#Computer Fraud & Abuse Act: New Boon for Criminal Lawyers

GWU Law Professor Orin Kerr's op-ed in today's NYT  "Should Faking a Name on Facebook Be a Felony?", and his take on how far the US Department of Justice wants to take this 1986 legislation is a must-read.

Unknown to most, that legislation has been quietly broadened over the years, and unless anyone raises a voice, its about to become a felony to write/post anything that "exceeds authorized access" to any computer, including writing/posting anything that's not true.

Sounds crazy? Well, the DOJ is planning to exploit the definition of "exceeds authorized access", the ubiquitous 'terms and conditions' that are part and parcel to the very tiny fine print displayed in every software application, and a condition to virtually every third party website, including social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Aggressively over-promoting the benefits of a soft drink?Are you doing the Alec-Bloviator-Baldwin thing, and stating on your Twitter account or FB page that "the barrista at Starbucks purposefully gave me bad service and didn't know what he was doing!"?  Boom: Potential 3 year jail sentence in a federal slammer.

Marcom 202: Fired CEO Don't Call Board Members #Doofuses"

Who can't resist reading about Carol Bartz? This is a gal that's been at the tiller of major corporations, and at the same time, drops f-bombs faster than a machine gun. When she gets fired from her latest gig as CEO of Yahoo!, what does she do? She calls the board members " a bunch of doofuses"..

If ever there was a lesson not to be learned about how to control the messaging from a global brand's corporate HQ corner offices, this one might even trump the lessons that should not have been learned from the countless HP stories over the past number of years.

1. Firing a CEO over the phone is a very bad idea.

2. Which means that Carol is right, the board of YHOO! is a bunch of doofuses. Hiring Carol to run this company was a doofus move in the first place, but firing this firebrand over the phone takes the cake.

3. If they had the common sense to bring in a crisis management expert before someone was allowed to call Carol, one that would have also been fluent with marketing communication best practices, and who would have known how to pre-empt PR disasters like the one that happened today, 2 billion fewer people would have found out how munch of a doofus they are. 

#SocialMedia Sites Fail To Stir Conversions

On the heels of warning about government clampdowns on social media sites, lo and behold, research shop Outbrain issued a report that indicates social media sites trail far behind search engines when it comes to delivering traffic to websites and content sources. What does this mean? Read the report!


2011 Q2 Outbrain Content Discovery Report

#Flashmobs: US Regulators Eye #Clampdown on #Social Media; Twitter, FB and Others to be curtailed?

Social media apps, and the companies that promote them are more than likely to face heightened scrutiny, if not outright clamp downs from US regulators as the Flashmob Epidemic moves from the Mid East to the UK, and now inciting violence across the US.

You read it here first: Cellphone carriers will undoubtedly be included in a new wave of government actions intended to prevent unruly and violent mobs from gathering and wreaking havoc.

Sure, were it not for social media apps, Mark Zuckerberg wouldn't have become a zillionaire, countless VC's wouldn't have been resuscitated in the latest investment industry frenzy, and the "Arab Spring" would have wilted before the first bud appeared.And Ashton Kutcher, the guy with the largest following on Twitter, might not have replaced Charlie Sheen on that TV show 2 1/2 Men.

Yes, we love social media for creating billions of dollars of wealth, and helping to create jobs for thousands of marketers and ad sales people. Not to mention the jolt its provided for a bunch of staggering brands. It would seem to be a good thing that a bunch of dictator regimes have fallen, all thanks to social media, but into the hands of who? Liberal or altruistic democrats? Hardly. The founders of Facebook and Twitter, cheered on by the likes of Anderson Cooper might want to think that their social media tools should be credited with inciting movements not seen since Mahatma Gandi, but the facts tell a different story so far.

Sure, we can blame the spreading civil unrest on challenging economic times, and we can blame that on inept politicians and corrupt government officials that seem to care only about their largest campaign donors or the private sector lobbyists holding out job offers that are conditioned on legislation or regulation that delivers bigger profits and bonuses to corporate titans.

