Buzz.com: At&t steps closer to Big Brother through targeted ads and u-verse (my title)

Do you have a new favorite restaurant you’d love to recommend to your friends? Or maybe you need a recommendation for a new dentist? Today, there’s a new option for sharing local tips with your friends – buzz.com from AT&T Interactive. Buzz.com is opening its early-access beta program to the public today, after an invite-only period.

Social networks have become a central part of many people’s lives. According to Nielsen, in 2009, 82 percent more time was spent on social networking sites than in 2008. Buzz.com lets users tap those growing social networks – starting with their friends on Facebook – to discover, share and store recommendations for great local businesses. That means there’s no need to build a new community of friends or sift through rants and raves from strangers. Instead, buzz.com offers users a personalized version of local search, based on the recommendations of people they know and trust.

“We recognize that people are already having conversations online about the best places to go and businesses to call. Buzz.com makes it even easier to discover the businesses your friends recommend,“ said buzz.com General Manager Charles Hornberger. “Although the site is still in beta, we’re very excited to open it up to anyone who wants to see how we’re approaching ‘social search’ for the local marketplace.”

A Bellsouth Yellow Pages salesman came into my office today to talk about other products AT&T may soon be offering, especially targeted ads. This press release on Buzz.com is part of the story. Here's another. One scenario he gave was that if At&t was your ISP and you sent an email to a friend with a word that they considered a keyword, say "lawyer" or "wedding"- if you had U-verse as your cable provider, you would start to to see TV ads generated by words in your private emails. In other words, you will see an increase in lawyer ads or wedding ads, while your neighbor may be seeing more car ads, based on their keywords in private correspondence.

My salesman thought this was a great idea. I consider it a huge invasion of privacy- mostly because u-verse customers will not be told that this is occurring. I wondered if any other Freepers, small business owners have heard of this? What do you think? Based on the emails you've sent in the last 24 hours what kinds of ads would you see? My sons are big into youtube poopies right now...I'd hate to see the TV ads generated by their emails and web traffic.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.