public

Truste Has released the findings of a very interesting survey it conducted regarding behavioral targeting. It turns out that consumers' comfort level with the concept is going up.

On the tail of the Oscars this weekend comes a story from the NY Times. I have read it several times because I can’t get over the possibilities. The possibilities of what you ask?

It’s usually fun to see what’s on everybody’s mind by looking at Google Trends. Today, no so much, because gas is on their minds, and hurricanes, and not necessarily in that order, depending on where you live. In Texas, or near Texas, or if people have loved ones in Texas, they’re searching for news of Hurricane Ike, which is destined for landfall in Galveston. The rest of the country, while no doubt very concerned for their countrymen are also concerned about spiking gas prices as the hurricane makes for oil refineries.

You may have never heard of Qik, but it seems to be the logical next step in the citizen journalism movement: live video feeds from mobile phones to the Web. A certain Twittering Congressman uses it already, and today it officially goes public, in beta, naturally.

For the first time in thirty years, Wall Street saw a quarter come and go with no companies going public. The second quarter of 2008 proved to be a disappointing one all around. Adding on to residual distrust from the dotcom bust, venture capitalists and investment firms are reluctant to debut their startups to the public market during such a weak climate. Memories of Vonage's embarrassing public offering two years ago don't help the situation; venture capitalists feel going public during the current market's mood would be anticlimactic.

New social networking features complement the opening of the public beta of Blist, a site that wants to make the database as easy to use as any kind of list.

In the United States, we have some pretty easy-to-remember guidelines on what constitutes “public” and “private.” Areas like your home and your car are considered private. With a few notable exceptions, other areas are public. These legal definitions apply to entities like the police and the press—anything that happens (or is found) in public is “fair game,” but to intrude on your privacy, the police have to have at least a reasonable suspicion of illegal activity (or your permission).

At this point, we really haven’t seen a major Web 2.0 company make it through an IPO. We’ve seen YouTube gobbled up by Google, and MySpace snagged by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. To date, they remain the companies that have truly defined success in the evolving Web 2.0 era.