Friday, January 13, 2012

Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Words With Friends Helps Save Man’s Life”

Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Words With Friends Helps Save Man’s Life”

Words With Friends Helps Save Man’s Life

Posted: 13 Jan 2012 01:54 AM PST

Words With Friends

Addictive scrabble game Words With Friends helped save the life of an Australian man with heart problems, reports Ozarks First.

Australian resident Georgie Fletcher met Beth Legler from Blue Springs, Missouri through a random Words With Friends game. Georgie’s husband Simon was experiencing some health problems, which Beth described to her husband Larry, who is a doctor.

Larry recognized the symptoms and urged Simon to go to a hospital, which turned out to be a last minute call, since Simon had a 99% blockage near his heart – an extremely serious condition.

“Had Larry not sent that message I don’t think Simon would have gone to the doctor that day,” Beth said.

Three months later, Simon is alive and well and very thankful for that Words With Friends game. “I owe Larry everything…I’m really lucky to be here,” admits Simon.

While playing Words With Friends can have its benefits, one should take care not to overdo it. The popular game recently hit the news when Alec Baldwin got booted off a plane for refusing to stop playing.

[via Ozarks First]

More About: game, scrabble, trending, words with friends

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Find Your Match on Hitch.me, the Dating Site for LinkedIn Professionals

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 08:49 PM PST


The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Hitch.me

Quick Pitch: Hitch.me is a dating site for LinkedIn professionals.

Genius Idea: Connects the dating world and the professional world for a secure, safe online dating platform.

After noticing how unsafe some online dating sites are and how many are filled with scammers and sex offenders, Naveed Nadir wanted to fill a void in the online dating world. He decided to marry the dating world and professional world by creating Hitch.me, the first and only dating platform for LinkedIn professionals.

“There are a lot of dating websites out there but most people on those sites lie and have fake profiles,” Naveed Nadir, founder of Hitch.me, told Mashable. “With LinkedIn, people get a sense of security and they feel more comfortable with the network.”

The online dating site lets users browse through profiles of hundreds of LinkedIn professionals all over the world, send them private smiles (without words), pitches (250 characters) and even presentations (private images and videos).

Once you sign into Hitch.me using your LinkedIn account, your professional information, including your LinkedIn photo, is automatically added to your profile. To keep the site professional, users cannot change or modify their profile photo.

Users can then fill out their own personal profile, which includes information such as age, date of birth, interests, photos, etc. Hitch.me’s privacy options lets users limit the visibility of their personal profiles to only selected individuals.

To save you the hassle of searching for compatible users, Hitch.me shows you all of your matches with their professional and personal profiles on your own dashboard.

Although Hitch.me does not charge a monthly fee, credits are required to view personal profiles and send messages. Users receive 200 free credits upon signing up and 100 credits per each person that signs up by clicking on a shared link that users can post to their social networks.

Thereafter, credits cost $10 for 300, $25 for 1,000 and $50 for 2,500. Once you pay via credit card, a receipt is sent to your email and you obtain full access to browse professional and personal profiles and send messages.

Twenty credits are required to unlock a profile or send a smile, 50 to send a pitch and 100 to send a presentation.

”The intent is to keep Hitch.me professional and to make it as private and secure as possible,” says Nadir.

Hitch.me is self-funded and has officially launched Thursday.

Image courtesy of iStock, dizign54

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: bizspark, dating, dating sites, Hitch.me, linkedin, online dating

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New York Times ‘Truth Vigilantes’ Comment Draws Backlash, Humor on Twitter [PICS]

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 08:32 PM PST

twitter quill

A New York Times column titled, “Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” drew heavy criticism Thursday on Twitter and even spawned a fake account parodying Arthur Brisbane, NYT’s public editor who wrote the piece.

Brisbane asked if hard news reporters should push sources like politicians and companies if they provide the media with information that seems false. In an op-ed piece, Brisbane says, a reporter can call out a lie. But in a hard news piece, he questioned whether a reporter should just report the facts even if evidence points to those “facts” being false.

Brisbane — who is the fourth public editor for The Times and has an extensive journalism career that began in 1976 — wrote a follow-up post explaining what he was attempting to articulate in the original piece, but it did nothing to soothe the annoyance of people on Twitter and commenters who were outraged at his “truth vigilante” question.

SEE ALSO: Was the AP Wrong to Reprimand Reporters for Publishing News on Twitter First?

The question did however provide some Twitter comedy. Check out some funny/clever/poignant tweets about The Times’s debacle below.


Twitter Reacts to NYT Public Editor




This fake public editor account created Thursday had more than 500 followers by day's end.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: journalism, new york times, Socail Media, Twitter

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How the Australian Open Is Acing Digital Media

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 07:40 PM PST


The 2012 Australian Open Grand Slam tennis tournament may just be the most digitally connected major sporting event of all time.

A Slamtracker already provides real-time updates of qualifying play that began on Wednesday, and fans can relive and share their favorite moments via Facebook and Twitter through a database of classic matches.

But the real fun begins when the tournament officially begins next Monday.

Tournament officials plan to man the @AustralianOpen Twitter feed 24 hours per day all the way through final matches on Jan. 29 for the event’s global audience. There will be a fan leader board that ranks players based on buzz and provides a social counterpoint to on-court results. There will even be a team of selected “Fan-bassadors” who prove themselves by being particular active online and sharing a wealth of tennis knowledge.

The Australian Open has always been on the cutting edge of social media use among tennis’s major Grand Slam competitions. But it’s taking a new step this year by uniting everything under the umbrella of what organizers call a “social media hub” Fan Centre.

“We’re concentrating more than ever on engaging socially with our fans,” Daniel Lattimer, who works on the digital team for the event, told Mashable. “We were the first Grand Slam on Twitter, and engagement has been going up there and on Facebook, so it’s important to provide people with that complement to the actual watching of the tennis during the tournament.”

Australian Open fans won’t just be able to engage in dialogue with one another and tournament officials via social media — they’ll also participate in competitions of their own and even have the spotlight turned back on themselves at times.

The Fan Centre leader board will continuously rank the top 10 male and female players at the tournament according to who is being mentioned the most on social media and whose content is gaining the most views on the Australian Open site. Fan-bassadors, meanwhile, will be chosen according to who provides the most useful analysis and commentary from different corners of the globe and set up with profiles on the main tournament site featuring an avatar and small bio. The platform presents a great opportunity for fans to gain traffic for their personal blogs and sites via AustralianOpen.com‘s huge audience.

“We’re kind of tapping into people’s competitiveness as fans as well as their love for the players,” said Kim Trangrove, the digital manager for Tennis Australia, the sport’s governing body Down Under.

Lattimer said that they hope to have selected Fan-bassadors from as many countries as possible by tournament’s end to help promote the Australian Open worldwide and spread news through different time zones.

Additional digital initiatives of the tournament include live-streamed in-house video coverage, social prediction games, new mobile websites and apps for iPhone and Android.

But the slew of social media engagement doesn’t just serve the Australian Open — it serves a more ambitious interest, too.

“Our overriding goal is to increase interest in tennis; it always come back to that,” Trengrove said. “Ultimately, we want to get people playing the sport too, and our goal is to get 4 million people playing here by 2016.”

How important to you think digital and social engagement is for sporting events like the Australian Open? Let us know in the comments.

More About: Marketing, Social Media, sports, trending

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5 Proven Ways to Generate Revenue From Facebook

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 07:22 PM PST

Facebook Money Image

Brian Carter is author of The Like Economy: How Businesses Make Money With Facebook and co-author of Facebook Marketing: Leveraging Facebook’s Features For Your Marketing Campaigns. He is a keynote speaker, trainer and consultant.

Facebook, with its 800+ million users, presents a huge opportunity for business. But the first question people ask is, “Can it really generate money?”

If you’ve read any of the Facebook marketing case studies over the last year, you’ve seen examples of small business profits and boosts in ecommerce sales via Facebook sharing.

If your business is ready to move toward Facebook profits, your next question should be: “What distinguishes profitable and unprofitable Facebook marketing campaigns?”

First, consider your revenue model. What steps will get your users to buy? How do you attract their attention in the first place? What does the conversion funnel look like? And how does Facebook fit with the marketing channels that already work for you, like email, text messages and affiliate revenue?

