quick word-vomit about segmenting of society and marketing

AdAge is a leading advertising industry magazine. Here's a little bit about what may become a greater trend in advertising: the increasing push of the utility of a product and less specific identification of the product with an identity.
The comments section is particularly fantastic, as it contains some great critique. My personal favorite is the one that says "you lost me at 'consumer generated media'", which says to me that the commenter is probably very confused by the MySpace. The next comment provides better commentary, saying that self-segmentation (such as the type Facebook uses for those little side-bar ads) are not the death of consumer segmentation, but considerably better than any focus group could be. He also says that what "marketers need to think about is how to encourage more consumers to share their preferences with marketers – replacing privacy concerns with a desire to receive more relevant and appealing marketing communications." Ew.