Esther Dyson: Privacy Is a Marketing Problem

In light of the recent outcry about social networking privacy lapses and the potential misuse of users' personal information, long-time web thought leader Esther Dyson had this to say at the Pivot marketing conference: Online privacy is a marketing problem.

The disclosure of personal information is a complicated subject, one that young people are starting to understand pretty well, but adults are catching onto a little more slowly, said Dyson. While Facebook is often targeted for obfuscating and breaching user privacy, Dyson contended that the company is actually doing a reasonably good job of pushing forward its users' understanding of privacy, with a few exceptions. But the issue is more practical than all that, according to Dyson. "It's not about privacy; it's about transparency, disclosure and control," she said. "I don't know what privacy is, and you as marketers don't know what privacy means to each of the individuals you market to. What you can do is you can disclose your own practices, you can make them intelligible and you can give your users control."