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Social media data is one of the easiest and cheaper mode of understanding the personality and preferences of an individual, which makes online data collection a major trend in the marketing industry.
What you don’t know here is that apart from advertising their brands and offers through social media websites, these companies also keep a track of things you post on your social networking site.
It is fun to post things on your friend’s forum or to create your own blog, but with all these posts and writings being public, you must not overlook the fact that everything you write online is scrutinized and used by companies looking forward to get in touch with you for various reasons.
Experts have all kinds of theories regarding data mining, some believe that using casual chats and posts of users by their banks or other companies can provoke a backlash, other insists that it is nothing but harmless way of making things easy and customized for both the prospective users and the interested companies. Its like when a user leaves a recommendation posts on an online bookstore about a particular book, the online bookstores find out that a particular user likes to buy particular set of books through online bookstores.
How data collection is done?
It is amazing to see how a data collecting company can create a dossier about a person without even meeting him/her in person. A data collecting company basically collects information including the financial picture and purchase preferences or more.
If you are wondering how online data collecting works and why does it sound scary? Then, you must realize that a data mining company does nothing to affect you, or any other user, personally or professionally. Using basic online post, casual forum chats and blog based information, these companies create a behavioral pattern of an individual to form an information chart of possible preferences and status of each individual. This collection of online information and behavioral pattern is based on publicly posted data and thus, it does not impact a person in any negative way.
Usually when a person hears about online data collecting his first reaction is worry about his credit reports and information, which is where online data collating faces opposition by users. But, not many people know that social media data collecting is purely based on the information posted on blogs, social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, newsgroups and forums, which also mean that these data collecting companies do not hold any access to an individual’s credit reports.
You must also take a note of the fact that social media data collecting is nothing but a marketing tool used by financial organizations like lenders and banks and other non-profit companies to help their marketing goals and lending decisions. It’s like when you write a post about a particular credit card that you want to know about or have heard about or dislike, that particular data is used by a data company to give their banker clients your perception and preferences about that product.
Any company that mines social data has access to only the information that you have made public on internet, as these companies work like search engine crawlers, thus everything you publish online is crawled instantly. Often, data collecting companies work for clients looking forward to ability to personalize and customize their offers services to better use.
While it acts a benefit for companies looking forward to target prospective customers, it can also help you with your credits. When you are looking for a loan or some kind of financial assistance, saying or writing the right things online are very important. Staying in the friend’s list of people with good credit histories makes you a person with good or trusted company. This is what some expert’s call as “like follows like” concept.
How a user can benefit from data collection?
According to experts following social media data collecting, internet users must always be cautious about what they write on their networking sites and blogs.
Things to avoid posting on your profile or blog largely depend upon whether you have a public or private social networking profile. Because if your Facebook and Twitter profiles are public and open to all, you must not write anything, not even as a joke, about your bad banking habits or credit status. Funny or joking remarks about you going bankrupt can be taken in account by data collecting companies working for banks and other financial organization, which is why you must completely avoid indulging into any such jokes online, because you don’t want to end up explaining your bank why they shouldn’t hold up your loan application.
Second most important thing to remember when living in a world of social network, profiles, tweets and blogs is to make friends with caution. As mentioned above, with a good friend list of people with good credit risk you get the opportunity to have a good credit risk too, thus it is always a good idea to be friends with the right kind of people online. Try not to add any person who you believe can paint a bad picture of you, for companies keeping a check on your social profiles on web.
Also, never ever add in people you don’t know much about. Getting number of friends request does sound good on web, but it is risky if you do not know who these people are and what kind of credit or financial status they hold. Either you avoid accepting random requests or else make sure you go through their profiles, before you decide to click on the accept button.
Data collecting companies use web tools that work both ways for you and their clients, who want to market their offer and products to you. But, the adverse effect of this open data collection is based upon how you project yourself on your social media sites. Remember the more honest, positive and less personal you are, the better it is.
