NJ Woman Prosecuted for Facebook ID Theft

Although there’s been a lot of discussion about the potential for criminal prosecutions arising from online impersonation, New Jersey is one of the first states to see an actual prosecution for identity theft on social media. The lucky winner is Dana Thornton, a somewhat unbalanced-seeming 41-year-old woman from Bellville, NJ, who is accused of creating a fake Facebook page to defame her ex-boyfriend.

And defame she did, if the accusations are true: apparently Thornton used photos and personal information about her ex-boyfriend, a narcotics detective from northern New Jersey, to create a Facebook page where she then posted extremely unflattering statements supposedly made by the man himself. For example, the profile proclaimed that the individual in question liked to spend money on prostitutes, had herpes, was “high all the time,” and summed it all up with this sweeping self-indictment: “I’m a sick piece of scum with a gun.” As there’s no leniency for catchy turns of phrase, Thornton faces up to 18 months for fourth-degree identity theft, “for the purpose of obtaining a benefit for himself or another or to injure or defraud another.”

While this might strike the casual observer as just another colorful slice of New Jersey life, the court case is actually important because of a decision already rendered by the court -- specifically, the ruling that the case can proceed under existing identity theft law, even though the statute doesn’t specifically include electronic media as one of the venues where identity theft may occur.

State Superior Court Judge David Ironson brushed off an argument to that effect from Thornton’s lawyer, who said that the case should be dismissed because the statute didn’t mention electronic media. In his ruling Ironson wrote: “The fact that the means of committing the crime are not set forth in the statute doesn't lead to the conclusion that the defendant didn't commit the crime.” The NJ legislature is currently considering amending the identity theft statute to explicitly include electronic media. Currently only New York and California have laws explicitly banning online identity theft.

by Erik Sass,

comScore Releases First Comparative Report on Mobile Usage in Japan, United States and Europe

comScore Releases First Comparative Report on Mobile Usage in Japan, United States and Europe

Japan Mobile Audience “Most Connected” with 3 of 4 Users Accessing Mobile Media in June

Social Networking Shows Highest Reach among U.S. Mobile Users, While Europeans Text the Most RESTON, VA, October 7, 2010 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a study on mobile usage and behaviors in Japan, the United States and Europe from its MobiLens service. The report examined multiple dimensions of mobile usage including content consumption, demographic comparisons and top social networking brands across markets to provide a comparative look at how consumers interact with mobile media across various geographic markets.

“Mobile media usage continues to accelerate across the globe, driven by advancing technologies and the growing number of content options available to consumers,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. “As we look across markets, dramatic differences in mobile media consumption, brand adoption and user behavior become evident. These differences are even more pronounced than they are for PC-based Internet usage due to the complex nature of mobile – including various device capabilities, operating systems and methods of accessing content. For brands seeking to establish a multi-market presence, understanding usage dynamics across geographies is essential to implementing a successful global mobile marketing strategy.”


Mobile Behavior Varies Across Markets
A cross-market analysis of mobile activities in Japan, the U.S. and Europe revealed significant differences among consumers by geography. Mobile users in Japan were the “most connected” of the three markets, with more than 75 percent using connected media (browsed, accessed applications or downloaded content) in June, compared to 43.7 percent in the U.S. and 38.5 percent in Europe.

Japanese mobile users also displayed the strongest usage of both applications and browsers with 59.3 percent of the entire mobile population accessing their browsers in June and 42.3 percent accessing applications. Comparatively 34.0 percent of mobile users in the U.S. and 25.8 percent in Europe used their mobile browsers, with 31.1 percent in the U.S. and 24.9 percent in Europe accessing applications.

Messaging methods also varied with Europeans displaying the strongest use of text messaging with 81.7 percent sending a text message in June, compared to 66.8 percent in the U.S. and just 40.1 percent in Japan. Japanese users exhibited the highest reach in the email category at 54 percent, while consumers in the U.S. were most likely to use instant messaging services on their mobile (17.2 percent).
Social networking/blogs reached the greatest percentage of mobile users in the U.S. at 21.3 percent, followed by Japan at 17.0 percent and Europe at 14.7 percent. Japanese users were most likely to capture photos (63.0 percent) and watch TV/video (22.0 percent) on their mobiles, while Europeans were most likely to listen to music (24.2 percent) and play games (24.1 percent).