There are a number of strategies companies use to do Facebook business effectively. Let’s look at five of them.

1. Advertising-Based Ecommerce

Marketers can leverage the massive reach and highly customizable targeting of Facebook’s ad platform. They can create ads that take clickers straight to an ecommerce site, bypassing fan marketing entirely. The ads-direct-to-websites option is often overlooked, but can be immediately profitable. If you’re not 100% sure about committing to the time and creativity required for fan marketing, then test direct-to-site ad traffic first.

For example, Vamplets.com, which sells plush vampire baby dolls, achieved a 300% ROI on ecommerce sales in its first month of advertising directly to the ecommerce site, according to a company representative.

2. Fan Marketing Ecommerce

Fan marketing is selling to fans by posting from your page into their news feeds.

Fans appear to be more responsive when acquired through ads than through contests, content or legacy. Data analysis in 2011 from companies like PageLever revealed that many multimillion-fan brand pages were reaching 7% or fewer of their fans. Some pages have hundreds of thousands of fans who never liked or commented on a post, and have not seen the page’s posts for years.

Success with fan marketing requires that you be as visible as possible to your fans, and EdgeRank has a time decay factor. New fans may be required in some cases. Some businesses have taken the radical step to start entirely new pages and use Facebook ads to grow a new and more targeted fan base. With their more sophisticated and up-to-date understanding of how to engage fans, they achieve better results than they had with their old page.

Some profitable examples include Baseball Roses, Rosehall Kennel, WUSLU and SuperHeroStuff.

Baseball Roses sells artificial roses made from real baseballs. Founder of the company, Mark Ellingson, explained that they were unsuccessful with Google AdWords because no one was searching for their innovative product. They achieved a 473% ROI from their spend on fan acquisition via Facebook ads.

Rosehall Kennel breeds and sells German Shepherds, and has achieved more than 4,000% ROI on its fan acquisition spend, according to owner Eliot Roberts. What’s more, they have seen fewer requests for discounts and a shorter sales cycle.

WUSLU is a Woot-like site for home decor. While the company would not release exact profitability numbers, they are excited about their Facebook marketing results and have no plans to stop.

SuperHeroStuff.com’s founder Ronando Long told me that when the company began to use Facebook in 2011, it was the only new thing they were doing, and their revenues increased 150%.

3. Facebook Ads and Email

Many companies already have email dialed in. They know how much the average email subscriber is worth to their company, and they have an email marketing process that’s profitable.

For these companies, whether they initiate fan marketing or not, it makes sense to use Facebook ads to acquire even more subscribers, as long as those subscribers are qualified. Facebook advertising can be targeted according to 16 different criteria, including age, gender, interests, location, relationship status, connection to pages you admin, workplace, education level, majors in college and more. Add to that some ad copy that calls out the people you want to target, and you can ensure these new subscribers are qualified.

By sending contest-based email campaigns integrated with social networking, one Fortune 500 company achieved a 400% increase in email open rate, click rates of 14%, and one-fifth of their email subscribers also became fans, according to Steve Gaither, president of JB Chicago, the marketing agency that worked with the company.

4. Facebook Ads and Text Messaging

Businesses haven’t rushed to adopt SMS marketing, but 24% of mobile marketers have found their campaign ROI met or exceeded their expectations, and 4% of all mobile users have responded to a coupon for a product or service.

One local store (from a popular fast food franchise I’m not allowed to name) boosted revenue with this approach. It posted information about free text message coupons to its Facebook fans. Fans who opted in received an SMS coupon every day for 30 days. The result was $65,000 additional store revenue.

5. Generating Traffic to Your Ad-Supported Site

If you’re a publisher or blogger, content is your stock in trade, and advertising is usually your bread and butter. Why not create a Facebook page for your site, grow that fan base, then post a link to every new article? This boosts traffic to your website. Since your advertising revenue is tied to pageviews, more traffic from new readers and repeat traffic from fans mean more advertising revenues for your website.

Proud Single Moms, which created a Facebook page, grew about 98,000 fans via Facebook ads for less than $5,000, according to the site’s creator. Since the website uses AdSense ads, they chose to blog on topics that not only were interesting to moms, but which also had Google keywords generating high click fees. You can use a combination of the Facebook advertising platform and AdWords’ Keyword Tool to find interesting and profitable topics. Then they posted links to their blog posts on Facebook each day. Proud Single Moms was on track to break even on its initial ad investment within six months, and was privately sold to another party.

Which Revenue Model Should You Choose?

If one of these models isn’t an obvious match for your business, I’d recommend you first test direct Facebook ads to whatever is already working for your business. Do you have products or services that already sell well? Use Facebook ads to send more traffic to them.

Fans can also be affordably acquired through Facebook ads, but make sure you understand the amount of time and creativity required for fan marketing before you start. Companies that jump into fan marketing without that understanding and a good plan usually post in a way that doesn’t lead to much interaction. Then, EdgeRank reduces the reach and value of your Facebook page. Overall, the ROI of your efforts becomes low or negative. But when you get the right fans from Facebook ads and engage them with interesting content, profits often follow.

More About: contributor, Facebook, features, Marketing, Social Media, social media marketing

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And the Golden Globe for Most Twitter Mentions Goes to … Ricky Gervais

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 07:08 PM PST

ricky gervais image

The Golden Globes are right around the corner and the Twittersphere isn’t much interested in the movies and nominees that will be vying for top prize. No, Twitter users are more likely to talk about the controversial host and funnyman Ricky Gervais.

NM Incite, a social media tracking and analysis company, found that “Excitement for Ricky Gervais” took up 26% of the conversations around the 69th Golden Globe Awards, airing Sunday at 8 p.m. ET.

Gervais habitually stirs up conversation with his pull-no-punches humor at the industry’s expense. Gervais’s return to the show is driving some serious Twitter traffic to the Globes. “Excitement for Gervais” ranked just behind “General Excitement” for the Globes (28%) and well ahead of the next largest topic, “Support for Celebrity Nominee” (10%).

The results were taken from more than 7,000 Twitter messages posted from Jan. 10-11. Gervais ranked again on the list with 8% of the Twitter conversations about “Ricky Gervais’ Humor.” There were no other specific nominees or celebrities that made NM Incite’s list.

Take a look at the full results below and let us know in the comments if you’re more likely to watch the award ceremony because Gervais is hosting. Scroll to the bottom for a little NSFW treat.

golden globe analysis image

Image courtesy of Flickr, k-ideas

More About: Film, Movies, sentiment analysis, social buzz, television, Twitter

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The Best Airports and Airlines for Tech-Dependent Travelers [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 06:51 PM PST

Jetsetting from New York to Silicon Valley and everywhere in between helps high-tech travelers gather a wealth of knowledge about life spent in airports and at 35,000 feet. So, if you’ve got a trip coming up, you’ll find this infographic’s insights about the most tech-friendly airports and airlines to be incredibly useful.

For longer flights, you need to be completely juiced up beforehand … or have access to outlets onboard. There are 17,000 outlets in the 40 busiest American airports; that may sound like a lot, but it equates to just 5.5 outlets per gate, on average. That’s not a very favorable ratio when you consider how many people are traveling with smartphones, eReaders, tablets, laptops or any combination thereof. (Tip: Virgin America has outlets in every row of the plane to keep you charged in the sky, so there’s no race to recharge at the gate.)

Even when you’re all charged up, you might not be able to afford being offline for hours at a time, so inflight Wi-Fi isn’t just a nice perk — it’s a must. So it’s good to know that AirTran and Virgin America have Wi-Fi on 100% of their aircraft.

And when you’re managing travel or booking flights, you might think to yourself, “Oh, there’s an app for that.” But you should know that few airlines have apps that are fully functional — Delta’s is ranked the best among all U.S. carriers, scoring 8 out of 10 possible points.

Lastly, in case you didn’t learn how to travel efficiently from George Clooney in Up in the Air, there are some handy tips for expediting your trip through the TSA lines at the bottom of the graphic. Want to take it to the next level? This tech-lover’s jacket could be a helpful tool.

In short, this infographic from OnlineMBA.com highlights pretty much everything you need to know about high-tech travel. Noticeably missing from the airport map are LAX, SFO and Chicago’s O’Hare, but we’ve got you covered with information regarding airport Wi-Fi and Boingo Hotspots.

