the 40-something Beached White Males made redundant by the latest financial downturn.
Turning data into stories, as companies like Narrative Science already do for example, sounds like a harmless enough activity, until you discover that you are the subject of the latest mining expedition.