Select Mobile Behaviors in Japan, United States and EU5 (UK, DE, FR, ES and IT) June 2010 Total Mobile Audience Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Percent of Total Mobile Audience
	Japan	United States	Europe
Total Audience: 13+ yrs old	100.0%	100.0%	100.0%
Used connected media (Browsed, Accessed Applications or Downloaded Content)	75.2%	43.7%	38.5%
Used browser	59.3%	34.0%	25.8%
Used application	42.3%	31.1%	24.9%
Messaging Usage
Sent text message to another phone	40.1%	66.8%	81.7%
Used major instant messaging service	3.3%	17.2%	12.6%
Used email (work or personal)	54.0%	27.9%	18.8%
Social Media/Entertainment
Accessed Social Networking Site or Blog	17.0%	21.3%	14.7%
Listened to music on mobile phone	12.5%	13.9%	24.2%
Took photos	63.0%	50.6%	56.8%
Captured video	15.4%	19.2%	25.8%
Watched TV and/or video on mobile phone	22.0%	4.8%	5.4%
Played games	16.3%	22.5%	24.1%
Financial Information
Accessed bank accounts	8.0%	9.4%	7.1%
Accessed financial news or stock quotes	16.1%	10.0%	7.2%
Retail/Travel
Accessed online retail	7.2%	5.5%	4.1%
Accessed classifieds	4.2%	6.6%	4.2%
Accessed travel service	3.3%	4.7%	4.1%
Other
Accessed maps	15.7%	16.0%	10.8%
Accessed traffic reports	12.6%	8.2%	5.9%
Accessed weather	34.1%	22.3%	13.7%

Mobile Media Usage by Demographic Segment
A demographic analysis of mobile media users across markets showed that mobile media consumption was more balanced across age segments in Japan when compared to the U.S. and Europe. In the U.S., 25-34 year olds were 44 percent more likely to access mobile media than an average mobile user, with 18-24 year olds 39 percent more likely. In Europe, 18-24 year olds represented the most-connected segment, 54 percent more likely to be mobile media users, while persons age 25-34 were 35 percent more likely.

The U.S. and Europe also showed greater gender disparity among mobile media audiences. Females were 9 percent less likely to be mobile media users in the U.S., while females in Europe were 16 percent less likely.

Mobile Media Usage in Japan, United States and EU5 (UK, DE, FR, ES and IT) by Demographic Segment June 2010 Total Mobile Audience Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Connected Media Audience Index*
	Japan	United States	Europe
Total Audience: 13+ yrs old	100	100	100
Male	102	110	116
Female	98	91	84
Persons Age:
13-17	114	130	133
18-24	117	139	154
25-34	114	144	135
35-44	111	117	103
45-54	105	85	78
55+	80	39	57

* Index = % demographic segment / % demographic base*100

Top Mobile Social Media Brands
Across markets, local and global brands showed varying levels of adoption by mobile audiences. In all three markets, the top mobile social media brand mirrored the top PC-based social networking brand with Facebook leading in the U.S. and Europe and Mixi leading in Japan. Local brands Gree and Mobage Town were the #2 and #4 most accessed social networking brands in Japan. Twitter was the only brand to be ranked in the top four in all markets.

Top Mobile Social Networking/Chat/Blog Brands in Japan, United States and EU5 (UK, DE, FR, ES and IT) by Audience Size June 2010 Total Mobile Audience Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
Japan	United States	Europe
Mixi	Facebook	Facebook
Gree	MySpace	YouTube
Twitter	YouTube	MSN / Windows Live / Bing
Mobage Town	Twitter	Twitter

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and the preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

Contact:
Sarah Radwanick
Senior Analyst
comScore, Inc.
+1 206 268 6310
press@comscore.com
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NJ Police Create Facebook Perp Walk

Here's another one for the "bound to happen eventually" file: It seems police in the town of Evesham, N.J., have begun posting mug shots on the police department's Facebook profile, in a move that is basically designed to publicly shame miscreants ranging from drunk drivers to car thieves and worse. Equally predictable is the wave of criticism this has elicited. Some of these are good points, but I think there is a way to post photos without hurting anyone unjustly.

First of all, lawbreakers forfeit some (though not all) of their privacy in breaking the law. While the right to privacy still protects important information like their social security numbers and health histories, it does not cover their basic identity -- meaning their name, address, and likeness. Police stations and courts are public places, so the very act of being arrested and hauled in front of a judge reveals their identity to anyone who cares to inquire. Furthermore, public shaming of transgressors is an established practice -- many local newspapers already feature a "Police Blotter." If it happens that online social media is a more effective medium for shaming the transgressor by reaching a larger public audience, well, all the better, right?

The only problem I can see with this approach is the potential for posting a mug shot of someone who was wrongly arrested -- but frankly that is a pretty big problem. It's easy enough to figure out whether someone has been driving under the influence, but what about cases where a person is falsely accused of a serious crime to tarnish their reputation? And of course police also make honest mistakes (e.g., Buffalo police arresting the wrong suspect in the shooting which left four people dead last week).

In light of these facts, it seems inappropriate to indiscriminately post arrest photos -- as the Evesham police appear to be doing -- as it goes against the spirit of the rule that suspects should be considered "innocent until proven guilty." A safer approach might be to post mug shots once the suspect has confessed or been convicted of the crime, or at least waiting until they have been charged.

So what about law enforcement posting "wanted" photos of suspects on social media sites? This strikes me as a qualitatively different from what the Evesham police are doing. A fugitive at large could inflict further harm on the public, and in my view this outweighs any concern over damage to his or her reputation if he/she should happen to be innocent. By contrast, a mug shot depicts someone who is already in custody, meaning there is no immediate utility in posting it for all to see.

