personalization

The practice of making web sites be "personal".

This is an extrapolation of the "My foo" crap. So Yahoo will put up boxes with bookmarks, and Salon will show you cartoons you really like.

Oh yeah, and you'll see ads targeted to computers if you keep reading computer stories. And if you buy something from them, you'll see more of them. They track everything you do.

Normally provides only superficial customisation, in one of two forms:

• Choose which news streams you want (ala mybbc, myyahoo)
• Choose which color you'd like the background to be (ala mymsn.co.uk, E2)

Normally nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to extract marketing information and return visits with minimum effort

In cognitive therapy, a cognitive distortion frequently related to depression and depressive mood disorders. Personalization takes place when an individual sees herself as the cause of some negative external event for which she was not in fact primarily responsible.

For example: You walk into a room and something crashes to the floor. Someone engaged in personalization might believe that somehow her entry to the room "caused" the crash.