Best Airports for Tech

Infographic courtesy of OnlineMBA.com

More About: infographics, travel, trending

Charting the CES Chatter, Thursday Edition [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 06:35 PM PST


Motorola, Twitter and OLED display technology ruled on Wednesday at CES 2012. Microsoft still has the largest share of overall tweets tagged #CES, but its grip on the conversation slipped again on the expo week’s third day. And Mashable became Wednesday’s most-tweeted news site for the CES scoop.

This is our latest glimpse into what has techies talking this week in Las Vegas, provided again by Simply Measured analytics. The statistics offer a quantified analysis of who and what is grabbing electronic attention at one of the world’s most important trade shows. Here we offer Simply Measured’s findings for Wednesday’s buzz, as well as which brands have been dominating the conversation all week. Click here for our rundown of Tuesday’s stats, and here for our recap of Monday.

How Did Wednesday’s Overall Twitter Chatter Compare to Last Year?

On Wednesday, #CES-tagged tweets showed roughly the same general trend as on the event’s second day in 2011: rising popularity in the morning before a trail-off as the afternoon wore on. But people maintained their Twitter tenacity at a higher rate in 2012 than in 2011, with the gap between tweets from the two years much wider in the late morning and afternoon than earlier in the day. Why is this? We’re not sure. Twitter use has grown significantly over the past year, so maybe while there are more users at CES 2012 better parties have led to harder mornings?

(Note on graphics: CES officially runs Tuesday through Friday, so Monday is referred to as "Day 0,” Tuesday is referred to as "Day 1,” and Wednesday is referred to as “Day 2.”)

What Were Wednesday’s Hottest Brands?

Motorola took the day, consistently gaining more mentions than other bands and enjoying a huge spike likely related to the news that Intel had agreed to a multi-year deal for Intel-based Motorola phones and tablets. Interestingly, however, Intel didn’t get the same boost in buzz. Aside from Motorola, Samsung performed solidly throughout the day, while HP had a couple of modest bumps in the evening and around midday.

What Tech Trends Had People Talking?

For the third consecutive day, more people discussed OLED display technology than any other tech-world trend. But tablet devices finally passed ultrabook laptops in popularity; ultrabooks were second and tablets third on both Monday and Tuesday. Gaming technology made a big jump on Wednesday as well, edging out tablets for second place on the day.

What Were Wednesday’s Most Popular Domains?

As usual, news and social sharing sites dominated the list of most-tweeted domain names on the #CES hashtag. But a couple of new leaders emerged, with mashable.com replacing ces.cnet.com as Wednesday’s go-to news site and twitter.com taking over for the first time as the most-tweeted overall domain. For other sharing sites, youtube.com held firm near the head of the pack, while facebook.com interestingly took a precipitous drop in mentions from nearly 1,500 on Tuesday to just over 300 on Wednesday.

Who Are the Overall Brand Leaders?

Microsoft has still grabbed the largest total share of #CES-tagged tweets, holding steady at 6% of the total count for the second consecutive day. But the Seattle tech giant’s daily share of tweets has decreased consistently since it corralled a whopping 12% on Monday behind Ballmer’s big speech to kick off the company’s final CES appearance. Among the top 10 overall, Google still gets the most value per tweet, as people who mention it have the most followers on average.

But enough from us. What does all this data tell you about who is making a mark at CES and why? Let us know in the comments.

More About: analytics, CES, CES 2012, infographics, Twitter

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Celebrity Social Media Campaign Rallies for Haiti, Two Years After Quake

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 06:22 PM PST

Two years after the devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake that hit off the coast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, celebrities with major Twitter and Facebook followings are joining in the “HAITI: Aid Still Required” online campaign.

The campaign announced its partnership Thursday with Internet giving platform Snoball.com, in an effort to reawaken global concern for the ongoing crisis in Haiti and raise money through online donations.

“The usual pattern is for the public to contribute generously in the moment of a disaster and then forget about it,” says Hunter Payne, president of Aid Still Required. “But disasters don't heal themselves – they take time, energy and resources over a protracted arc. We hope this campaign will go a long way to engendering this kind of thinking not only about this tragedy but all others as well.”

Among the 40 celebrities joining in the campaign — who have a combined social following of more than 125 million people — are Maroon 5, Sting, Alicia Keys, Martha Stewart and Lady Antebellum.

The money raised will help fund reforestation projects, infrastructure, schools, orphanages and trauma relief programs for PTSD and rape victims.

If you’re interested in joining the campaign, you can log onto Snoball, give money or invite people in your social networks to join the cause.

How do you think the power of social media can best be leveraged to heighten awareness for the ongoing crises in Haiti? Let us know in the comments.

Aid Still Required - Projects- Haiti

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr, American Red Cross/Talia Frankel

More About: celebrity endorsements, haiti earthquake, Social Good

Google: Sorry, Twitter, We Don’t Index the @ Symbol

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:54 PM PST


If you haven’t noticed that Google+ pages are increasingly becoming a part of Google search results, you may have noticed Google and Twitter’s increasingly public spat about it.

Twitter argues that by promoting Google+ in search results, Google isn’t providing the most relevant social results. Meanwhile, Google has implied it would promote more pages from Twitter if it had adequate permission to do so. Twitter general council Alex Macgillivray then tweeted an example of why he thought Google’s new results were inefficient: Google search results for the search term "@WWE" — yes, with the “@” symbol — that did not include the organization's Twitter page.

Now Google has confirmed to Mashable that it has never indexed the “@” symbol. In other words, the search engine has never recognized a Twitter handle when it was formatted that way.

So while a search for “WWE Twitter” still returns the organization’s Twitter feed before its Google+ page, “@WWE” returns the same results as “WWE” — in this case, with Google+ results first. Somehow a search for “+WWE” succeeds in returning a Google+ profile.

But really, Google? The company with a car that drives itself? In more than five years of people searching for Twitter handles, you never got around to adding the @ symbol to your index?

Even without the @ sign being indexed, however, the concern over the results for “@WWE” are valid: About 24,900 people have +1ed or added WWE to their circles on Google+ — but 792,642 people follow WWE on Twitter. In this case, and many others, the Twitter page is a more relevant social result than the Google+ page. Twitter ranks higher than Google+ for the WWE in Yahoo, AOL and Bing results.

On the other hand, Twitter and Facebook haven’t necessarily made it easy for the search engine to feature them in results. Facebook denies Google’s crawlers access to its private pages, for one obvious reason — they’re private. Twitter includes “nofollow” links on its pages that make it hard for Google’s crawlers to index them.

As Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan has pointed out, Google has indexed at least 3 billion pages. But Twitter users create 200 million Tweets every day that would be hard to index without access to the network’s firehose — access to which Google lost with expiration of an agreement last July.

In the end, exactly how Google search results came to be dominated by Google+ pages — either as a result of having little access to other social networks or by intentionally ignoring them — isn’t that important. The important question is whether or not this domination is good for consumers. An issue which, if a complaint from privacy watchdog EPIC is effective, could be settled by the FTC.

More About: Google, Search, trending, Twitter

Apple’s Offshore Accounts Could Double its Cash by 2014

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:44 PM PST


Apple is on track to making an even more astronomical amount of dough with its offshore accounts.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company has most of its money in overseas investments — $54 billion of its $85 billion in cash is kept out of the United States, according to a story on investment website SeekingAlpha. By 2014, it is estimated, Apple could have $150 billion.

The SeekingAlpha story speculates that Apple’s offshore accounts will continue to appreciate because of the booming overseas’ economies in which the cash is invested. The money is in yen, real and euros.

If Apple wants to move that cash stateside, they’ll have to pay a hefty American corporate tax rate. Fortune reported last year that Apple lobbied for a one-year break from repatriation in an effort dubbed the “Win America Campaign,” with the aim of bringing offshore corporate reserves back to the U.S. at a discounted rate.

The possibility that corporations could pay a lower tax rate than civilians caused a hubbub and resulted in protests. Last summer the group US Uncut demanded Apple “leave the tax cheat lobbying group and stop lobbying Congress for more tax loopholes.” Apple later backed out of the campaign.

The U.S. corporate tax rate is around 35%, one of the highest in the world. But few business pay the full 35% — due to loopholes in the tax code. Some companies, such as GE, paid no federal taxes in 2010; GE claimed a $3.2 billion tax benefit. Some companies even pay a negative tax rate — meaning the government is paying them to operate here.

