A couple of ad targeting firms let Steel look at what they had on her, and guess what: it was not totally accurate! They guessed that she liked luxury boats and was a newlywed, when actually she just had friends getting married, and has no boat. That's because tracking can't follow you across different computers, and guessing about demographics based on internet cookies is an inexact science. You might think that keeping these people in the dark would be a good thing, but Emily gives props to the firm that correctly pegs her as "someone who spends time exercising and socializing at bars and nightclubs." Psht, well that's not exactly ESP territory. She ends with this:

Meanwhile, marketers, here is some free intelligence about me that you won't find in my Revenue Science or Acxiom profile: I'm a bargain shopper who loves reading fiction, and I'm a huge Tar Heels fan. And for the last several months, I've been scouring the Web for running gear.

I'll be looking for the targeted ads.

As soon as every other American writes a WSJ feature on their shopping preferences we'll have this whole industry straightened out.

[WSJ; pic via]

Twitter CEO (nice business card, ha) Jack Dorsey says the teeny-typing service is a boon for reporters:

Dorsey: We've heard from a number of organizations — even as old as Reuters — that are building tools to monitor what's going on with Twitter to help conform what they need to focus on in terms of writing their articles.

Twitter provides a great man-on-the-street account of what's happening right now.

That's where you're wrong, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. You know what provides a great man-on-the-street account of what's happening right now? People on the street!

See, streets tend to be full of all types of people: all races, creeds, subcultures, and economic strata tend to utilize streets. But Twitter is full of—we're generalizing slightly here, but not too much—upwardly mobile white tech obsessives. It's certainly easy to shop for a quote on Twitter. And reporters love easy quotes, I say from personal experience! But it's the modern equivalent of asking your taxi driver in Mumbai what he thinks about the upcoming elections or whatever, except more likely to be delivered in 140-character increments. By an affluent tech nerd. A demographic which does not yet represent a reasonable cross-section of citizens for any story outside of, you know, tech stories.

It's a lot like our own relationship with our commenters. We love you, but you're a voluble minority, and if we guided the site based solely on commenter feedback, it would consist exclusively of live blogs and notices for commenter meetups. Which is fine, no backlash please! But we've seen the problem more important arenas, too: Howard Dean thought his massive lead in Meetup.com events would help him win the presidency. It didn't!

Reporters still have to leave their cubes to find the people on the street. They're outside, you see; out there, on the streets. And remember, Obama fans:

IWM: Who are some big-name Twitterers?

Dorsey: The biggest one at the moment is Barack Obama.

That's not necessarily a good sign.

[I Want Media]