In the mix...data for coupons, information literacy, most-visited sites

1) There's obviously an increasing move to a model of data collection in which the company says, "give us your data and get something in return," a quid pro quo.  But as Marc Rotenberg at EPIC points out,

The big problem is that these business models are not very stable. Companies set out privacy policies, consumers disclose data, and then the action begins...The business model changes. The companies simply want the data, and the consumer benefit disappears.

It's not enough to start with compensating consumers for their data.  The persistent, shareable nature of data makes it very different from a transaction involving money, where someone can buy, walk away, and never interact with the company again.  These data-centered companies are creating a network of users whose data are continually used in the business.  Maybe it's time for a new model of business, where governance plans incorporate ways for users to be involved in decisions about their data. 2) In a related vein, danah boyd argues that transparency should not be an end in itself, and that information literacy needs to developed in conjunction with information access.  A similar argument can be made about the concept of privacy.  In "real life" (i.e., offline life), no one aims for total privacy.  Everyday, we make decisions about what we want to share with whom.  Online, total privacy and "anonymization" are also impossible, no matter the company promises in its privacy policy.  For our datatrust, we're going to use PINQ, a technology using differential privacy, that acknowledges privacy is not binary, but something one spends.  So perhaps we'll need to work on privacy and data literacy as well?3) Google recently released a list of the most visited sites on the Internet. Two questions jump out: a) Where is Google on this list? and b) Could the list be a proxy for the biggest data collectors online?