MySpace to Share Data With States on Offenders

By BRAD STONE

Published: May 22, 2007 New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO, May 21 — MySpace and the 50 state attorneys general appear to have made peace.

In a statement released Monday, MySpace, the popular social networking site, said it had agreed to hand over to the states the names, addresses and online profiles of thousands of known convicted sex offenders who have opened up accounts on the service.

The company also said it had deleted the online profiles of 7,000 convicted sexual predators, whose names were flagged through the cross-matching of its membership rolls with a database of registered sex offenders maintained by Sentinel Tech Holding.

MySpace to turn over sex-offender data after all

The Complying Game

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco → More by this author

Published Monday 21st May 2007 19:56 GMT - The Register

The use of MySpace by registered sex offenders is only one of a litany of abuses critics have heaped on the social networking site. Other complaints include MySpace's liberal rules for the use of javascript, which in the past has allowed users to infect visitors' machines with malware. Also an issue is the growing prevalence of spam in MySpace Groups, much of which redirects users to scatological porn sites so shocking and vile they aren't fit for adult viewing let alone viewing by children.

The state AGs have been calling on MySpace to do more to protect children from such threats. Among other things, they have urged MySpace to raise the age requirement for members from 14 years old to 16 and to verify both the age and identify of its users. ®

Discussion Questions:
1. Is there a privacy issue here?
2. Can this be extended to other categories of users to be reported on?
3. What obligation has MySpace for the protection of underage users?
4. What ethical issues does this raise for marketing on the internet?

You're a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well

from the Wall Street Journal On-Line
By KEVIN J. DELANEY
May 8, 2007; Page A1

"In the age of Google, being special increasingly requires standing out from the crowd online. Many people aspire for themselves -- or their offspring -- to command prominent placement in the top few links on search engines or social networking sites' member lookup functions. But, as more people flood the Web, that's becoming an especially tall order for those with common names. Type "John Smith" into Google's search engine and it estimates it has 158 million results. (See search results.)

For people prone to vanity searching -- punching their own names into search engines -- absence from the first pages of search results can bring disappointment. On top of that, some of the "un-Googleables" say being crowded out of search results actually carries a professional and financial price."

1. What is changing in consumer behaviour when people publicise themselves freely and openly in MySpace, Youtube, Blogs, FaceBook, LinkedIn?
2. What implications does this have for privacy concerns?
3. Has the "15 minutes of fame" claim by Andy Warhol come true?
"The expression is a paraphrase of Andy Warhol's statement in 1968 that "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.""

Do Not Call Register

3 May 2007

Do Not Call Register launched

The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan, launched the national Do Not Call Register today.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority is responsible for establishing and overseeing the Do Not Call Register, determining the fees telemarketers will be charged for accessing the register and for investigating breaches of the Do Not Call Register legislation. ACMA is also responsible for developing a national standard for minimum levels of conduct by telemarketers and research callers.

The Do Not Call Register enables individuals with Australian fixed line and mobile numbers to list their fixed and mobile telephone numbers on the register and opt out of receiving a wide range of telemarketing calls.

Registration of a telephone number is easy, quick and free.

From today, individuals are able to register their telephone numbers, if they are used primarily for private or domestic purposes, through the Do Not Call website, at www.donotcall.gov.au or by post.

Individuals will be able to register by telephone from 22 May 2007. It may take up to 30 days for a registration to become effective.

Under the legislated scheme, it will generally be unlawful to make telemarketing calls to numbers placed on the register from 31 May 2007.

http://internet.aca.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD//pc=PC_100642

1. How effective do you think this is? Will this kill the telemarketing industry?
2. What about telemarketing calls from other countries?
3. Can a consumer agree to some category of calls but not to others?

Contextual Marketing

contextual marketing

From TechTarget 27-04-07

Contextual marketing is an online marketing model in which people are served with targeted advertising based on terms they search for or their recent browsing behavior. By tying the ads users see to their demonstrated interests, advertisers hope to decrease user annoyance with online marketing and, simultaneously, increase clickthrough and conversion rates. Google's AdSense program, for example, is a straightforward version of contextual marketing, in which ads are displayed based on the terms that the user searches for.

