Let readers see (and edit) their own data

Work's been heavy lately. Tomorrow, a post on triaging limited programming resources. (As if there's some other kind...) Today, a quick suggestion for winning trust: let readers access their own usage data.

Job one, of course, is to start collecting readers' usage data. Seriously. Let readers know about it, tell them how they'll benefit, let them opt in or out, but start it right away and do it any way you can.

Job two is inspired by this Fredshouse brainstorm (courtesy Lifehacker): Google should create a digital privacy tool for all its users that would let them view, delete and set expiration dates for all data that's collected about them.

We should do that, too.