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Comment by twistedpair | Hacker News Reader

There is always the standard way to make money: sell all the user data to advertisers and anyone else who wants it. Want a list of people in city X that chat more than Y times a day with influential network of Z people? It's all for sale, just no one brags about it.

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I'm not actually sure how valuable that is. What am I supposed to do with a list of supposedly influential names and cell phone numbers? Match them to addresses and send them direct mail? Sounds like a lot of work.

Correlate it. You've got phone numbers. That's a strong identifier. Phone/Power/Gas company will sell your their name and address. Other sites need a phone number and might have more details as well. There are a ton of big data brokers out there that do just this.

Sure, I get that. It just doesn't seem like you would get rich that way.

Think about it. If I know you, everything about you, I can sell directly to you. Not just things that are vaguely intersting to you, but to the most primal want you have. The key is getting an accurate image of who you are, tapping into the "I cant resist" part of your individual monkey brain. We all have somethings that we don't think rationally about,and if someone can map you down to you that point, then they have you. Your patterns on social media leak that data. The more sources, the more accurate they can construct "you."

The next step is biometrics. The kinect is a good example. Im betting that is looking to measure pupil dilation, heart rate, etc. if its not already. Looking at an ad and your heartrate goes up and pupils change? Time for these similar ones, ever deeper and deeper into you.

If I can do that, I can sell that info to a vender with an actual product, making myself very wealthy just moving data around. Its even better if Im also that vendor, like in microsofts case with games. Then I cut out the middle man and vertically integrate myself to the moon.

>Not just things that are vaguely intersting to you, but to the most primal want you have

And that's a good thing actually

Why sell the data when you can sell targeted ads to the desired demographic? Why give away the cash cow of actual people-to-properties key-value maps?

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