We got some initial (and very good) feedback on the site’s user forum.  Keep voicing your opinion and interest in ListensToYou.  If you love it, hate it or somewhere in between, we would like to hear from you.  The important thing for us, right now, is that people like the vision - to give internet users some control over and meaningful feedback on - the ad content they see on the websites they visit.  The best way to accomplish that can be shaped by you; and it should be.  After all, we are all about empowering user choice. 

Rather than split user feedback into 2 places - blog comments and the user forum - we have consolidated it all into the blog right here in the User Feedback category.  If you want to start a topic, post in the comments under our New discussion topics blog post and we’ll promote great discussions to posts of their own.  Also, we transferred some of the best user forum topics and responses over to the User Feedback category of blogs, so check them out and continue the discussion.

If you have topics you’d like to discuss, post them as comments on this blog post and we’ll promote some of the discussions to their own posts to continue the discussion.  We’re open to all feedback!

From the ListensToYou user forum

Make updating preferences easier in real time. Go to someone like Conduit in short term- have them create a toolbar for you - that way users have one-click access to your resources. Also paves the way for better ad network integration (cookie based ad targeting growing obsolete - pave way for next generation browser-ad network integration via xml etc).

Posted by : Mark81295  

Posted date : 06-19-2008 10:35:22 am

Replies

Mark - you are right on point with your suggestion. It makes total sense to have a browser plug-in or toolbar to allow people to update preferences as they occur (see an ad you like, add that type/brand/product to your listenstoyou profile). We had considered this as a long-term play, but had not considered Conduit to do this in the short-term. Your feedback really helps - thanks! If you have more suggestions, you can always post on the forum or email to info@listenstoyou.com. I get all of those messages. David

Posted by:LTY David  Posted date:06-19-2008 12:33:35 pm 

if you can figure out how to do it, it would be great to single out ads that I don’t want to see again (on the page I see them) - and have that preferenced apply to all partner sites. I only want to see relevant ads, from relevent companies. Its ok to show me ads from companies I haven’t ranked but let me tell you if I’m interested or not when I see the ad. 

Posted by:tmc2k  Posted date:06-20-2008 12:46:49 am 

tmc - another great piece of feedback. I should point out to the ListensToYou community that this type of interaction is VERY helpful to us. I would really like to have not only registered ListensToYou users be able to give feedback on particular ads - as you mentioned - but also to let anyone give the feedback and have it initiate registration for those that are not current users. We’d like to continue discussing these ideas and the technical execution of them, so please keep up the forum posts or send me an email: info@listenstoyou.com

Posted by:LTY David  Posted date:06-20-2008 08:42:33 am 

From the ListensToYou user forum

I’m sure you went around a lot on this already but your name is not very catchy and its too long. Gotta find a better name for the service. 

Posted by : tmc2k  

Posted date : 06-20-2008 00:59:45 am

Replies

Thanks, tmc2k! You know, we went back and forth with this. We did get some feedback saying the name was hard to understand, but we also got a lot of feedback that the name, and the slogan it inspired, was great. Maybe we could have users submit names they like? Perhaps we can hold a naming contest. At the very least, that could help get the word out, which we are trying very hard to do.

Posted by:LTY David  Posted date:06-20-2008 08:34:25 am 

From the ListensToYou user forum

Which are the websites that have the worst ads!? Reply to this post or click the Contact Us link to suggest some partner websites.

Posted by : LTY David  

Posted date : 06-18-2008 07:03:30 am

Replies

Good question. I don’t mind high quality ads even if they are not relevant. Of course quality is subjective. Yahoo! has some very poor ads when using their email service. Blinky, non relevant ads. I don’t want to see any more ads for classmates etc. Hopefully your service can set a quality bar so that I’m not presented with fake dialogs boxes or other messages that are designed to trick users into clicking on the ad. Filter out the noise level of advertising and give me a better internet experience. Perhaps options for users to reject types of ads (show them samples), they must be universally annoying. 

Posted by:tmc2k  Posted date:06-20-2008 12:57:59 am 

Now, this is another level of user control, for sure! This, to me, is the ultimate - demanding high quality content and execution in banner and other online ads. With the exception of fashion magazines, it seems that no medium does this very well. Your idea for execution, simple examples, is something I could see working. Additionally, you spark a good idea that our brand could stand for advertising that isn’t annoying or a trick, but only ads that the user would want. Of course, we would have to bring a pretty strong user-base to the table if we are going to start making those demands of publishers and advertisers. But, that is exactly what we are trying to do and we appreciate the help you are giving us with your suggestions and feedback!

