I ran across Nielsen Company’s new site, Hey! Nielson today (via a banner ad, I admit it). It’s basically a site where you can post your opinion about just-about anything, and then people rate how strongly they agree with your opinion. “Holy, free market-research, Batman!”

Despite my general objections to giving away my opinions to a company that is going to turn-around and sell them (I guess Facebook is no better), they have done an amazing job with the website. It’s the picture of a social, Web 2.0 site complete with the white-background and “beta” logo. They are even going to have a calendar feature where you can recommend shows to watch to your friends, or whomever wants to follow your opinions.

There aren’t even banner ads on the site since they “…also wouldn’t want any advertising to get in the way of your experience on the site or influence your opinions.” Thank you for being so magnanimous, Hey! Nielsen.

At the end of day, nice job on the site. It looks and works great. I respect Nielson Company for branding it with their name; they clearly state that all this information will be used for market-research. So at the end of the day, are they any worse than a site like Digg?

But still, it makes me sad that we’ve come to a point where whole communities of people will gladly hand over information about themselves (in this case, their opinions) so a corporation can make money off them, by helping other corporations sell you crap. Of course, don’t listen to me…I work for one of those corporations too