NJ Attorney General Warns Against Social Media Scams

Stupid is as stupid does, mama always said. I'm not quite sure what that means, but I have a feeling it has something to do with giving money to people you don't know online.

The rise of social media has been accompanied by all sorts of exciting innovation by clever crooks, for example burglars spying on social network users to figure out when they'll be away from home. But social networks are even better-suited for con men and identity thieves, who exploit the inherent sense of trust and affection between friends to scam unsuspecting users. That's according to New Jersey Attorney General Paula T. Dow and the state's Acting Consumer Affairs Director Thomas R. Calcagni, who say they have seen an increase in the number of social media scams on Facebook or other sites, often using hijacked accounts.

The NJ officials' statement warns against one common approach in which scam artists hack into a user's account and access their address book, then send messages pleading with their friends to wire cash because they are stuck in some foreign country. To make it extra-alarming, they might construct elaborate stories about being robbed, getting sick, or having an accident in some place that is nice to visit, but not somewhere you'd really want to stay. They can even throw in details like the names of spouses or boyfriends/girlfriend and various kinds of biographical information to make it extra-convincing -- all gleaned from the user's profile, of course.

Dow stated: "People lower their guard when someone they know from a social networking site needs their help. Rather than sending an email to random people, these thieves have learned they can improve their chances by hacking into social networking accounts and then directing pleas for money to the account holder's list of friends." Common tricks used by criminals trying to hack into social network accounts include anything which requires you to paste a URL into your browser, quizzes, polls or contests asking for personal information like your social security number, credit card number or bank account information, requests to update Flash or download a new program, and anything that asks you link to another page and invites your friends there.

Okay, I don't want to be too harsh here because I imagine the criminals can go to great lengths to present a convincing come-on, and they're taking advantage of good-natured, trusting individuals. But trust is overrated, and there is a right way and a wrong way to be good-natured.

First of all, if someone sends me a serious message over a social network, my first instinct would be to ask why they didn't send me an email or call. If they are sending the message to my email address (having located it in an online address book) I would be somewhat more inclined to hear them out, but it would be pretty easy to confirm that they are who they say they are, by asking questions like "where/when did we meet," "when's the last time I saw you," or something else -- not on their profile or anywhere else online -- only they would know. I'd also try calling them and sending messages to their other email accounts seeking confirmation of the story.

And after I finally confirmed they were real, then -- and only then -- would I tell my friend in Turkish prison to go hit up someone else cuz I blew it all in Vegas last week. Good luck and godspeed, voyager! P.S. send a postcard.

Is Social Optimization the New SEM?

As Facebook reaches 500 million users, Twitter reaches 20 billion Tweets, and U.S. consumers devote close to a quarter of their online time on social networks, it is little wonder firms are seeking to optimize these networks.

Even less surprising: an industry has sprung up to help them do so. Called "social optimization" many of these providers are defectors from the search space. Gigya, for example, shifted its business model late last year when it realized publishers like Huffington Post and USA Today were getting more traffic from social referrals than from search engines (via Portfolio). "It became obvious to us that there is an addressable market of at least tens of thousands of online businesses who are willing to pay at least tens of thousands of dollars for both the technology and service for social optimization, in the same way they have paid for search optimization," CEO Dave Yovanno told Portfolio. He maintains that optimized the right way, social could be the top source of traffic for businesses.

Another convert is ShareThis. CEO Tim Schigel tells Portfolio that social marketing will drive an increase in display advertising because of the way it can segment audiences. "With search, you’re only able to get to people when they’re searching," he said.

Facebook Questions and Social Search

Social networks, for their part, are actively taking steps to hijack search traffic, facilitating this trend even faster. One example is Facebook Questions, which launched in beta last week. People use it to ask - and answer - such questions as 'who makes the best pizza in Manhattan' to 'which is better for an eight-year-old - Wii or Xbox?'

In the long run, Facebook Questions could have a significant impact on the emerging category of social search, Evan Bailyn, founder of FirstPageSage told TechNewsWorld. "Question like these tend to make up a tremendous portion of searches. With Facebook in the picture now, I would guess there would be enough data to increase search traffic by hundreds of millions of queries. "It is going to give them a big slice of long-tail search — and a leg up on Google as well."

Social Media marketing services

7 Social Media Truths You Can Ignore and Still be Successful

By Rich Brooks

There are a lot of social media experts out there—including the ones who claim there’s no such thing as a “social media expert”—and they’re telling us how social media works, how it doesn’t work, and how we all must behave in the social media arena.

Much of this advice is framed as “universal truths” that every business must follow. Unfortunately, a lot of it is based on the expert’s personal experience. And that may not be appropriate for you. Even the most well-intended advice is often off the mark when it comes to your business.

There’s nothing wrong with sage advice, but when guidelines become rules, they need to be scrutinized.

What follows are some of the oft-quoted “rules” that you need to question as you use social media for your own business.

Claim 1: Social Media Has Changed Everything
Balderdash. Yes, we’ve got shiny new tools, and consumers can give more public, vocal feedback on your products and services. However, leads still need to be generated, sales need to be closed and invoices need to be sent; no business survives otherwise.