But record unemployment and the growing chasm between haves and have nots ain't going to be solved by the type of social-media inspired violent outbreaks that we're seeing in the UK, and now in the US. These are destructive events being led by youth-centric anarchists wielding social-media powered cellphones; the new tools of the social disruption trade.

"What about freedom of speech? Or what happened our right to our right to congregate?.." you might ask. This blogger respectfully suggests that when all of the other constitutional rights, not to mention public safety, are being threatened by gangs of unruly mobsters [many of whom have been living on the government teet simply because its easier than working] --and intent on re-creating scenes from Mad Max and the Thunderdome, then the weapons they're using need to be taken away.

If that means Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare or the other less ubiquitous names in the space should be subjected to new rules that prevent instantaneous broadcast of  messages that inspire unruly mobs to gather and wreak mayhem, or if it means I can't update my LinkedIn, or broadcast a txt msg to more than 4 peeps at the same time via my Verizon-powered cell phone in order to promote a brand that's hired me to raise awareness for their new bikini wax, or if means the value of the shares that I bought in FourSquare on the SecondMarket platform is going to crater, then  I'm all in favor of Big Brother clamping down. I can easily sell my shares tomorrow.

What? You'd rather have a bunch of under-employed teens throwing a brick through your store front window for the fun of it? Or, maybe its ok with you when 20 unruly twenty-somethings get a Twitter message to show up on your street and turn over your car and light it on fire while your infant is in the back sit?

Something is clearly awry when widgets created by wonkers-turned-billionaires are turning the world literally upside down. To the Zuckerberg's of the world, and the other Gen Z geniuses: you need to take a time out if you truly believe that power is in the hands of the beholder and can be exploited without consideration for the impact on public welfare. Otherwise, you should get yourself prepared for a serious spanking.
Yes..I said it and now I feel better.

Website Offering #Prizes to #Critique Ads

Interesting article, albeit it remains to be seen whether the responders are providing material feedback..But, heck! I'm happy to score a $300 prize for critiquing an ad..oh..you need all of my personal data, too? mmmmm...

Loffles, a new Web site where users choose from a selection of prizes, watch a commercial in order to be entered to win that prize, then answer two or three questions to confirm that they viewed the commercial. So far she has won Michael Kors sunglasses (valued at $317), an Oster electric wine bottle opener ($24) and a gift certificate to The Cheesecake Factory ($50).
Since Loffles began on June 27, more than 3,400 users have registered on the site, providing their age, sex and areas of interest, information advertisers in turn use to determine who sees their ads. Users, who may enter a contest for a prize as many times as they are willing to watch additional ads, spend an average of about 16 minutes a day perusing prizes and watching commercials on the site.
About 60 percent of users are male and 40 percent female, while the average age is 24.
Click this link for the NYT article.

You might want to #short stocks, but not #Social Media

The Value of #PR. Can it be measured? What to pay for publicity?

Kudos to Carl Bialik at the WSJ for opening the can of worms that many within the "public relations" industry would like to keep closed, particularly those that pitch AVEs (Advertising Value Equivalents) as the metric by which they charge for their services...
Here's the thesis:

For decades, many publicists have translated clients' news coverage into dollar figures, with a simple rule of thumb: A newspaper article is worth as much as a newspaper ad of the same size. Similarly, 30 seconds of television news coverage is seen as comparable to a 30-second ad. 

Some public-relations specialists, reasoning that news coverage carries greater weight with consumers than paid advertising, put a news article's value at three times an equivalent-size ad.

But other public-relations professionals and academics have railed against making these calculations. Publicity, they say, has different goals than advertising and shouldn't be measured in the same way.

This blogger would argue that putting a definitive monetary value on a blurb is bombastic, BUT, the PR hack's job is to get the client as many mentions as possible, whether in major newspaper stories, radio, TV or attributions in blogs. For those that favor a flat tax, maybe there should be a flat fee, or a fee scale that's based on number of third-party mentions, and the scale is limited to media sectors?