Posted by:LTY David  Posted date:06-20-2008 08:51:39 am 

So, I am writing this post to complete my Technorati “claim of” our blog.

I have to put this code: [Deleted the code - can't be too safe :) ]

somewhere on the blog’s front page.

First, I am not sure if publishing that code in a public forum is a bad thing, but i suspect not, since Technorati suggests that as one way to complete this step.

What I really want to know, however, is: are there other steps I need to take to make our company and blog recognizable and understood.  It seems like there are thousands of things to do - an entire industry of them, in fact.  I wish someone would make a giant diagram of prioritized things to do.  I guess that is like asking for someone to do our job for us, though, so we’re going to keep working through it.

I can’t wait to make a big announcement in the next month about our product/service!

Please check back, subscribe to our RSS or follow us on twitter @LTYdavid

The NY Times reported last week that the FTC reaffirmed its thinking that internet companies can responsibly self-police their privacy practices.  Website publishers and companies have privacy policies that are intended to report how your information is collected, stored and used, but these are often unclear and, mostly, just unread.  It is not realistic to expect users to read and understand the privacy policy of every website they visit.  It is like having to read and approve dozens of legal documents every day — and, most privacy policies state that they can change without notice, so they are moving targets.

The recent FTC comments have to do with a particular topic that is really important to ListensToYou: behavioral advertising - the practice of observing and storing your searching and surfing habits and history in order to target you with ads.  The commission wants website publishers to make users aware, in a very clear way, how their data may be used and wants users to be able to opt out of behavioral tracking.  This is an ok suggestion, but it still happens on a site-by-site basis.  Should I really have to opt out on all sites I visit?  To be clear, it could also happen at the ad network level.  A business that sells and serves ads on behalf of several websites could avoid tracking users on all of those websites.  Still, though, there are dozens of ad networks and that doesn’t even account for the thousands of sites that sell and serve their own ads.  Plus, it isn’t like the FTC is demanding or regulating these things, it is still relying on the websites or ad networks to do the right thing.

Last night NBC aired a special report on banking and the collateralized debt that contributed to the current financial crisis.  None other than former Fed chief Alan Greenspan said that the Fed was relying on the banks to do the right thing and to self-regulate.  We see how that worked out.  I am not saying that a privacy crisis similar to the financial crisis will occur, just that it isn’t enough to expect companies to protect us and that government institutions aren’t stepping in on consumers’ behalf.  Internet users cannot afford to be complacent about their own data.

Today is Data Privacy Day.  ListensToYou was founded not just to give an alternative to advertising based on data collected without user consent, but to participate in the awareness and discussion of data privacy.  Many people have told us that they don’t care about giving away their data.  Others have told us that the ListensToYou model would be difficult to implement because people are getting more and more comfortable giving up their data.  We think that is a problem - NOT that it is always a problem to give up your personal data, when you choose to do so, but to do so only because it seems more natural these days or because it is so common that people barely notice.

Erick Schonfeld, one of my favorite writers at TechCrunch, wrote a good post about this today.

I just want to remind people to give some thought to how they want their data to be accessible to organizations.  I think ListensToYou is a good step toward giving an alternative method of advertising, but there are more situations to think about - passwords, friends, pictures, etc.

A fair question.  One of our friends posed this question over dinner a few weeks ago suspecting, correctly, that our lack of communication was because things ARE happening (rather than because things just aren’t happening).  It is a difficult task to bring a new way to advertise into the market in a meaningful way.  ListensToYou is a good idea and, if you read some of the posts on this blog, guest posts (post 1, post 2 and post 3), and posts by other sites, you can see the benefit to the entire advertising chain - beginning with the consumer/viewer. 

Starting out - the first steps toward building it to its full potential - takes time.  We have a lot of interested partners and each has helped us form and refine our product, which is what we have been doing: building and refining an implementable product.  The good news is that we expect to exit closed beta this month or early next and we will launch with our first partner at the same time!  We are excited about making ListensToYou a reality.  There is still much more to be done to give users the control they want over online advertising, but we’re taking the first steps and we think you’ll like the results.

As always, please contact us with suggestions (I read all of these) or questions or submit a comment to our feedback posts to begin or add to a discussion about ListensToYou.