The latest scandal among the tech giants last week was that both Facebook and Google were found to
have been paying selected users to allow the companies to track
their usage on the iPhone. Apple has since shut both the backdoor research
apps down, saying that they violated the special enterprise certificates that allowed both Facebook and Google to
bypass the App Store, since their certificates were intended to internally distributed apps only.
Facebook was paying its users $20 a month, while Google allowed users to earn gift cards. A $20 price tag indicates that these companies are finding significant value in knowing exactly how users are interacting with
their iPhone. This information could be used to serve more relevant ads to the
users on their platforms; however, perhaps more valuable, both companies can use these insights to shape future product development knowing how its rivals’ customers are interacting with their products.
As more of our lives continued to be centered around
our mobile phones this knowledge is becoming increasingly more valuable and its
likely to see companies continue try to make a play to gain access to this usage
data. Personally, I wouldn’t mind getting $20 a month which I could put towards
my phone bill in exchange for how I used my phone, partly because I suspect
Apple is doing this to some degree already anyway. How much would you need to turn
over your mobile phone usage data?
Further Tech Crunch coverage:
- Overview of Facebook's 'Research' app
- Overview of Google's 'Screenwise' app
- Facebook's defensive of its 'Research' app
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