Helping Surfers Sidestep Site Registration 91
netbuzz writes, "PrefPass, a startup debuting at DEMO today, is looking to do for the onerous Web site registration process what Amazon has done for shopping: one click and you get the goods. If it catches on, sites requiring full registration may feel the heat." Looks like sites will have an incentive to implement PrefPass; it's not antagonistic to their interests in the way Bugmenot is.
Re:Attempted before? (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically, one aggregate cookie for each person that displays (limited to PrefPass participant sites) browser history. The reason this works better than Passport for a lot of sites is that the website is provided with marketing info, not just a validation of the user. So the participating sites don't need to request the info, they don't need to worry about storing the info (if they do so to make sure non-cookie-accepting-visitors still get tracked), etc.
Another way to think about it is meta-tagging applied to websurfers for the use of websites they visit.
No surprises here (Score:5, Interesting)
FTA: "In exchange, users agree to let PrefPass sites access their pref lists, thus allowing them to customize the experience, as well target advertising to the user."
I'll stick with BugMeNot, thank you.
Re:Don't the sites want the demographic info? (Score:2, Interesting)
This tool does not help you log into the NYTimes by providing their registration process with fake info. It helps you log in to sites that have opted in to the program and agreed to take less info about you during registration.
Sites obviously don't want fake info; it doesn't simply affect their interactions with you, very small amounts of fake info can completely fuck the validity of the statistical inferences that they make from it (and you should think about that the next time you read some study conducted by phone survey). Less info is better than fake info.
So how do the participating sites get targeting and statistical information out of you from this system?
Ahhhhhhhh, well, ya see, there's the rub. The central outfit stores some info about you and the site gets that info from their server. They keep your site cookie. What's in that cookie? A browsing history.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
Anyway, the information the sites get with which to target advertising and play with numbers is your history of browsing participating sites. Go to L.L. Bean and they know you're a potential Land's End customer, but probably don't have much interest in Deb or The Limited.
KFG
Re:Attempted before? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm talking about MyUID [myuid.com] [slashdot article [slashdot.org]]. I set up a site where you created a profile, which could be read over sites that participated in using our API. You specified what public information you wanted to provide, your privacy was up to you. However, I think most people missed that point and I mostly recieved a flood of complaints about privacy concerns.
I hope a site like this can succeed some day.
You may wish to RTFA... (Score:4, Interesting)
I honestly don't see an easy way for spammers to cull this thing (unless they bust into the PrefPass servers, I suppose).
My Thought... (Score:4, Interesting)
Call it 'X-Demographics'
Contents would be of the form
"X-Demographics: Age/28, Location/Seattle, Sex/Male, Occupation/Programmer"
All free-form and user selected, with browsers offering a dialog where users can set common information, and choose when/where to send it.
Servers must not require the info, and must accept invalid data without dying ( "Age -1/Location The Moon/Sex Yes Please" ) but if provided, they can customize their content/advertising.
Sure, users might deliberatly provide false data, but they would do that anyway with a 'log on' form; and if you don't want to provide it, you don't (default in a browsers should be nothing sent without user approval) and browsers should be able to control which sites get sent what data. Even a simple mechanism, such as the first time you visit a site, do not send data, but if you return to the site later, then send it.
Details of parsing are trivial (I know, not really), once a standard basic layout and header field name is chosen, I'm going for something like the 'Accept:' field format.
I don't mind reasonable advertisments, but as an example, as a guy, I really have no interest in tampon ads, and I doubt the tampon companies want to spend their advertising dollars on me.