"[A] useful case study for thinking about the positive and negative aspects of this sort of marketing. On the one hand, I'm weary of doing the work of marketers for them, ferrying their messages to my friends and family, signed, sealed, and delivered with my personal mark of approval. I know we all convey to those around us all the time the products we like, the services we use. But creating and sending online advertisements is so explicitly the work of marketing, it seems a bridge too far. On the other hand, I like the idea of investing more power in consumers over which messages we all receive. Although I am not a parent, I can see how such control would be particularly appealing if I were. Tipping some of the power in this equation back toward consumers seems like fundamentally a good thing, though the difficulty lies in assessing whether that power is real or illusory. And good luck in sussing out that one. In the end, the story of the age of the interactive ad will be one of that tension, about how we, as consumers, will control marketing, and how much it will control us." - michael silverton