Why you probably shouldn’t bother with Lockerz

My first impression of Lockerz was that it was one of those sites. You know the ones where you fill out a billion questions on a billion different pages to get a free iPod after several billion surveys, quizzes and questionnaires. But it's not, it's a different beast. Although not that different. More like a wolf in sheep's clothing.

One of the first things you notice about it, is that it's pretty well made. You have that nice little flash game at the start, a shit lot of AJAX, and some good graphics on their dailies feature.

The only bad thing I notice, is how self consciously awkward the site feels. It's like when your nan wants to buy you a birthday present, and all she knows is that you're male and 18. So she gets you a football, because that's what all 18 year old males like. Right? Well, not if you're me, no. They seem to have latched onto the whole generation Z thing, and gone wild with the letter Z. I thought pluralising words with a Z instead of an S went out of fashion in the mid-1990s, but apparently not. Now we have Lockerz, PTZ, etc. It's so bad. Even the videos they post of themselves are terrible. Calling themselves the Lockerz "crew", wearing a scruffy top, a backwards cap and taking a dog to work? Who are they kidding?

Whatever. You probably know all that by now.

Why you shouldn't go there. You remember the questionnaire sites, things like Prize Rebel? They work by gathering a lot of data on everything about you, and stuffing it into their databases. Then selling it to clients who want to target their crap at you. These databases swell to crazy sizes, and contain everything you ever said about yourself, and then some. They probably know your favourite social media sites, toothpaste, and what food your cat likes.

The end result is, that a if company wants to sell more of their cat food they find out what age groups are buying it most and where, then they can target specific stores. Then they find out even more about these groups. If most have high incomes, then it's not worth putting a lot of adverts on public transport. If most prefer MySpace over Facebook, then it's not worth spending as much on Facebook adverts. Or they do the opposite, and mass target the people who aren't buying it yet.

Sites like Prize Rebel have a big flaw, in that nobody wants to give them real information. Most people who use them on a regular basis probably fill in bogus information, and for the database of media companies, this is a nightmare. Who could tell that John Doe has several thousand birthdays, and likes everything from extreme canoeing, to self help books? Lockerz solves this problem, by hooking them in with small questions, one day at a time. This or that? Yes or no? Small comment, [ttext=They would probably say "PLZ"]please[/ttext]? Oh, and don't forget your address and age? Then to keep people from buggering off, they add videos and other such nonsense. So they keep you entertained while they harvest your preferences, and use it to sell you crap you don't want yet.

I don't want to live in a world where people are constantly selling me things, things I don't want and probably don't like. I know we already live there, but it's getting worse everyday. So please, tell Lockerz you like hot sauce in your coco pops, and that your name really is John Smith.