When I was a young 'un the internet hat this concept of sharing. content providers did not expect to get payed, they hoped to get read.

Oh well I guess that commie pinko liberal thinking went the way of free market capitalism.

Phenomenal...

very interesting and inphormative...

...what opinion to phorm about this.

aren't made of Phormica

except;

your reputation,

the privacy of your subscribers

and quite possibly your customer base

but hey, you might make some money, if any one joins our marketing club.

where do I sign?

I remember the days when you paid an ISP for access to the internet and this funded the business model, if they want more revenue then they should build content that people are interested in rather than trying to profile and pimp their customer base.

there's so pretty perverse logic behind that thinking and the catalyst appears to be greed, it'll be good to see the EU string them up by the balls!

..oh hang on.

Can we phormally tell them to phuck off?

...that the rest of the behavioral targeting mob is paying them well for being the whipping boy/guinea pig/worst of a number of poor choices whilst they get their shit together. One wonders why Mountain View has been so quiet, given that this stomps on their core business rather heavily. I would also like to take this opportunity to send my commiserations to those investors who have lost an imperial arseload [1] of cash and hope that someone, somewhere has given you and WKWAI enough to retire on, since you'll never work in a position requiring anything more complex or responsible than inserting a bolt into a Tonka toy with a fourteen page work instruction and three supervisors watching your every move ever again.

I must admit, it was a cleverly planned (except hosting initially on FarceHosts, a dead giveaway that this was not a serious company), well executed move by all concerned and the choice of a man with the most arrogant demeanour, evil background and awful accent as chief nasty was inspired. It's almost too convoluted for my own Machiavellian mind to follow, but talent recognises genius...

Joke alert. <SpookyReverb>Or is it?</SpookyReverb> ;o)

[1] Slightly larger than a metric fuckton. Sorry for deviating from ElReg standard units, but I'm old school where we learnt pounds, shillings, pence and HOW BLOODY MUCH?

When I was young, and my heart, was an open book (they used to say....) I was treated to a workshop by some of the country's leading PR experts. I was working for a major telecoms equipment manufacturer after a spell at Tesco, who also taught me a lot about customer relations.

I was introduced to the 1 in 10 concept: that for every strongly dissatisfied customer who bothered to send you feedback, there were another 9 equally dissatisfied but hadn't got around to telling you. And these weren't just the grumblers, but the people who were likely to take action and stop using your product or service. Not only that, but they were likely to tell at least 10 other people how dissatisfied they were with your service, and these 10 other people would be at least aware of your product's deficiencies.

Currently very close to 19,000 people have spoken out on the Number 10 website against ISP profiling for the sakes of advertising.

If the PR types were close to true, and I firmly believe they are, after all, how many people are even aware of the No 10 website(?) then there are a further 171,000 dissatisfied people out there who do not like being tracked by their ISP for whatever purpose.

And it also means that around 1.9 million people have heard something bad about BT/Phorm from the 190,000 dissatisfied customers.

Next time I hear Drayton et. al telling me that the people protesting against Phorm are extremists and few in numbers, and that "only a very small percentage" of our customer base have signed the petition I swear I'll tell him where to go, and get fired in the process.

The fact is that a good proportion of tech literate customers are aware of what ISPs are up to and are voting with their feet. Big companies like BT are losing focus on core business. They are focusing on deals to attract customers rather than reasons why customers want to stay.

SHORT TERMISM DAMAGES BRAND STRENGTH!

The opinion that is Phormed through reading this story, is that the author here is non-too impressed with our friendly little WKWAI company!

In fact, you could Phorm the opinion that this somewhat Phormulaic piece is designed to drop a small hint...

I hope they disappear into a gigantic hole of their own Phormation! Clear enuff yet?

..... Paris wouldnt understand... but she'd still get it!

It really is a funny little fish bowl these cologne-breathing testosterone factories live in.

@Man Outraged

Nice back-of-the-envelope job. Sadly, judging by the behaviour of our telco 0.9 crowd, the wisdom you learned has gone the way of the Dodo.

Paris; she certainly knows the right way to communicate opportunities to her end-users.

When you said "(Company) That Could Not Be Named", I thought that old Gnarly Thotep (aka 'The Royal Pant') had moved into the Telecomms arena, possibly using kit supplied by H(ewlett) P(ackard) Lovecraft...

Mine's the one with the Elder Sign on the back and the jug of Space Mead in the pocket.

More good journalism from Orlowski. What's going on?