That's what they're attempting to establish in a nascent 2-sided market where, by other proxy measures, the value of personal information is close to zero for l

That's what they're attempting to establish in a nascent 2-sided market where, by other proxy measures, the value of personal information is close to zero for large swaths of the uneducated digital population. I use the word 'uneducated' because presumably the working hypothesis is that once data-awareness is raised (i.e. "you can actually get paid to share your data!"), the corresponding market-price of various personal information tuples/assets will rise. EDIT: As a single other data point, AT&T's cable division called U-Verse is offering a fiber plan called GigaPower that effectively pays subscribers $29/mo for their participation in the AT&T GigaPower Internet Preferences (i.e. consensual data-mining) Program[1]. The "payment" is offered in the form of a price delta between the Premier (i.e. data-mined) tier for $70/mo, or the Standard tier for $99/mo[2]. So, at least one large corporation believes that household web browsing data is worth $29/month which is a good proxy for a price ceiling on how much personal data could be worth in the medium term. [1] http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB421828&cv=812#fbid=JUNeIt0J13u http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB421828&cv=812#... [2] http://www.eweek.com/small-business/att-u-verse-with-gigapower-launches-in-austin.html http://www.eweek.com/small-business/att-u-verse-with-gigapow...