A new way to look at online privacy regulation…”Personal data is the new oil of the internet and the new currency of the digital world.”  More easily stated that your identity online has value!!  You should treat your online identitiy as cash or property.

The online medium has the largest disparity between time spent consuming and ad spend out of all mediums.  There is a formula that demonstrates the value of all Facebook likes alone below:

29*550MM*$3.65=$58B

Where 29 denotes the avergage number of brand “likes” for a FB user, 550MM denotes total FB audience, and $3.65 the average cost/like.

Really interesting when you put it into context that global online ad spend is only $54B.  Moreover, the Zuckerberg Law (original huh?) states that every year you share double the amount of data than the year before.  Thus putting more of yourself online for someone to potentially take advantage of.

This just shows the value of the ability to target individuals based on their behaviors, interests and likes.  While it is very unclear at this time who the owner of all of this data is?  Does it belong to the individual?  the event (SXSW for example they know who I am where I am at a given time this week)? or some corporation who collects this data?  It is a very interesting battle that is being waged as we speak.  Is the industry’s attempt to self regulate enough and does it empower the individual to realize that their online idnetity does have value and should be protected that way.