Mary Meeker, on overall economic risks:

New Home Sales Off Historic Lows But Way Below 'Normal'
Consumer Credit Card Defaults Rising
Residential Mortgage Defaults at All-Time Highs & Rising
Unemployment High & Rising - USA at 10% in 9/09 vs. 6% Y/Y
Debt Levels at Historic Levels & Rising, USA Government Leading Charge

Mathew Honan, for Wired, in January:

Millions of people are now walking around with a gizmo in their pocket that not only knows where they are but also plugs into the Internet to share that info, merge it with online databases, and find out what - and who - is in the immediate vicinity ... Simply put, location changes everything.

Citysense:

At the heart of Macrosense are powerful machine learning algorithms that process time-stamped location data and metadata streams from heterogeneous sources – GPS, WiFi positioning, cell tower triangulation, RFID and other sensors – and empower companies and investors to better understand and predict human behavior on a macro scale.

Noah Shachtman, for Wired, in October:

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media.

Decius, in August 2008:

Don't worry about privacy ... privacy is dead ... there's no privacy ... just more databases ... No consequences, no whammies, money. Money for me ... Money for me, databases for you.

Meeker:

Facebook = Unified Communication + Multimedia Repository in Your Pocket

William T. Vollmann:

Across the border, the desert is the same but there are different secrets.