“Things I’ve Learned from Lately” is a regular compilation of articles that have made me a smarter marketer. Hopefully, they’ll help you, too.

Little Left to Interpretation – Liroy Choufan points out that fashion is becoming a matter of cut-and-paste with the proliferation of digital. Choufan argues that digital distribution of photos and videos have created enormous archives, allowing access to more fashion information than ever. It’s leaving less to designers’ imagination. Instead, they have archives of previous styles to evaluate and redefine. This leads to less diversity in styles as everyone is working off the same database of content.

Nothing’s Free - Jay-Z’s latest album was pre-released as an app called “Magna Carta” in partnership with Samsung. The app allowed the first 1 million downloader’s to get a free copy of the album three days prior to release, but according to Alex Pharm in Billboard, the app overstepped permission boundaries for some users as it requested access to phone information. The experiment illustrates the careful balance marketers must take when it comes to requesting data in exchange for content.

Google’s Privacy Conundrum - Google wants users to feel that their privacy is safe, but they also want people to share information and data. After all, that’s how Google makes money. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google is feeling pressure to address the debate over data and user privacy.

Social Curated Book Recommendations - Fast Company featured this piece on BookVIbe, a new product that scans tweets from people you follow and then delivers an email with reading recommendations for you. The theory behind this is interesting, but it also assumes you’re interested in book recommendations from people you follow on Twitter, which may not be the case for all users as people follow different accounts for different reasons. This does, however, show the potential for automating recommendations based on your social connections.