Ethical minefield + more news

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Ethical minefield

JWT makes a move into wearable tech | Marketing Interactive – wearable technology represents an ethical minefield. The reason for the ethical minefield is that the data is so sensitive. Now imagine providing marketers with access to biometric data. To envision what that ethical minefield might be like, think about if health insurers based exclusions on biometric data. Say fitness and exercise data derived from a wearable device or enforced passing a DNA test that was screened for genetic related risks, that had been triggered by wearable data? I was interviewed on this subject area, a number of years ago by Stephen Waddington and it featured in his book Brand Vandals. More on ethics here.

Business 

Yahoo just admitted it badly overpaid for Tumblr – Quartz – Tumblr needed an incentive to sell to Yahoo!

Design

Daring Fireball: Mossberg: ‘Twitter Has Become Secret-Handshake Software’ – interesting debate on user experience

Media

Former Top Executive of Chinese Online Video Giant Youku Tudou Detained on Corruption Charges – Hollywood Reporter

Hong Kong: Beijing opens a new chapter – FT.com – title belies the copy. The Causeway Bay Books owners and publishers underwent extra ordinary rendition. The apparent reason was to keep an unauthorised biography of Xi Jingping out of print. These books seem to be written for the Chinese market by overseas dissidents. I knew of colleagues with families on the mainland who were asked to bring these books home each lunar new year. Many of of the customers at Causeway Bay Books were mainland Chinese desperate for the inside scoop that they didn’t get through party controlled newspapers. (paywall). More Hong Kong related posts here.

Online

Twitter API data show the number of tweets is in serious decline – Business Insider – as others have pointed out to me where the Twitter media relations team and why aren’t they responding

At Berkeley, a New Digital Privacy Protest – The New York Times – interesting given Berkeley’s historic place in rights activism (paywall)

Gmail now has more than 1 billion active users | VentureBeat – which puts WhatsApp in perspective

Lists are the new search — Benedict Evans – the irony of all this for me is especially striking, it is essentially a justification of Yahoo!’s knowledge search approach from a decade ago

Technology

Microsoft Plumbs Ocean’s Depths to Test Underwater Data Center

Telecoms

Here’s How Free Basics Is Actually Being Sold Around The World – BuzzFeed News – no real surprises on how Facebook Free Basics was looking to hoover up more of the developing world as Facebook users. It is not surprising that it wasn’t well received in countries like India.