Leaders in Internet marketing, tracking and analysis software announced today that they're joining forces to develop a standard for sharing personal information about online customers across different enterprise applications. The standard, called Customer Profile Exchange, or CPEX, would combine online and off-line data about customers, such as information gleaned from catalog sales, into one format. Combining the information would give online retailers an easy way to collect information about customers' backgrounds and preferences. Officials said the standard should be available by June 2000.
Mass marketing is dead.
Other members include Vignette Corp. in Foster City, Calif., and net. Mass. But privacy advocates want to put the brakes on practices where online customers don't know what personal information is being recorded or who has access to it. They want to create a standard so they can sell everyone's data profiles like hog bellies at the Chicago livestock mart. Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters Corp., an advocacy group in Green Brook, N.J., called the standard a double-edged sword. If built with fair practices in mind, it has the potential to make it easier for companies to adopt those practices by having them available instantly in that infrastructure.