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Minyanville’s Absurd Privacy Policy

February 23, 2010 3 comments

I was doing some research for an upcoming article about Every Day Low Prices, and ran across some information on Minyanville.com.  At first I was disgusted with their obtrusive and ridiculous ads.  But then a video featuring Josh Lipton started, automatically.  Even though I was annoyed at the auto-starting video, I thought the content was not only informative, it was astonishingly entertaining!

I proceed to sign up for a Minyanville account so that I could comment on the video.  Knowing their ads were out of control, I thought it would be best to read their privacy policy before I decided which E-mail address to divulge. I am glad I made that decision! Minyanville’s privacy policy is absolutely absurd! Check out these three segments:

Personal Information

We will not sell or rent your personal information.

We may share your personal information with third parties solely for the purpose of providing services to you.

As we develop our business, we may buy or sell assets or business offerings. Customer, email, and visitor information is generally one of the transferred business assets in these types of transactions.

Their privacy policy starts out stating they wont share your personal information what-so-ever.  Then it states they may share it.  Finally it says, they may actually end up selling it. Unbelievable.

In case they decide to change it at a later date, here is a PDF of their privacy policy.

Formatting: Crain’s E-mail Alerts

January 5, 2010 2 comments

I follow local business news very closely and Crain’s Chicago Business is an incredible source for Chicago business news.  They have excellent reporting, a broad range of stories,  and even a well produced daily video podcast (iTunes).   However, Crain’s E-mail alerts have some opportunity for improvement.  And as many of my friends and colleague know, I am a “Formatting Nazi”.

Here is a quick “1-minute” formatting improvement.

Original

Improved

The improved segment is easier to read; looking cleaner, better structured, and more professional.  I made five improvements, each of which made a dramatic difference.

  • Move the date below the “Top Headlines” title -> cleaner look.
  • Used an Un-ordered list instead of inline, text bullets -> cleaner look.
  • Decreased quantity of words in each headline -> no wrapping text.
  • Standardized text sizes -> all headlines match, cleaner look.
  • Used Blagojevich’s real last name, not slang -> improved professionalism.