In fact, the tax rate in the United States is lower now than it was in the 1980s for many large corporations [PDF]. In 1986, the corporate tax rate for businesses earning more than $1,405,000 was a flat 46%.

We reached out to Apple to ask if they have considered moving more of their operation overseas, and what its response is to those who criticize its push to bring their overseas investments back to the U.S. at a lower tax rate. But what do you think about the way Apple run its business? Tell us in the comments.

More About: accounts, apple, money

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4 Short-Form Blogging Networks Perfect for Customer Engagement

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:05 PM PST


Anne Buehner is the associate social media strategist at Red Door Interactive, a strategic partner dedicated to ensuring businesses acquire, convert, retain and engage their customers wherever they are. Email her at abuehner@reddoor.biz.

Toasting the new year is not what it used to be. Which comes first – a kiss from your loved one or uploading a photo of the ball drop to Instagram?

This type of midnight social media madness provides a great snapshot into the lives of the consumers who may buy your product or service in 2012. It's time to take direct aim at your audience, or at least try to satisfy their appetite for moment-to-moment content.

With 2011 in the rearview mirror, you're likely forecasting a fresh social media/instablogging strategy for the new year. You've probably heard that a brand relationship needs to mirror a personal one, but which self-publishing platforms can really accomplish this esprit de corps? One of the easiest ways for brands to leverage warm and fuzzy feelings is to play in the same social spaces as your friends and family would.

However, it can be difficult to decide which platform is the right fit for your brand – in addition to the standards Facebook and Twitter, of course. Which sites help brands keep up in the real-time content race? Which sites really drive engagement? Here are a few I see as emerging leaders.

1. Tumblr

Brands use Tumblr to create a community and to build a following fast with its quick and easy setup, seamless tagging and sharing capabilities. Existing brands also use the short-form blog to breathe life into content through a host of mixed-media that includes photos, links and video. However, you don't want to shoot from the hip with Tumblr — it requires a content strategy, branded "look and feel" and management approval to re-blog other images. You'll want to use Google Analytics to track traffic since Tumblr does not offer a reporting platform. Tumblr also does not have the best reputation when it comes to collaborating with brands on advertising opportunities.

Anthropologie recently launched a Tumblr blog called Etymologie. The posts are inspired by reader-submitted words and the content is more lifestyle-driven, rather than promotional. Ace Hotel uses a Tumblr called Everything Will Be Okay, with a philanthropic focus and subtle "get a room" reference to its hotels.

The Tumblr platform isn't just suited for big timers; it can work for a small companies looking to find fans in a target audience of 34-years-old and younger.
 

2. Pinterest

Brands use Pinterest to build brand personality and inspire trends and influencers through instant social sharing. Pins are typically centered around major life events such as weddings and holidays. Users create theme-based collections through the site's virtual pinboards. Dialogue is generated through the simple act of Pinning, Repinning, Liking and commenting on images taken on a smartphone or from the web. Pinterest presents a helpful tool for brand direction by analyzing what is frequently Pinned and why.

With over 400,000 visitors per month – and rapidly growing – Pinterest is a huge referral source for brands. Real Simple recently reported that Pinterest drove more traffic to its website than Facebook in the month of October. Smaller brands should take note of Cabot Cheese, which uses Pinterest to curate photos of food that can be made with its cheese — other boards include fun photos of cows, farms and Vermont.

While the site's list of etiquette states "avoid self-promotion," aka soft sell, it does not include stipulations around contests. Lands' End took advantage of this in December with the engagement contest Lands' End Canvas Pin It to Win It. The promotion encouraged users to browse its modern clothing line and make Boards for a chance to win apparel.

3. Instagram

Brands use Instagram to showcase products, services, events or just a behind-the-scenes look through a feed of photos, instead of a slew of text. The photo sharing application for iPhone uses dazzling image filters, and features cross-posting to other social networks including Twitter, Facebook profiles, Flickr, Foursquare, Tumblr and Posterous. The goal is to attract new fans with Instagram's search and keyword function, and to draw engagement through likes, comments, @replies and #hashtags. Instagram provides relatively seamless integration with dozens of third-party applications, including Statigram, which offers analytics.

Brands with an existing following can thrive on Instagram. In 2011, more than 150 million images were uploaded to the platform in less than a year by more than 8 million users. Popular t-shirt company Threadless is a great insta-success story, recently passing 70,000 followers, some of whom submit their own designs.

One big drawback: Instagram is still not available for Android, and the application doesn't integrate with Facebook brand pages. What it does do is make your pictures look good – really good. For me, Instagram feels like a safe space, where I can sift through gorgeous real-time photo updates from friends, family and my favorite shoe company, all in one place.

4. Tout

Brands use Tout to create real-time, 15-second video status updates captured from Apple and Android smartphones, and then distributed through social networks. Instant video sharing is on the rise as more and more consumers use smartphones. Tout offers integration across multiple platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, and does include analytics. It's essentially video Twitter.

Brands that want to utilize creative ways to showcase new products or services, make announcements, give a behind-the-scenes look, or "tout out" to show appreciation for fans or staff may want to experiment with this platform. You might remember when Shaquille O'Neal famously announced his retirement from basketball via Tout. Similar to Instagram, brands without a decent following shouldn't start with Tout first, but add it on to their existing social strategy.

Tout is still in its toddler stage, asking for suggestions from its community to help drive the product road map for the platform. Perhaps you can help navigate how Tout would best suit your brand.

I also think Tout requires client management, and doesn't really work in the B2B space. You can't share Tout directly from your smartphone to YouTube, only to Twitter, Facebook and email. You can cut YouTube videos down and then upload your favorite 15-seconds to Tout.

No matter what platform you choose, if you're providing springboards for spontaneity around your brand, you generate a more transparent, empowering and compelling message for the audience — one that can help build and strengthen communities at a rapid pace with the snap of a camera, Pin or click.

Understanding and developing a strategy around these tools gives your brand control over the real-time moments that today’s connected generation craves. After the midnight toast, it's time to Pin, Tumble and Tout.

Image courtesy of Flickr, libraryman

More About: contributor, features, Instablogs, instagram, Marketing, pinterest, real-time, tout, tumblr

Facebook Sees Its First Live Theater Performance

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 04:43 PM PST


If Facebook can host presidential debates and Twitter can host live concerts, why can’t theater appear on social media?

Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater proved Facebook can be home to a live theater experience Monday, in what it calls Facebook’s first performance. Twitter saw its first performance last year with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s rendition of Romeo and Juliet.

The German theater’s performance of Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest premiered on the social network in a special adaptation for the “online Facebook stage,” Reuters reports.

“We were really pleased to try something new and innovative, and have learned a lot about how we can use the internet for our productions,” a spokesperson for the theater told Reuters, adding that the theater would consider using Facebook for future performances. “Facebook can’t replace the stage, but it offers some really interesting opportunities to perform theatre online.”

Status updates, shared photos and wall posts between characters were part of the interactive experience. Audience members voted for their favorite wedding dress option and contributed to a love letter exchanged between characters. Of course, there were periods during the show where Facebook chatter was discouraged. The performance narrator sent “silence in the theater, please,” messages, sort of like a virtual dimming of the lights.

SEE ALSO: Special Seats for Tweeting at Theaters: Annoyance or Enhancement?

The theater says some 1,200 people joined the Facebook group before stage admittance was closed (you can no longer gain admittance), but many others may have watched online during the production. A more traditional version of the production goes up this Saturday.

What do you think of this integration of social media into the arts? Have you seen other theaters innovating with social media?

More About: Arts, Facebook, theater, trending

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What’s Hot in Digital Entertainment at CES? [VIDEO]

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 04:20 PM PST


This CES Video is presented by Wendy’s, where $1 gets you more. Show what you can do with $1 on Facebook during the Wendy’s Value Challenge! No purchase necessary. Enter by 1/22/12. To enter and for Official Rules, visit www.facebook.com/wendys.


LAS VEGAS — Mashable Entertainment Editor Christina Warren spent some time at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show chatting with Tekzilla‘s Patrick Norton on the Revision3 stage.