In a more sophisticated application, contextual marketing uses an approach called behavioral targeting to serve relevant advertising. Here's an example: The user searches for mid-size car reviews, reads one or two reviews and then reads an article about fuel-efficient models. Next, the user might visit a general news site and see, to his surprise, ads for hybrid vehicles and biofuels.

To the unsuspecting user, the appearance of ads relevant to his interests -- on seemingly unrelated sites -- may seem like pure coincidence, or even synchronicity. In fact, however, each time the user performs a search, reads an article or clicks on an ad, a cookie stored on the computer tracks the activity, which is used to create a behavioral profile of the consumer for marketing purposes.

Behavioral targeting is usually conducted throughout so-called "ad networks" of affiliated Web sites. TACODA, Inc., for example, is an Internet marketing company that oversees an ad network of 4,500 sites. According to the company's chairman, David Morgan, TACODA sees 80 percent of the U.S. online population 50 times a month, through sites including Cars.com, CBS Sports and the Wall Street Journal.

MORE INFO:
> ContextualMarketing.com provides an article called 'Everything You Need To Know About Contextual Marketing.'
> SearchCRM.com offers a chapter download, 'Market-Driven Thinking: Achieving Contextual Intelligence.'
> Ask.com is launching new sponsored contextual advertising listings and will go live the week of May 21st.
> A Harvard Business School journal article, Contextual Marketing: The Real Business of the Internet, explains more about the practice.

Engagement Marketing

This is a presentation from Cord Silverstein, a marketing blogger (Marketing Hipster). This was presented to the American Marketing Association.

There is also a link to a podcast (mp3 file) by David Weinberger at the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council's Social Media Cluster this afternoon (24-004-07) titled "Taking Back the Internet: How Social Media will Transform Media and Institutions". It was followed by an 80 minute discussion period that involved questions and comments from many of the 35 or so attendees and lots more from David.

Discussion:
1. Do you think this is an important issue for web marketing?
2. How does this view differ from the conventional marketing approach?

Google and Privacy

Google has recently acquired DoubleClick, a leading on-line based advertising company. Concerns have been expressed about the dangers of one organisation having access to a vast amount of personal information.

Google to Buy DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion

Google in Privacy Hot Seat
"Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick will give one company access to more information about the Internet activities of consumers than any other company in the world."

How Paranoid Should I Be about Google?

Tuesday, April 17, 2007 12:06 PM PT Posted by Edward N. Albro

What I search for: Google's cookie lasts for decades and could be keeping a record of every search query I submit.

What Web sites I've visited since 1996: DoubleClick's been around longer than Google and has probably had its own tracking cookie on every computer I've used virtually since I started browsing the Net.

What I write and read in email: I have two Gmail accounts with a total of 26,389 messages, all of which have been scanned by Google so they can place contextual ads within them.

What I'm doing when: Google Calendar doesn't have all of my activities, but it's got a lot.

What's on my hard drive: Google Desktop indexes the contents of my hard drive and mixes search results from that index in with my Web search results.

Where I go: I've got Google's great Maps app on my Treo and use it frequently to get directions to new places.

What I'm producing: So far, I've only dabbled with Google's Docs & Spreadsheets applications,

1. How is DoubleClick different from Google?
2. What can Google gain from this acquisition?
3. What can be done to protect privacy in this situation?

Google Privacy Statement Highlights
DoubleClick Privacy Statement

FUTURE FOCUS - NEW CYBERSPACE WORLDS

SBS
08:30 pm
FUTURE FOCUS - NEW CYBERSPACE WORLDS
A booming business has sprung up at the crossroads where virtual worlds and the real world meet. In auctions inside these realms, imaginary real estate and virtual islands are selling for hundreds of thousands of real dollars. Weapons and characters are also being exchanged every day for a few dozen gold coins. Millions of ‘gamers' worldwide spend on average 30 hours a week playing in these boundless realms, creating their own new personalities as players in the game (known as ‘avatars'). (From France, in English, French and Mandarin) CC WS SMS Alert Code: 0115

http://www.sbs.com.au/whatson/index.php3?progdate=17:04:2007
The show will appear on SBS on Tues, 17th April.
We thought this could be a great program to watch re: virtual worlds-
Posted by Vicky and Josie yes, on a Saturday night study binge! How sad :(