Furthermore, networking didn’t start with LinkedIn. Before there was social networking there was real-world networking. And you know what? It came with drinks and hors d’oeuvres, so it wasn’t all that bad.

In fact, arguably the best book on social media marketing predates social media marketing: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Go and (re)read that book; everything he talks about is still true today, it’s just that now it happens on Twitter.

Claim 2: You Can’t Sell in Social Media
This statement is the mantra of early adopters who remember “the good old days” of social media, before Facebook had ads and all the spammers realized how powerful and inexpensive the medium could be.

It’s well-documented that Dell has sold million of dollars of PCs and accessories through Twitter promotions. Local coffee shops use Twitter to take orders that are ready when you arrive or promote themselves using location-based apps like FourSquare or Gowalla. (In fact, if you’d like some advice on how to sell in FourSquare, check out Why Foursquare Drives Business.)

Now this doesn’t mean that you should go out and spam everyone you can reach through social media. In fact, that’s probably a quick way to lose followers and even get banned from popular networks. However, when you put the right message in front of the right person in the right social medium, sales happen.

Claim 3: You Have to Stay On Message
This is preached by many of the most successful social media experts out there. But you know who stays on message? Politicians and boring corporations. If you don’t count yourself in either group, then staying on message isn’t for you.

I’ve bonded with people over my love of Phineas & Ferb, photos I’ve uploaded to my personal Flickr account, and my fear of a zombie apocalypse.

In fact, my interest in zombies is so well-known that friends tweet me zombie news and I’ve even received several zombie-themed gifts at events. It seems strange, but the undead have helped build my network.

While that may not lead to direct sales—Google Analytics still doesn’t list “zombies” as a traffic source—it has helped me make new connections and opened up new opportunities that have led to business.

While zombies may not be your cup of tea, sharing your interests—whether it’s gardening, cooking or skydiving—will attract like-minded people to you and help build your network.

As Chris Garrett says in his post “How to Boost Your Personal Brand with Social Media”:

Using light humor, being kind, sharing about more than just your work—including your interests—allow people to connect with you on a human level as well as a business and technical level.

Claim 4: You Need to Have a Lot of Followers
When I asked my network about expert advice they disagreed with, the focus on developing a large following was the most often cited.

There are two types of experts who talk about social media as a numbers game. The first is the social media “guru” whose Twitter bio promises to teach you how to get hundreds of new followers a day, but is somehow stuck at 17 followers himself.

The second is the social media evangelist who is almost always on message and has a business model that requires a large number of customers to succeed. For her, a lot of it is about the numbers.

And in defense of this particular piece of advice, the bigger your network, the more people you can reach. All things being equal, that’s a good thing. If you ask a question and you have few followers, expect few answers. If you have hundreds or thousands of followers, expect a lot more responses.

There’s also the matter of “social proof”: without anything else to go on, we often “trust” someone with a lot of followers, or who gets a lot of comments on his blog or video. Twenty-five thousand followers can’t be wrong… right?

But beyond that, social media is not an arms race. It’s better to have 100 followers with whom you regularly engage than 10,000 who never pay attention to you.

Some people spend each day following as many new people as they can, then unfollowing those who don’t follow them back in 24 hours to free up space for more new followers. What kind of return on investment are they getting for that behavior? When your followers are following 20,000 people, how much attention is being lavished on you?

Likewise, if you’re following tens of thousands of people, how many can you truly engage with? The rule of diminishing returns is at work here.

Claim 5: You Need to Have a Lot of Comments on Your Blog
Nothing gives you a warm feeling like posting a blog that garners a lot of comments. It’s nice to know that your work is having an impact.

That being said, comments aren’t clients. They may make you feel good, but they don’t impact your bottom line. In fact, focusing on comments can be detrimental to your business. I know of businesses that quit blogging because they weren’t getting many comments on their blog. They stopped creating new blog posts that would have increased their online visibility and generated more online leads.

If comments are your business goal, then blog about politics, religion or American Idol. If growing your business is your goal, then focus on whether your blog appears in the search engines and delivers warm leads to your website.

Claim 6: You Can’t Measure Social Media ROI
Of course you can. There are “soft” numbers, like how many people viewed your last YouTube video, how many people subscribe to your podcast, and how influential your blog is according to Technorati. It’s also easy to know how many Facebook friends you have, how many people follow you on Twitter, and how often your most recent blog post has been “dugg.” (Keeping in mind that not all friends or followers have the same importance and social media is not an arms race.)

There are also “hard” numbers, like the traffic social media and blogs send to your website, and how much of that traffic converts into business. If your contact form asks “How did you hear about us?” you may be seeing more people respond with “I follow you on Twitter” or “Your video came up in a Google search I did.”

As you can see from the graphic above, most of the non-search traffic to our site came from blogs (our own and those of other companies) and social media sites where our company and employees are active.

Claim 7: You Have to Be on Facebook (or Twitter, or Have a Blog…)
There’s only one reason to use a specific social platform for business: your audience is there.

