Privacy and Permission

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Earlier this week I was on a social media panel for the Triangle Interactive Marketing Association in Raleigh, NC with pr guru Peter Shankman.

We were speaking to a highly marketing literate crowd of about 100 or so offline and online companies interested in the social media space.  The question of privacy came up, and Peter made the excellent point that:

"Privacy is currency."

This is an incredibly powerful statement for marketers to keep in mind as we explore and try to find the new metrics that will adequately measure the online space.  I brought up the issue of "attention metrics" and "attention currency" when someone asked about how to monetize Twitter or Facebook.  Looking back, I think Peter’s theory of privacy currency is even more compelling and takes things like attention into its fold.

Keep that in mind when deploying social media campaigns or when attempting to "monetize" Facebook et al.

In relation to Peter’s point, my closing statement went along the lines of "online privacy might be a tightly held currency and an illusion, but permission is not."

In other words, the marketing metrics of the 21st century (both online, offline and in the strange hybrid of relativist space that exists between them) will swing between the pendulums of privacy and permission.

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