NY Times To Data-Mine Its Visitors

pilsner.urquell points out a story in the Village Voice from a stockholders' meeting at the New York Times. It seems that the media giant is now eager to data-mine visitors to its Web properties. Of course anybody with a site who profits from advertising is likely to be doing something of the sort. It's just a bit surprising that the Times would use the words "data mining" out loud in public. From the article: "Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits... [T]he problem with reading papers electronically is that they can also read you."

Obligatory??

[Anonymous Coward]

[T]he problem with reading papers electronically is that they can also read you.

So, how are we supposed to make Soviet Union jokes after this??

Papers read you!

[maxwell demon]

"[T]he problem with reading papers electronically is that they can also read you."
Wow, a Soviet Russia joke directly in the summary!

Re:Garbage In, Garbage Out

[truthsearch]

Gabrielle Carteris [imdb.com], is that you?

Re:Obligatory??

[MrNaz]

I never knew Nietzsche was Russian!

Re:Obligatory??

[Intron]

"shows a lot of integrity"

Except they didn't put it in an announcement to the website visitors, they announced to their stockholders that they planned to make more money.

Anyway, I think everyone visiting the NYT site from now on should do a search for "elephant porn" and we'll see how that affects their advertising budget.