There’s no platform that’s right for every company. If you’re using social media to grow a business, you need to focus on the sites and applications that are already being used by your target audience.

You should still reserve your “handle” on as many social media sites as you can, for two important reasons:

It protects your brand and keeps someone else from using “your” handle.
What seems like an unimportant platform now may grow into a popular place where your audience hangs out.
The important thing to remember is that there’s no one rule that’s right for every company. While much of the advice you hear might be solid, it may not be appropriate for your business. Just because it worked for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you.

Except for this one rule…

One Rule Worth Following
Provide value. That’s it. In social media it’s all too easy to unfollow, unfriend or unsubscribe from someone who’s not providing value. Every tweet, status update, blog post, video, or check-in should provide value to your audience.

Value means different things to different people. Your value may be in creating thought leadership blog posts. It might be in always posting links to great resources. Or it might be creating irreverent, sarcastic or even off-color commentary on what’s going on in your audience’s lives. The key is to just keep providing that value to your audience.

Now it’s your turn. What social media advice have you heard that you feel is completely off base, or has been the key to your success? Please add your thoughts in the comment box below…

5 Keys to Integrating Search and Social Media Marketing Campaigns

By Avelyn Austin And Renée Revetta
The relationship between search engine optimization (SEO) and social media can no longer be ignored. Integrating your SEO efforts with social media marketing can be accomplished by sharing links and, ultimately, using social profiles to attain higher organic rankings. Here are five keys to integrating your search and social media marketing campaigns:

 

Key 1: Know the basics of how search engines work.

Search engines use robots to scour the web, collecting data as they move through websites via links. The robots then pass that information to indexing servers, where it’s processed and ranked. Two main ranking elements for SEO are content and inbound links.

 

Key 2: Understand how social media affects SEO.

As consumers continue to demand the freshest news and content, search engines will incorporate more social media updates within organic search engine results. These updates currently appear at the bottom of the first results page as “Results from people in your social circle for … [your query].” Searchers can see content from individuals they're connected with via social networks. Additionally, search engines will soon likely integrate public Facebook updates into results pages, and already do so for more open networks like Twitter.

 

Key 3: Determine which social profiles your company needs.

Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have generally been accepted as the most popular social sites across industries. However, for SEO, creating a corporate Google Profile and Buzz profile is increasingly important with the impending release of "caffeine," the new Google search algorithm. Your company should also create a YouTube channel and Flickr account for multimedia content — but try to also host that content on your own website.

 

Key 4: Learn to monitor social media efficiently.

Programs like TweetDeck, HootSuite and Seesmic make sharing content and links across Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook simpler. To monitor networks for inbound linking opportunities and reputation management, search columns for keywords or hashtags are extremely helpful. Additional monitoring can be done through Twitter Search and TweetBeep, while an overall online presence can be surveyed with tools like Trackur, Google Alerts or SocialMention.

 

Key 5: Use social media to increase organic rankings.

With social profiles created, your company's site listing should appear on the first page of results for branded queries, along with your company’s Twitter account, Facebook page and other social profiles — ultimately allowing your company to dominate the first page of branded results. Finally, social media profiles will allow you to quickly distribute content to more individuals, who in turn may create additional inbound links, increasing link popularity.

 

BusinessWeek’s B.L. Ochman said it best in a blog post last year: “For companies, resistance to social media is futile. Millions of people are creating content for the social web. Your competitors are already there. Your customers have been there for a long time. If your business isn’t putting itself out there, it ought to be.” At minimum, companies who wish to have a comprehensive SEO campaign should do the following:

• choose keywords wisely;
• add keywords to website content;
• engage in quality link-building efforts; and
• engage in social media by creating a corporate blog and Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Buzz profiles.

Visit for SEM Programs.

5 Steps to Build a Twitter Marketing Strategy

By Lee Odden

So you want to succeed with Twitter eh? Before you run off and chase shiny butterflies and little blue birds, take a seat and collect yourself. Then read the following tips on creating a potential Twitter marketing strategy that will help you become more productive and successful using Twitter for business.

 First things first. Who are you trying to connect with?

1. Describe your target audience on Twitter. If you’re not an active participant on Twitter, then research. Do the homework and write it down, including Twitter handles of actual target users. If you’ve been able to go so far as develop a persona that represents your customers that spend time on Twitter or social media sites in general, that’s even better.

 The first step in scoring is knowing all about the goal.

2. What outcomes are expected from Twitter participation? Besides being able to say you have 50,000 followers, of course. Incidentally, we experiment with Twitter accounts and those that have a substantial number of followers do not always result in the the most retweets and web site visits. This is important in the fans/friends/followers game. It’s not how many connections you have, it’s who you’re connected with that determines the propagation of tweets, spread of links, traffic, etc.

It’s essential to know how success with Twitter will be measured. If it’s just follower counts, heck those could probably be purchased. (Which TopRankMarketing does NOT recommend) However, that would be a fake network without effect.

Where does Twitter fit in?

