Is ThePudding Worth a Taste?

ThePudding is a new service that provides free web-based phone calls (a la Google Talk). While you're talking a computer analyzes your voice and serves ads based on what you're saying. Your calls are not recorded, just analyzed on the spot to serve ads the one time. There is no longitudinal data produced on your talking patterns.

Here's TechCrunch's description of ThePudding.

Recently Blake asked what I thought about this application. Here's my response:

As long as there are free services (Skype, Google Talk, yelling really loudly), I don't really know why I would need ThePudding. Targeted marketing is a fine idea to a certain degree, but does it belong in our phone? I'd rather not see the day that speaking face-to-face at a whisper is the only way to communicate without being monitored.

While I don't distrust government or corporations to the degree that I think it's 1984 all over again, I'd also rather not have to worry about a monitoring infrastructure that's in place for any reason. The government has a wire-tapping system - corporations don't need the same privilege. I guess I'm not at the point where I worry about getting black bagged in the middle of the night.

Now I don't know about you, but have you tried any voice recognition software, be it on your cell phone, home computer, or a company's customer service number? It's not perfect. And that lack of perfection is noticeable when you only have to speak a few words clearly! For all we know, there might be no reason to worry. This new company might be so inaccurate that they'll fail anyway.

I guess the proof will be in ThePudding. ( ZING!!)

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Blake (11:12 am): you clearly wrote that entire response just to make that pun at the end.
Blake (11:12 am): it was kind of worth it.
Me (11:13 am): Not gonna lie - I was one paragraph in when that pun came to me. I structured the rest of my response around that.