Woah

In less than 24 hours after posting about my bike lock failing to be opened with a pen, I got an email from the company thanking me for using their locks and telling me about their free program for replacement keys and how to return my lock for a better model.

I'm rather shocked, especially because this seems like an unexpected use of blogs and metadata about consumers. I have a general cynicism which in its application to the web means that I would expect comment spam, quote harvesting, and cease and desist mail. I am currently quite floored that my blogging meta data was quickly discovered by someone in Texas, employed by a reputable company I wrote about in the previous post, who in turn sent me a friendly email.

Is this because the company has received a bunch of bad blogging press due to their locks being exploited by a pen? Is this a part of turning away from generic broadcast advertising to a more individualized feel? Should I start worrying about the Scientology Omni Cam?


I realize that although this blog is not private, nor is anything posted to the web despite the guise of locks 'n chains or .htaccess files, what is posted here on a infrequent basis does not feel completely public. I can approximate who the audience is by the regular commenters, the lurkers who keeping tabs or hoping to score good dirt, or the strange people who come here searching for the perverse and leave never to return. I purposely refrain from writing about a variety of things due to the 2nd and 3rd groups in the realization that anything posted here can be discovered. But being discovered by a corporate entity has been completely outside of my scope, a near-invasion of privacy.

I was half tempted to write their name in this post, just to see if I'd get another email from the same office in Texas. But I want to continue in my little bubble world where they can't hear me.