Christina talked about how hard it is to get one of those fancy, giant TVs into a New York City apartment, why 3D technology may not be there yet, and she offers a special message to Justin Timberlake on his Myspace venture.

Click out the video above to watch. Also be sure to watch Mashable Editor in Chief Lance Ulanoff’s chat with Norton about other gadget highlights from the show.

Highlights From CES: Swivl Robotic Cameraman Keeps You Framed Up Wherever You Roam | Pioneer AR Heads Up Display Augments Your Driving Reality | Parrot Zik: Best Bluetooth Headphones Ever?

Series presented by Wendy’s

This CES Video is presented by Wendy’s, where $1 gets you more. Show what you can do with $1 on Facebook during the Wendy’s Value Challenge! No purchase necessary. Enter by 1/22/12. To enter and for Official Rules, visit www.facebook.com/wendys.

More About: CES, CES 2012, christina warren

Privacy Watchdog Complains to FTC: Google’s Social Search is Unfair

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 03:59 PM PST


Twitter isn’t the only party that thinks merging Google+ with Google search results is an abuse of its monopoly power in search.

Privacy watchdog EPIC filed a complaint with the FTC on Thursday, saying that Google is using its search engine to create an unfair advantage for its social network. The report says Google is highlighting results from Google+ at the expense of pages that might be more relevant.

“For example,” EPIC executive director Marc Rotenberg wrote in a letter to the FTC, “the right-hand display of notable business and Google+ users replaces highly-visible advertising space, even for consumers who have no Google+ accounts and are not logged in to Google.”

The letter cites research by Harvard Business School professor Benjamin Edelman, who has found more than a dozen Google services receiving favored placement in Google search results.

“Some have developed into solid products with loyal users,” Edelman wrote in a blog post. “Others are far weaker. But each enjoys a level of favored placement in Google search results that other services can only dream of.”

When Google announced changes to its search engine on Tuesday, Twitter issued a statement calling them “bad for people.” Twitter general counsel Alex Macgillivray tweeted an example of a page he felt demonstrated the new system’s inefficiency. The page showed Google search results for the search term “@WWE” that didn’t even include the organization’s Twitter page.

These results were different than those returned since November, because they included a list of Google+ pages related to @WWE in a right-hand column. Because Google doesn’t index the “@” symbol, they are the same results that “WWE” would return.

About 24,900 people have +1ed or added WWE to their circles on Google+ — but 792,642 people follow WWE on Twitter. Macgillivray’s point: that the WWE’s Twitter page is a more relevant social source than its Google page and should be represented as such in Google’s search results.

Twitter ranks higher than Google+ for the WWE in Yahoo, AOL and Bing results.

More About: epic, FTC, Google, trending, Twitter

I Can Has Cheezburger Turns 5, Plans to Go Black to Protest SOPA

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 03:34 PM PST

I Can Has Cheezburger Anniversary

Exactly 14,683 “lolz” after launching in 2007, I Can Has Cheezburger is celebrating its fifth anniversary this week, just before all Cheezburger sites will go black Jan. 18 to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

The humor website features the lolcat meme — photographs of cats with text placed on top of them (see the one I created on the right).

Cheezburger and the more than 50 sister sites it has spawned or acquired such as FAIL Blog, Know Your Meme, Memebase and The Daily What will be shut down for a period of time next week, according to a tweet from Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh.

A handful of other popular sites reportedly will go black Wednesday. Reddit, for example, also plans to participate in the blackout from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. to fight SOPA, which if passed would create a "blacklist" of websites that infringe on copyrights.

SEE ALSO: Nuke the Net — How to Get the Mainstream Talking About the Dangers of SOPA

Cheezburger is ringing in its birthday with a collection of staff members’ favorite lolz.

“Reaching our fifth anniversary means that we’re not just seen as a cat website company,” Cheezburger editor in chief Emily Huh told Mashable. “It’s amazing to see that for five years, we have been a humor destination for people around the world and people continue to make Cheezburger a daily place to visit.”

Huh says the things she remembers most are the cards, comments and emails Cheezburger receives from fans revealing that the site has helped them through difficult phases in their lives or brought them closer to relatives and friends.

So what’s next? “We’re always thinking of new sites to share with our users, and we’re building up our playground where users can create and share their own sense of humor with others,” Huh says.

SEE ALSO: Cheezburger Launches 'Meme Animals' Site | What Saved Cheezburger CEO’s Life?

One newer project is Cheezburger Sites, which is beta and allows people to create their own website using existing content from Cheezburger. For example, users have created sites for the Pepper Spray Cop incident, Ocean Marketing fiasco and Meme Dates.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, 101cats; text by Brian Anthony Hernandez

More About: I Can Has Cheezeburger, lolcats, memes, News, trending

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Meme Machine: 5 Hilarious Viral Topics Trending Right Now

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 03:06 PM PST


The Mashable Meme Machine is a daily look at five hilarious viral topics spreading across the web right now.

The Internet can be a really stupid thing sometimes. Technology has made it easier for us to function as a society, but that doesn’t mean you can cheat the system. Today’s roundup goes out to those of you who Google your homework answers, use your smartphone to settle a debate or make fun of those who don’t understand basic Internet protocols.

What’s on the plate today? The meme machine is spewing out World Wide Web n00bs, dancing with the Disney stars and questionable historic events. Bon appétit.

Got a tip for us? Feel free to contact Brian Anthony Hernandez (@BAHjournalist), Christine Erickson (@christerickson) or Lauren Hockenson (@lhockenson).


1. Why I Love and Hate Having a Smartphone




Comic site The Oatmeal never fails to make me laugh, and if this first illustration doesn't depict your life with a smartphone, there are 11 others that probably do. It is truly a hate-love relationship.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: comic, Entertainment, features, internet, Meme Machine, tumblr, Twitter

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Can Siri Control Your Home? [VIDEO]

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 02:53 PM PST

A small company in Arkansas is showing an unexpected side to Apple’s voice-based intelligent assistant Siri. This YouTube video shows various home appliances being controlled via voice command on the iPhone 4S, from adjusting the thermostat and light dimmers to turning on Blu-Ray DVD players.

Little Rock-based Carnes Audio, which custom installs home automation systems, created its own promotional video of Siri communicating with household technologies. For example, the demo shows Siri dimming the lights to 50% and setting the thermostat to 70 degrees after she was told to do so.

For most users, Siri is only able to control iPhone functionality. But the company uses Creston AMS-AIP home automation equipment and an intermediary proxy server to take control.

SEE ALSO: A Refrigerator That Helps You Diet? LG Unveils High-Tech Smart Appliances

"We posted the video to show the capabilities of what our company can do in terms of home automation, and we have since had a lot of interest from companies and individuals about integrating this type of Siri-controlled technology into their own spaces,” Matthew Carnes, audio engineer at Carnes Audio, told Mashable.

Carnes said the company will be rolling out these services to those that are interested in the future. “We are moving toward connected living in the home and workspace,” Carnes said. “There will come a day when many devices in your house have an IP address and sits on your home network. If there's electricity that flows through it, there's a good chance we can control it.”

Do you think we will be talking to appliances in the home in the future? Which one would you most like to control? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

More About: apple, blu-ray, home appliances, iphone, iPhone 4S, siri

Nuke the Net: How to Get the Mainstream Talking About the Dangers of SOPA

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 02:29 PM PST

Nuke the Net Image

Mashable OP-ED: This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of Mashable as a publication.

If you’re like most Mashable readers, you know plenty about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its sister bill in the Senate, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). And you’re probably plenty outraged about it, too. And rightfully so.

If enacted, SOPA/PIPA could have disastrous consequences for the basic infrastructure of the Internet. It would afford the Federal government and copyright holders excessive and far-reaching powers to take down sites they deem to be hosting protected content with little regard for the definition of “hosting.”

If a user of a news site leaves a comment with offending material, that could be grounds for a takedown. And YouTube could be in hot water should it fail to promptly detect a user who uploads copyrighted material. The same problem exists for all community-based websites, which, let’s face it, are the vast majority of our favorite sites.

It’s the punitive actions which SOPA/PIPA call for that are the most troubling aspect of the bills. They take an offending website off the Domain Name System (DNS), a sort of phone book for the Internet. For more on DNS, watch this excellent explainer video posted on The Guardian. By interfering with DNS, the bill could destabilize the foundation of the Internet. And dedicated pirates would find work-arounds.

