Behavioral targeting of advertising and content is increasingly common online. By analyzing search terms in a session, documenting content types visited, or employing other approaches, sites try to deliver material that fits interests they believe they can deduce from online behavior.
But do you browse like a boy or a girl? A cute little application analyzes your browser history and guesses your gender.
Give it a try. It seems like harmless fun, and it does open a door into the realm of behavioral targeting, revealing a bit about accuracy and privacy.
The cute test got my gender wrong. I think it may have done a better job if instead of looking at the top ten most visited sites, it went into the Long Tail of my surfing. In my top ten are everybody’s common sites (Google, Netflix, NY Times), but when you get into the sites less travelled, the skew would be to macho (yes, kidding) sites for technology and business like Slashdot and ReadWriteWeb.
Posted by Joseph J. Esposito | Aug 8, 2008, 12:52 pmInteresting. I appear to be quite transparent!
Posted by Wendy Ragiste | Aug 8, 2008, 5:06 pmVery interesting! More than 1/3 of the sites I visited were travel related (expedia, southwest, united airlines, budget, etc.). I hadn’t realized that travel related sites were more frequently visited by women than men.
They gave me up!
Posted by ann michael | Aug 10, 2008, 12:07 pm