3. Where does Twitter fit within your overall online marketing strategy? Is Twitter meant to be a customer service tool? Brand monitoring? Monitoring for sales opportunities? Promotion of other corporate social activities? (ie blogging, Facebook, YouTube, Etc) Does it support some other communications function?

 As a communications and social networking tool, Twitter can connect with customers, prospects, journalists, employees, candidates, investors and marketing partners. Understanding where Twitter fits within the overall mix of online marketing and communications will help with: allocating monitoring and engagement resources, establishing a working social media policy, workflow management and reporting. You may very well find a number of synergies available through Twitter, such as connecting with journalists and bloggers for PR purposes but also encouraging link usage when citing the company to assist with SEO efforts.

Twitter is a tool and only as useful as the tactics you use.

4. A firm grasp of the first three steps really needs to be addressed before useful tactics should be implemented. If all you do is focus on Twitter popularity tactics without addressing a plan for reaching other goals (hopefully being popular isn’t the sole goal) then the investment in time and effort becomes more like guesswork.

First and foremost for tactics, the Twitter page needs to be designed and optimized. If a business has the expectation to be perceived in a significant way, then the Twitter page needs to avoid looking insignificant. Tweets need to be diverse, yet follow a theme that is consistent to the messaging and audience goal. Kudos to customers and offering tips are great but alone are not going to attract followers fast.

There are a few tactics with Twitter that are almost always a good idea regardless of the audience, goals and overall plan:

• Having a persona or target profile in mind, research Twitter users and follow them.
• Associate the Twitter account with something else that is social, such as a YouTube Channel, Facebook Fan Page and/or a blog.
• Make an effort to link to a small number of high quality and creatively written resources, daily. Mornings are best. Brand these with a hashtag like #yourbrandtips, where “yourbrand” is the brand within your company that this Twitter account is focused on. It could also be a behavior or action. Ex: #niketips or #runningtips.
• Schedule a #yourbrandtips Twitter event every month, two weeks or weekly. This would be run like #blogchat where a real person from your company hosts a chat on Twitter about survey topics. Ideally there would be influential guests involved so that their tweets attract new followers to your brand’s Twitter account. The company should really post their twitter handle everywhere their web site address is posted.
• Find a way to ask followers questions, then use those answers in blog posts, which are promoted via the business twitter account.
• Create a Twitter list of a segment of the target audience. One list for each segment. Then solicit followers asking for recommendations of people that belong in the “segment one” list or “segment two” list. Ex: ”librarians” or “network administrators”. Mention that anyone who retweets a link to the list can get added to that list – provided they belong. Lists must be relevant and managed to be of any use. Promote lists with Listorious.com.
• Use #FollowFridays or #FF to recognize people that retweet the brand’s Twitter content the most. Also mention influential Twitter accounts that you have had some connection with. They might retweet the #FF and expose the brand Twitter account to new audiences.

Measure twice, Tweet once.

5. Measurement with Twitter can be tricky such as identifying referrers via various URL shortening services, but it’s the most important. By “measurement”, I also mean monitoring on an ongoing basis, not just counting outcomes or KPIs. Followers is just one dimension. Based on what the brand is trying to achieve, a mix of data points and measurement tools should be implemented. Some example metrics:

• Tweets published
• Retweets & potential reach from those retweets
• New targeted Twitter users that are followed by the brand’s Twitter account
• New followers of the brand’s Twitter account acquired
• Direct traffic from Twitter to brand’s web pages. URL shortening services should be used like bit.ly
• Mentions of the brand in Tweets without links
• How many lists the brand Twitter account is included in
• What new Twitter users has the brand’s Twitter account added to it’s own organized lists?
• How many engagements or discussions the brand’s Twitter account has with other users
• Connections (follow, retweet, @message, DM) with targeted Twitter users

Example Tools:

• search.twitter.com
• social media monitoring like socialmention.com, trackur.com, scoutlabs, Techrigy SM2, Radian6
• Web analytics
• bit.ly
• cotweet.com, hootsuite.com, tweetdeck.com

Obviously, there are many other tools for Twitter out there, including overall social media marketing campaign management tools such as: Wildfire, Objective Marketer, Spredfast, SocialTalk, pop.to and others.

Sure, you can “experiment” with tools like Twitter and find your specific strategy as you go, but you could also find productivity and valuable connections a lot sooner (as well as effective time and resource management) if you create a plan that addresses who you’re trying to reach on Twitter, what goals you hope to achieve and a plan for getting there. Make no mistake, there will always be a component of on-demand and real time or opportunistic marketing with Twitter. The platform is still so new that the community is finding new and innovative uses every day. You might find new uses too, so don’t get too committed to a single focus in your Twitter efforts. Be flexible, curious and willing to participate.

Some tactics are always a good idea and some will reveal themselves as you develop your Twitter network and participate with the community. Measuring success on Twitter has everything to do with goals, so make sure you’ve spent at least a little time figuring out where Twitter fits in with your overall online marketing strategy and then what tools make the most sense to use when measuring success.