Two Different Media Conversations

If you agree with my anti-SOPA stance, then let me assure you, we are in good company. We stand alongside the likes of Google, Facebook, AOL, Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla and a host of other giants in the tech industry.

But there’s work to be done. We know plenty about SOPA/PIPA because we’re so active on websites and online communities that are paying attention to the issue.

But what about the rest of America? What about your parents, your mailman and your co-workers? They may use the Internet as much as we do, but in very different capacities.

We sometimes think SOPA/PIPA has been part of the national dialogue for months, but it hasn’t. It’s only been a part of the dialogue in niche networks, communities and media sites.

Simply put, it’s not a mainstream issue yet. But it deserves to be.

If SOPA/PIPA are passed, it wouldn’t just mean disaster for us. It could severely disrupt the services that casual Internet users enjoy as well. And they represent a much larger swath of America. If we want to fight SOPA/PIPA, we need to educate and inform those casual users as best we can.

So far, mainstream media have been largely silent on the twin Internet killers.

And our elected officials in Congress? Most don’t understand the complexity of the Internet. Rep. Mel Watts (D-NC) said during a markup session that he "didn't understand a lot of the technological stuff,” and that he’s “not the person to argue about the technology part of this." Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said that it’s time to “bring in the nerds” – which Congress is thankfully doing.

It all echoes the late Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens’ remark that the Internet is a “series of tubes.”

Suggestions and amendments proposed by the seemingly few Congressman who do understand the Internet, like Colorado Rep. Jared Polis (an Internet entrepreneur), have sadly been getting shot down by their less-knowledgeable peers.

The Power of the Big Three

So how can the issues surrounding SOPA and PIPA reach the national discourse?

Some sites, including Reddit, Tumblr, Mozilla and others, have already censored parts of their websites in protest of the bills. Reddit is going a step further and replacing their normal website with an anti-SOPA message for a full 12 hours in late January.

SEE ALSO: Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh Says His 50-Plus Websites Will Go Black to Protest SOPA

That’s a good start, but there’s a problem with that approach. Those sites are most often visited by people like you and me, who are already in the know about SOPA/PIPA. We need massive, coordinated action on sites that casual Internet users visit.

Facebook, Google and Wikipedia. You’re the Big Three in this fight. You’ve already publicly affirmed your opposition to SOPA. Now it’s time to really be a part of the fight.

If you go dark for even a few hours, everyone will take notice — Internet aficionados and casual users alike. The effect would be increased exponentially if you coordinated the effort. And what’s there to lose? Some ad revenue? If you really believe what you’ve written about SOPA, that’s nothing compared to the consequences the bill could have. Consider any lost revenue your charitable donation to the cause, because the other side has some seriously big money behind it. You’re the dominant players in your field, and you won’t lose users over such a campaign.

Go dark. Shut down your sites. Leave a message about SOPA/PIPA, link out to more information and let people know what they can do to fight the bills.

Imagine a casual Internet user who hops on Facebook in the morning to browse his News Feed. On blackout day, he’ll see something radically different. And he’ll instantly take notice. He’ll start talking to friends, family and co-workers.

“Did you see what Google did?” asks one to another. “Yeah, Facebook too. It was about some bill in Congress,” responds the other. And the conversation begins.

Once public interest starts to mount, understanding will follow. The outrage that feels commonplace amongst Internet natives will spread to casual users and public pressure will build, forcing Congress to take a second, much deeper, look at SOPA/PIPA.

Should these companies be unable to stomach even a short outage, a prominent banner at the top of each website would probably suffice. But that wouldn’t nearly have the same impact.

You need to pull out the big guns in this fight. The Internet is an incredible thing and the online community powerful when it unites around an issue. But this issue needs to enter the mainstream. And blacking out the Big Three are the way to do just that.

More About: congress, Facebook, features, Google, law, Opinion, SOPA, Tech, trending, wikipedia

Enter the Google Maps Labyrinth [VIDEO]

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 02:22 PM PST



Google Maps gets the low-tech treatment in a new ad that imagines the app as the classic Labyrinth game.

The online video spot, the first for Google from San Francisco ad agency Venables Bell & Partners, uses a wooden gyroscopic structure to help two players navigate a blue ball. The camera follows the ball as it discovers restaurants, checks into a barbershop and then, finally, goes bowling.

The video was timed to coincide with CES and highlights capabilities on Google Maps like indoor maps, the ability to rate restaurants, create custom maps in Mapmaker and view traffic. A very similar animated video created by another agency, B-Reel, is designed to promote a game for Google Maps that’s expected to hit Google+ Games next month.

Google appears to have a soft spot for the concept of rendering its products in analog form. Early ads for the company’s Chrome browser took a similar approach. In the ad featured below, for instance, cardboard webpages are changed using a metal cylinder, activated by the swing of a hammer.


More About: Advertising, Google, Google Maps, Marketing, videos

Use an Alias, Leave Better Comments [STUDY]

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 02:06 PM PST


Commenters who use pseudonyms tend to offer better comments, a study Disqus suggests.

The study, drawn from commenting platform Disqus’s 60 million-plus user base and nearly half a billion comments, finds that pseudonymous users — that is, those who use an alias on Disqus rather than identify themselves via Facebook, or log in anonymously — tend to leave both a greater quantity and quality of comments.

Quality was determined by the frequency with which comments were liked, flagged, marked as spam, deleted and responded to.

On average, commenters using an alias contributed 4.7 times more often than commenters identified by Facebook, and 6.5 times more often than anonymous commenters.

Pseudonymous comments also tend to elicit positive reactions (61%) — i.e. likes and/or responses — compared to Facebook-identified users (51%). Not surprisingly, anonymous commenters tend to be the worst. Of the comments analyzed in the study, only 34% were deemed “positive,” while 55% were deemed neutral and another 11% marked negative.

It’s necessary to approach the findings with some reservations, however. Some of Disqus’s data is presented in a way to promote its own system over Facebook’s third-party commenting plugin, which has quickly gained traction among some 400,000 third-party publishers to date. At the end of its infographic on the study, for instance, Disqus points out that pseudonymous commenters account for 61% of all comments, without noting the percentage of such commenters versus those using their (presumably true) Facebook identities.

That said, there’s plenty of evidence to support Disqus’s findings — Reddit’s and Gawker‘s comments sections being prime examples.

[via Fred Wilson's blog, A VC.]

More About: commenting, disqus, Facebook, identity, Media

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3 Major Concerns for Brands Over ICANN’s New Domain Registry Options

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 01:39 PM PST


Jeff Ernst is a principal analyst at Forrester Research, serving CMOs and marketing leaders.

One thing's for sure: ICANN's gTLD program is a game-changer. The introduction of new .brand and .category gTLDs represents the biggest change to the Internet naming system since, well, since we've had websites.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opens the application window today, Jan. 12, and will run registration through Apr. 12, so company leaders need to decide whether they'll apply, at a cost of $185,000 per generic top-level domain (gTLD), plus application and infrastructure costs that could dwarf that.

But that's where the certainty ends. I've advised over 50 companies not to look at this defensively, but to evaluate the strategic opportunities made available by owning a registry. Some see this as the greatest opportunity to take control of their online identities. Others have heard the opposition from organizations like the Association of National Advertisers, and predict disastrous consequences if this program is implemented. Most are just confused.

Where's the truth? Well, let's look at a few of the biggest questions and concerns that brand owners have raised, and predict the most likely scenarios for how they will play out.

1. Concern: If I Don't Apply, Someone Else Can Get My Brand Name.

This is true. ICANN has procedures to protect trademark holders from infringement, but the process doesn't guarantee that another organization can't get your string. If you don't apply, the onus is on you to review the applications on the ICANN site after the window closes to see if anyone has applied for a string that is or contains your name. Assuming you have legal rights to the name, you can file a legal rights objection.

The court will consider certain factors that will be open for interpretation, but I believe that:

  • If you have trademark rights to your name and the organization applying for your name does not, you will prevail in an objection and prevent the other applicant from winning your string.
  • If the applicant has trademark rights for the same term in another sector, you'll need to prove that the applicant's intended use of the gTLD will cause harm to your brand, which will be difficult to do and you likely won't prevail. Let's say Delta Airlines and Delta Faucet hold similar marks on Delta within their industries. If only one applies for .delta, the other would have a hard time proving harm.

