Manage (and make cash with?) your data online
22.05.12
(CNN) -- It's a truth of the modern digital age: If you're using a Web service for free, you're not the customer. You're probably the product.
The sites we visit, the videos we watch, the purchases we make and the items we reward with a Facebook "like" or a Google "+1" -- all of that, and more, eventually melds together into a data set that lets many of the world's most popular Web companies get to know us better.
And they're using it to make billions of dollars.
But what if Web users could reclaim their online data and benefit, or maybe even profit, from it?
That's what a group of new startups want to happen. They say that instead of giving away data to tech titans who turn around and use it to target advertising, users should get something in return.
"I think what's happening now is that, finally, people are becoming aware of how their data's being used," said Shane Green, CEO of a company called Personal. "And in the future, they're not going to be just giving this stuff up."
Source: CNN