Yahoo further integrates Facebook into e-mail app

Sunnyvale, Calif.—Yahoo Inc. has added a new feature to its e-mail application, allowing users to update their Facebook status directly within Yahoo Mail. The service will be rolled out gradually in “select markets,” according to Yahoo.

To use the service, Yahoo Mail users must link their Yahoo and Facebook accounts from within Yahoo Mail. After that, users can type a message within the mail application that will appear automatically on Facebook, Yahoo Mail or both. In return, Facebook profile photos that link to Facebook will be displayed within Yahoo e-mails.

Last month, Yahoo provided a way to import Facebook friends’ e-mail addresses into Yahoo Contacts.

Microsoft Integrates Foursquare Into Bing Maps; Turns Attention To Signals

Microsoft plans to deliver new tools in Bing Maps powered by mobile location service Foursquare. The Redmond, Wash. company's Silverlight technology will pull in the data.

Bing has begun to pay more attention to real-time, social and location-based data signals that can provide depth to search queries that serve up tips, comments and other information.

Enhanced location-based services and a variety of other features will become available during the next few months, as Microsoft continues to invest more in its mapping platform. Not just information from "maps" that show location, but a "canvas where you can visualize search data," Adam Sohn, Bing director for the Online Services Division, told MediaPost Thursday. "The concept is related to the notion that there's real data and information behind each search that often gets disaggregated from its physical context."

People searching for information on Bing will finally begin to see the fruits of labor from separate deals inked with Facebook and Twitter last year to deliver real-time data.

The ability to deliver real-time information based on a variety of signals means giving people who search for a particular news source, such as The New York Times, access to connect not only to the main site but to links of the most popular trending stories based on information shared across the Web. Sohn says it's a new way to generate traffic from the search engine to the publisher's site.

Microsoft also plans to enhance Quick Tabs on Bing, moving the tabs from the left rail to the top of the page. The feature aims to deliver results based on what the search engine believes represents the intent of the person searching on the query. The change also represents a new look for the user interface and hopefully a more intuitive way to search.

Bing's focus on "curating content," rather than "cataloging Web sites," supports Forrester Research Principal Analyst Shar VanBoskirk's vision for the future of search. "Think about a search engine as a concierge pointing you to answers you need, instead of presenting lists of sites that have content that matches your query," she says.

VanBoskirk points to the side and the top navigation capabilities. The features allow users to drill into categories of content related to their search without having to do a subsequent search, or click through to pages to see if the content matches their needs.

"I think the other enhancement that really illustrates this shift is the creation of comparison answers and domain task pages," VanBoskirk says. "These are literally aggregations of content, links, images, video specifically to answer the most commonly search goals associated with different topics. Instead of having to scout through multiple pages, content sources, using multiple queries, Bing curates all of what they think the searcher is after into one page."

Thursday marked the beginning of Bing's spring release. Microsoft will experiment, test and roll out these features during the next several months.

N.J. Court Rules Gmail User Accused Of Libel Can Remain Anonymous

Upholding the right to send anonymous emails, a New Jersey appellate court has rejected a request to unmask a Gmail user who accused a student of underage drinking.

The court ruled that although high school student Alexandra Zubowski alleged she was libeled in the email, she didn't submit an affidavit stating the email's content was false. Without such a document, she had not presented a solid enough case of defamation to be able to unmask the sender, the court ruled.

Zubowski and her parents sued after a Gmail user sent an email to her school alleging that she wasn't living up to promises of good conduct that she made as a member of the school's "Heroes and Cool Kids" program. The email, signed by "a concerned parent," included photos from Facebook of Zubowski and other students. One showed Zubowski standing in front of a ping pong table with plastic cups and seven beer cans on top of it.

The school forwarded the email to the police, who investigated but declined to press charges.

Zubowski sued the anonymous author for libel and a judge ordered Google to provide information about the IP address associated with the account. Zubowski learned that the Internet service provider was Optimum Online; that company notified the customer about the subpoena, after which the author moved to quash it.

A trial judge in Bergen County, N.J. agreed with the author and quashed the subpoena.

The appellate court upheld that decision earlier this month, ruling that "no reasonable factfinder" could conclude that the email was false. Not only did Zubowski fail to deny that she had engaged in underage drinking, but the anonymous author also presented several other Facebook photos that, according to the court, showed her "holding and drinking alcoholic beverages."

Courts in New Jersey have said that people have the right to speak anonymously online, and therefore can only be unmasked if libel plaintiffs show they have a potentially valid case and if their interest in suing outweighs the speakers' First Amendment interests in keeping their identity secret.

Zubowski argued that those requirements only apply when people seek to unmask anonymous online authors who post in a public forum, and not to senders of emails, which she called a "private communication" similar to physical letters.

She argued that the court should simply decide whether she had alleged sufficient facts to proceed on the libel case without then weighing that against the sender's right to anonymity. But the appellate court said it didn't have to decide whether to balance Zubowski's right to sue against the speaker's right to remain unknown because Zubowski hadn't made out a potentially valid defamation case.