2. Concern: I’ll Have to Spend Millions to Defend My Brands from Cybersquatters.

This one doesn't add up. I don't see a huge risk of cybersquatting on top-level domains, or on second-level domains within the new TLDs because:

  • Cybersquatters won't vie for top-level domains. A cybersquatter with no trademark rights would be absolutely foolish to apply for your brand name, because the probability of being awarded the gTLD is next to zero. The perpetrator would have to go through the extensive process of completing the application, in which they describe in detail how they intend to use the registry, prevail against any objections, and pass all of ICANN's technical and financial requirements. Also, there is no secondary market for gTLDs, so a cybersquatter would have no way to extort money out of you to buy it from them.
  • Rights holders have first crack at second-level domains. Each new gTLD is required to have a "sunrise period," which provides trademark and brand holders the first rights to register their brands as a second-level domain within the gTLD before it opens to general registration. Brand owners need to evaluate the new gTLDs and determine which ones they want to be part of, which ones they want to prevent others from registering, and which don't matter.

3. Concern: If I Apply for My .Brand, am I Guaranteed to Get It?

No. Several situations could arise, which must be factored into the decision to apply and manage properly.

  • A non-applicant could object to your application. Just like you can file a legal rights objection, another company can claim that your gTLD string infringes on its trademark.
  • Another company could apply for the same or similar string. The more generic your brand or company name, the more likely that you could also face competition for your .brand string or a similar term. When this happens, ICANN first gives the parties an opportunity to work out a resolution on their own, which we don't expect to happen, and then it will go to auction.

If you expect to ever own your domain name, then the best chance of that happening is to apply now. So, put the business case together and prepare a strategic application. If you haven't identified any strategic opportunities for your firm in owning and operating a registry, then stay on the sidelines.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, PashaIgnatov

More About: contributor, Domain Names, features, gtld, ICANN, trending, URLs

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Foxconn Resolves ‘Mass Suicide’ Dispute With Workers

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 01:29 PM PST


After reports that some workers threatened to throw themselves off of a roof in protest of unfair treatment, the largest technology manufacturer in the world says it has solved the dispute.

Foxconn Technology said in a statement that the dispute involved about 150 workers and was resolved peacefully. Earlier reports had counted twice as many protesters.

Some of the workers involved in the protest told The New York Times they were angry about being moved from Foxconn’s largest campus in Shenzhen to the Wuhan, China factory, where the protest took place. After the move, they had received about a third of the salary they were promised. Another worker told The Times that several workers involved in the protest threatened to commit suicide if their demands weren’t met.

Details of the agreement Foxconn reached with these workers were not released, but a worker told the The Times he had received additional compensation. Forty-five of the protesters resigned.

Foxconn, which counts Apple, Dell and HP among its clients, entered the global spotlight after a string of its employees committed suicide in 2010. The suicides prompted pressure from the manufacturer’s clients to improve working conditions.

In June 2010, Apple sent its then-COO Tim Cook and a team of independent suicide prevention experts to review Foxconn’s factory in Shenzhen. According to an Apple report released in February 2011: “The investigation found that Foxconn's response [to the suicides] had definitely saved lives."

Despite this report, suicides have continued at Foxconn factories. Though the suicide rate among the company’s 800,000 workers is commensurate with that of the general population, the company has become a cornerstone for discussions about the true price of electronics.

How much responsibility do you think tech companies and consumers have to monitor working conditions where their products are manufactured? Let us know in the comments.

Graphic courtesy M.I.C. Gadget

More About: apple, Foxconn Technology

College Football Recruiting via Twitter? Check Out DirectSnap

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 01:20 PM PST


The bubble of American college football recruiting has few parallels in the sports universe. Millionaire coaches fervently woo teenage boys. Jobs, reputations and big-money contracts are on the line. Rabid fans pay for exclusive information from scouting services as the young players struggle to chart their futures.

It has practically morphed into a separate sport unto itself, and much of the fan action takes place on Twitter. There, “recruitniks” monitor the high schoolers’ feeds and then speculate, rumor-monger and gloat with other hardcore supporters.

Now, a group of Southern football fans has found a way to distill the madness in one place. Their site is called DirectSnap.com. It organizes and streams tweets mentioning the nation’s most-prized prospects into individual profile pages for each player as well as the teams recruiting them.

Here’s an example: A recruiting reporter tweets an unconfirmed rumor that a top quarterback prospect might be taking a last-minute visit to a powerhouse school. The rumor spreads across the Twittersphere. Minutes later, a random football-crazed student spots the recruit at a campus dining common eating with an assistant coach and tweets what he sees. The student’s message goes out to just a small number of followers, but both tweets go directly into the quarterback’s DirectSnap profile stream and to the diehard fans anticipating his final decision. Rumor confirmed.

“Before, you would have had no way to put those two pieces of data together,” Drew Roberts, one of DirectSnap’s three 28-year-old co-founders, told Mashable. “A lot of news breaks on Twitter before it hits the recruiting sites or even the message boards, so we want to go directly to that source and organize all of it.”

It’s a lot to organize. Last weekend, when the two top high school football All-America games were nationally televised, DirectSnap indexed more than 46,000 tweets in three days.

Many players commit to college teams only to change their minds at least once before being forced to sign a binding letter-of-intent late in their senior year. Much of the online interest comes from fans living and dying by the roller coaster of a players’ decision-making process.

“These are 16, 17 and 18-year-olds, so they change their minds all the time,” Roberts said.

On Thursday morning, when news broke that a 6-foot-7 260-pound offensive lineman had switched his college commitment from Louisiana State University to Auburn University in Alabama, the player’s DirectSnap profile filled with hundreds of tweets over the ensuing few hours.

Players’ DirectSnap profiles feature vital statistics such as height and weight, the colleges they are most commonly mentioned with and embedded highlight videos culled from YouTube. DirectSnap pulls rankings of the top 300 players in each year from the scouting sites that compile those lists.

Roberts and his co-founders launched the site on Dec. 28 and drew some 70,000 visitors in its first two weeks online. Roberts said that analytics show the site’s most avid users visiting multiple times per day to monitor progress and spending an average of 10 minutes on the site. But Roberts wants DirectSnap to have a wider appeal too.

“What we really try to do is also make it accessible for casual fans who can just go to a team to page to get a good glance at what players are getting talked about with regard to their team,” he said.

Roberts and his co-founders are funding DirectSnap themselves, in part using money from a popular college football blog called Saturday Down South that they started last summer. DirectSnap is monetized solely through on-site ads, although Roberts said that they would be interested in exploring partnerships with larger recruiting and sports sites as they gain more traction. They’re working on a DirectSnap mobile app and also plan to start a similar site for college basketball recruiting.

One lesson Roberts and company have learned since launch: Don’t include tweets from the recruits themselves. They experimented with that in an earlier stage, but found the streams bogged down by typical teenage tweets about girls, parties and homeroom. But, no matter; DirectSnap’s masses of football-mad Twitter users solve the problem for them.

“Anytime a recruit does something of actual importance to their decision process, the fans jump all over it,” Roberts said. “So everything important gets picked up by everyone else.”

Would you use a site like this? What do you think about the online craziness that surrounds college football recruiting? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, LUGO

More About: sports, Startups, trending, Twitter

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Google Science Fair 2012: Now More Global

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 01:10 PM PST

The second annual online Google Science Fair competition is getting even more global this year, allowing teenagers between 13 and 18 to submit entries in 13 languages for projects that could make a practical difference in the lives of a group or community.

Touted as the world's largest online science fair, the competition launched in 2011 and raked in more than 7,500 entries from over 90 countries. This year, Google will accept submissions in 13 languages – submissions were previously required to be in English. In addition, there will be 90 regional finalists: 30 each from the Americas, Europe/Middle East/Africa, and Asia Pacific. There is also a new "Science in Action" award for a project that addresses a social, environmental or health issue.

"It could be a new take on particle physics or game theory,” Google said on its event site. “It could be a cost-effective way to provide clean water to a remote community or maybe a project like reducing the carcinogenic properties of grilled chicken (that was one of last year's winning entries). It should definitely be inspired.”

