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>"On the other hand, that means that I'm giving ten different vendors the ability to monetize all the data my site generates essentially for free. This is great

>"On the other hand, that means that I'm giving ten different vendors the ability to monetize all the data my site generates essentially for free. This is great for them, kind of crappy for the users who get tracked and monetized, and terrible for me, because I'm not realizing the value I generate." Presumably you are not directly sending data to any vendors you are not receiving value from. In the analytics world, it is kind of understood that if you use Google Analytics, you should have an expectation that Google is using that data however they see fit. Same holds true with other vendors unless they explicitly say otherwise. As such, the burden (rightfully) falls on the site owner to properly vet their vendors to make sure they work with companies whose business practices align with the site owner's data policies. Nobody is forcing you to integrate with vendors who don't adhere to your standards, but not everyone has the same standards. So at the end of the day, I'm confused by your point about how this is terrible for you since you're not realizing any value that you generate. You are exchanging data, money, or both, in exchange for a service. It is up to you to determine what that is worth to you and whether you are paying a fair price, but it isn't Segment's fault if you decide to partner with companies that give you a raw deal.

amluto 11y ago
When I said that sites don't realize the value they generate, I didn't mean that they don't get something else out of the deal. Google Analytics is a genuinely useful service, for example. I suspect that a lot of sites aren't thinking hard about the tradeoffs, though. The benefits of using these services are immediate and obvious, whereas the costs are rather more subtle. I heard a fascinating talk last year by John Gruber about ways of monetizing content outside the usual sell-tracking-rights-and-accept-ad-bids model. (Check out what he does at http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/ http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/. The whole site seems to be entirely devoid of third-party tracking.)

amluto 11y ago

When I said that sites don't realize the value they generate, I didn't mean that they don't get something else out of the deal. Google Analytics is a genuinely useful service, for example. I suspect that a lot of sites aren't thinking hard about the tradeoffs, though. The benefits of using these services are immediate and obvious, whereas the costs are rather more subtle. I heard a fascinating talk last year by John Gruber about ways of monetizing content outside the usual sell-tracking-rights-and-accept-ad-bids model. (Check out what he does at http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/ http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/. The whole site seems to be entirely devoid of third-party tracking.)