"We consider all of the photographs in conjunction with plaintiff's failure to present any certification of her own, or from any other witness, certifying that she was not consuming alcoholic beverages on the occasion that is depicted in the original photograph," the court wrote. "Having done so, only one conclusion can be drawn: plaintiff has not presented prima facie proof that [the sender's] statement was false."

Twitter Turns on Its Geolocation Feature and It's Opt-in

Twitter March 11 switched on its long-awaited location-sharing feature and made the service opt-in. Twitter's geolocation feature, which works for Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and Google Chrome on Windows, tags users' tweets based on where they are tweeting from. The way Twitter has done this should endear it to privacy hounds that get nervous about location-sharing services. Facebook, meanwhile, is set to launch its own location-sharing service for its 400 million users. The leading social network would do well to follow Twitter's flexible approach to location.

Twitter March 11 switched on its long-awaited location-sharing feature and made the service opt-in.

Twitter's geolocation feature tags users' tweets based on where they are tweeting from. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and his team believe this additional layer of context will make Twitter a richer network. See Stone's example of why this is useful:

"Let's say I'm at my office and I hear a loud boom. It sounded serious, so I search Twitter for 'boom.' Among the first results could be someone who tweeted 'Boom go the fireworks!' This could be anywhere in the world. However, if that person had activated the new tweet location feature then the neighborhood data under the tweet would read, 'SoMa.' Now I know it's just fireworks going off in my neighborhood."

What the cool technology integration users get to see is that the key tweet word "SoMa" is linked to a Google map to let users explore the area some more. The point is that Twitter can now not only help its roughly 70 million users discuss what is happening, but where.

This is a concept that will be explored to the hilt at South-by-Southwest in Austin, Texas, this coming week. ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick said at least 25 companies will be making location-related announcements at SXSW this week.

Tweet by location works for Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and Google Chrome on Windows. To use the tool with older versions of these Web browsers, users will have to download the not-yet-defunct Google Gears app.

To get started, users may navigate to the How to Tweet Your Location Web page on Twitter and enable "Add a location to your tweets" in Twitter's account settings page. Twitter client applications will then be able to tag a tweet with exact location.

To tweet with location on a per-tweet basis after Location has been enabled, users must click the crosshair icon below the update box on the left. Users will then be asked to let Firefox "Remember Your Location." Double check to make sure "Remember for this site" box is checked and click "Share Location."

Location will then show below the update box. Of course, users who want to turn this off can click the "x" next to their location. This turns off Tweet With Your Location on a per-Tweet basis. Location will not be shown until users re-enable it by clicking the crosshair icon.

To disable Tweet With Your Location entirely, users must go back into accounts setting and uncheck the Add a location to your tweets box. Users may also delete specific tweets with location data, or remove all location data from all of your tweets by clicking the "delete all location data" button on the settings page.

This can take up to 30 minutes, but note that it does not guarantee the information will be removed from all thirdparty application's copies of the data or results from search engines such as Google or Microsoft Bing.

The way Twitter has done this should endear it to privacy hounds that get nervous about location-sharing services. Google recently discussed this issue -- the creepy factor associated with location-based services -- in detail with eWEEK.

Facebook meanwhile is set to launch its own location-sharing service for its 400 million users. The leading social network would do well to follow Twitter's flexible approach to location.

Top Information Technology Predictions

Gartner continues to investigate the changing balance of power from across its research areas, and selects Internet Technologies as the focus of this year's crystal ball gazing.

Here's our future according to Gartner:

• By 2012, 20% percent of businesses will have no ownership of IT assets. Fueled by technological developments in 2009, such as virtualization and cloud computing, there's a movement toward decreased IT hardware assets and more ownership of hardware by third parties.

• By 2012, India-based IT companies will represent 20% of cloud service providers in the market. Gartner attributes this to companies leveraging their market positions and R&D efforts in cloud computing, resulting in cloud-enabled outsourcing options.

• By 2012, Facebook will lead the pack in developing the distributed, interoperable social Web through Facebook Connect and similar mechanisms. The interoperability will be critical to survival of other social networks.

• Other social networks (including Twitter) will continue to develop with focus on greater adoption and specialization. However, they will all revolve around Facebook.

• By 2014, building on server vitalization and desktop power management as savings in energy costs, more organizations will be driven by the need to be responsible for carbon dioxide emissions and will include carbon costs in business cases. Vendors will have to provide carbon lifecycle statistics for their products.

• In 2012, 60% of a new PCs total life greenhouse gas emissions will have occurred before the user first turns it on. In its lifetime, a typical PC consumes 10 times its own weight in fossil fuels, but around 80% of a PC's total energy usage occurs during production and transportation. Buyers will be paying more attention to eco labels.

• Online marketing by 2015 will control more than US$ 250 billion in Internet marketing spending worldwide.

• By 2014, mobile and Internet technology will help over 3 billion of the world's adults to electronically transact. Emerging economies will see increase in mobile and Internet adoption through 2014. Worldwide mobile penetration rate will get to 90%.

• By 2013, mobile phones will replace PCs as the most common device for Web access.