What sayeth you? Let us know!

Branding & PR: Not Just For #Gamers

Here's a new PR twist: that's gaining traction: tell customer's you'll throw them out if they txt or use their cell phones while in your establishment. The operator that's pushing this envelope has got my vote on the message, the delivery, and the application! Click here for NYT coverage

Here's a "duh" idea that leads one to ask "Why didn't your marketing/branding wizard think of this idea? He did?! Then why hasn't he implemented anything yet??.. Got you guessing? Good.
Now click on this article from today's WSJ
 

#GameChanger:#ICANN's Plan To Profit By Extension:The Bubble That Keeps On Floatin'

In what can only be viewed as a "profit by extension" scheme by ICANN, the Internet Central Bank and World Congress of the Internet combined, today's game changing announcement to open up the extension market, which is currently capped at 22 suffixes (e.g. .com, .net., .biz, .org, .edu, .mil, and 17 others) and allowing the registration of privately-owned extensions for a mere entry price of $185,000 per extension is going to make millions for fast movers with big check books.

Make no mistake; this is also a game changer for anybody (who's anybody) that's responsible for brand marketing, and anybody that has a vested interested in the World of SEO.

While ICANN had first started planning this idea over 10 years ago, today's formal approval to open up the flood gates and offer the ability to own and monetize customized extensions was no doubt bolstered by the terribly-in-vogue, "its all the rage and there's no supply!" pricing strategy currently being used by Wall Street and Silicon Valley bankers in the course of their touting social media IPOs; a period that will hereafter be remembered as 'The Bubble That Keeps on Floatin' "

Having once dallied up and down the lanes of big bank trading floors, this part-time VC, part-time blogger, part-time rainmaker is lovin the idea. While this post is not to be construed or considered to be a solicitation to sell shares or solicit investment from institutional or individual investors, if you want information on a new private fund that will be focused on leading the land-grabbing gold rush by securing sought-after search phrase names, then executing a "profit by extension"  plan with the goal of making 10x-20x return on invested capital--contact us.

And no; our plan isn't driven by a blue ocean strategy; in this case, the size of the ocean went from being the size of a puddle to the size of the Mediterranean Sea. The opportunity to profit has gotten that much bigger for those that are willing to sit at the $185,000 per card table.  Chump change maybe, and its more than likely you'll very soon be reading about tens of millions being raised by hedge funds and Wall Street shops to back similar ideas.

That's fine; if today's social media IPO market is any indication, the ones that get to the gate first and accumulate the value properties the fastest can make 50x on their money in under 5 years. This isn't a pernicious prediction, this will be happening. As the notorious parody author of one the blogosphere's more pugnacious sites likes to say: Trust me.

No Joke: #MarthaStewart Goes Comic; #FlashSale: The New #MarcomStrategy

Comic Book format for story-telling (i.e. product/service selling), a marketing strategy that we profiled two years ago and revisited last week when Steve Jobs announced his new bio will be in comic format, is gaining traction--as evidenced by Martha Stewart's announcement that her bio will be published in a similar comic-centric format.
 "A visual medium provides perspective that is not only accessible but more relatable to the average person without losing any of the information involved." 
Don't say that we didn't tell you so.


As long as we're on the topic of trendy marcom strategies, for all of you PR 'gurus' and marketing geniuses that get paid for positioning creative branding strategies for your clients, you should know that aligning your clients with "flash sale" sites (the ones that offer steep discounts for products only if you act "now") isn't so much a sales strategy as it is a branding and marketing strategy.

Most brands have long lamented the down-sides of using juicy on-line promo coupons to bring in customers; the subsequent sales from these strategies are considered to be momentary blips, and for many merchants, these campaigns prove to be more aggravation than they might be worth.

That said, and as profiled in today's NYT , brands are discovering that flash sale campaigns have become something else: a way to advertise and find new customers, many of whom visit the sites of the brands and buy full-price merchandise soon after the sales.