SEE ALSO: The Teenage Winners of Google’s Global Science Fair

The Google Science Fair judging panel is made up of an international team of scientific experts from a wide range of fields, from biology, physics and chemistry to computer science.

Prizes include scholarships, a scientific trip to the Galapagos Islands and real-life work opportunities, such as CERN – a European organization for nuclear search – in Switzerland.

Submissions are being accepted on the site until Mar. 30. Regional finalists will be chosen in May and 15 finalists will be selected in June. The winners will be announced at Google’s headquarters on Jul. 23.

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Klout Founder Joe Fernandez Answers Your Questions [LIVE CHAT]

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 12:50 PM PST

Joe Fernandez is the founder and CEO of Klout. While his jaw was wired shut for nearly three months after surgery, Joe began to develop a deep fascination with the evolution of influence within the social web. The way individuals could instantly broadcast questions, opinions, and ideas to their trusted network sparked his curiosity. In 2008, Joe started Klout in an effort to help businesses understand this individual user impact by providing context around who a person influences and what topics they are particularly influential in. Klout is currently the standard for influence on the social web. Joe grew up in Las Vegas and attended University of Miami and Oxford University.

YEC Global is an international mentorship program of the Young Entrepreneur Council, an invite-only non-profit comprised of promising young entrepreneurs. Its goal is to promote and support young entrepreneurs around the world, as well as foster the thriving global entrepreneurial ecosystem by sending delegations to various countries around the world to lead in-person, peer-to-peer mentorship programs, creative sessions, panel discussions and business competitions. The program also offers one‐to‐two week internships at YEC-member owned companies.

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Indian Court to Facebook, Google: Censor Content or We Will Censor You

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 12:45 PM PST

india internet

The Delhi High Court has ordered Facebook India and Google India to find a way to remove objectionable content or the sites will face a blackout.

Justice Suresh Kait warned that if the Internet giants cannot monitor their content, India will follow China’s censorship lead.

“Like China, we will block all such websites,” Kait said Thursday, The Times of India reports.

But if Facebook and Google do tamper with content, it will be the same as if they had written it, according to Indian media outlet NDTV. Once the Internet heavyweights begin to interfere, they become legally responsible for content under the Indian Information Technology Act.

Mukul Rohatgi testified, on behalf of Google India, that the search giant cannot filter “obscene, objectionable and defamatory” content. He argued that neither the domestic branch Google India nor Google Inc., the holding company, are responsible for third parties’ content.

“No human interference is possible, and moreover, it can’t be feasible to check such incidents,” Rohatgi said. “Billions of people across the globe post their articles on the website. Yes, they may be defamatory, obscene, but cannot be checked.”

Do you think the Internet companies should try to devise a way to sort content to appease the Indian court? What do you think the Indian Government accomplishes by blocking Facebook and Google? Let us know in the comments.

BONUS: How the Internet Is Consumed in India


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Bing Overtakes Yahoo as the Number Two Search Engine [STUDY]

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 12:25 PM PST


Microsoft’s Bing overtook Yahoo in market share in December for the first time, making Bing the number two search engine next to Google, according to comScore.

The researcher found that Bing’s rise that month, to 15.1%, was due mostly to a 0.6% drop in Yahoo’s market share. The rankings come after Bing tied Yahoo in November.

Nevertheless, it’s cause for celebration among the team behind the three-year-old search engine at Microsoft, which powers Yahoo search. Last year at this time, Bing’s share was 12% vs. 16% for Yahoo. Bing’s growth is a reflection of Microsoft’s characteristic patience — the search engine has been a drag on earnings.

However, the numbers also evince Yahoo’s continuing decline. Once the number one search engine, Yahoo lost that ranking to Google in 2000. Over time, Google, which became Yahoo’s default search provider that year, became as well known as Yahoo. The two parted ways in 2004. Since that time, Yahoo has seen an erosion in market share in search and has failed in its bid to reverse its fortunes despite a steady stream of would-be turnaround CEOs. (PayPal’s Scott Thompson became the latest to fill that slot earlier this month.)

Both Bing and Yahoo are far behind Google, of course, which commanded 65.9% of the market in comScore’s latest survey. Google also grew 0.5% in December.

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Girl Scout’s Call for Cookie Boycott Goes Viral. Is It Hate Speech? [VIDEO]

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 12:13 PM PST

UPDATE: Shortly after this story was posted the video was made “private.” The number of views on YouTube jumped to 234,787 since we published this story.

In a recent video gaining traction on the web, a teenage Girl Scout calls for a boycott of their famous cookies after a 7-year-old transgendered girl was admitted into a Colorado Girl Scout troop. The 8-minute clip on YouTube has been viewed more than 134,000 times in a little more than 12 hours since it began circulating the web.

In the video, a Girl Scout identified by World News Daily as 14-year-old Taylor from Ventura County, Calif., claims the organization is “promoting the desires of a small handful of people”

“GSUSA and councils are focused on adult agendas that have nothing to do with helping girls,” she says in the video.

Supporters of transgender rights and the Girls Scouts’ inclusionary rules started Tweeting the hashtag #trans on Wednesday when the video began making rounds on the web. The clip was posted on Jan. 3 and had only 778 views on Wednesday. By early Thursday, the video had more than 135,000 views.

Girl Scouts has been a popular topic online for the past few days, but that might be in part because it’s cookie-selling season — and a new cookie, “Savannah Smiles”, was unveiled last Friday.

Many users took to Twitter to say they’re going to be buying more cookies this year in support of the Girl Scouts, and to protest the boycott.

Appearing to be reading from a script, the teen lists her complaints against the organization: Having biological boys in the Girl Scouts organization presents a safety hazard for girls. Money from cookies sales goes to the organization that promotes these issues, she says. At the end of the video, Taylor asks viewers to visit the website honestgirlscouts.com where a flyer stating the Girl Scouts of the USA promotes abortion and LGBT rights is available for download.

The teen recited a statement from the Girl Scouts of Colorado as quoted in the Baptist Press, “We accept all girls in kindergarten through 12th grade as members. If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”

Girls Scouts of Central California respond to the video on their Facebook page on Thursday and posted the link on Twitter.

“For 100 years, Girl Scouts has prided itself on being an inclusive organization serving girls from all walks of life,” Girl Scouts of the USA said in a statement given to Mashable.

“We handle cases involving transgender children on a case by case basis with a focus on ensuring the welfare and best interests of the child in question and the other girls in the troop as our highest priority.As a beloved American institution, the Girl Scout Cookie Program is a natural target for those seeking to draw attention to themselves or their cause.

“It’s important for everyone to know that nearly 100% of the proceeds from these sales stay in the local market and are used to fund programs for girls.”

YouTube removes videos that violate their Terms of Use, which includes the following rule:

“We encourage free speech and defend everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view. But we don’t permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity).”

Some viewers believe a recent Rick Perry campaign ad came close to hate speech, but the video was not taken down.

Do you think this video qualifies as hate speech — or is this teen exercising her First Amendment rights? What do you think about YouTube’s Terms of Use? Tell us in the comments.

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SOPA Sponsor Has a Copyright Violation of His Own

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 11:50 AM PST


The controversial SOPA bill is designed to combat online piracy and copyright violations. But now it turns out the bill’s author and main sponsor, Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, has some copyright problems of his own.

Vice’s Jamie Lee Curtis Taete did some investigative research into whether Smith’s own campaign site was copyright Kosher. The photographic agency which produced the images used on Smith’s current site told Taete it was “very difficult” for them to check if Smith has the rights to use those photos.

So Taete did some more digging, looking at older archived versions of Smith’s campaign website. One former version of the representative’s site used a picture of an idyllic backwoods scene which Taete traced to a photographer named DJ Schulte:

DJ Schulte said the photo was listed under Creative Commons and anyone could use it — provided they gave him due credit. But, according to Schulte, Smith’s campaign made no effort to do so anywhere on his site.

“I do not see anywhere on the screen capture that you have provided that the image was attributed to the source (me),” wrote Schulte on his Flickr page.

“So my conclusion would be that Lamar Smith’s organization did improperly use my image. So according to the SOPA bill, should it pass, maybe I could petition the court to take action against texansforlamarsmith.com.”

Rep. Smith’s campaign office was not immediately available for comment.

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke ; Flickr, DJ Schulte

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