websense

Heh, you’d think the SEC had enough bad publicity shot at it lately, what with the allegations that SEC staffers have been caught watching and searching for uh, ahem.. adult content on the web, during work hours, on government computers. But, that’s not the only interesting development at the SEC this week.

If you weren’t aware, the SEC is bringing a securities fraud action case against Goldman Sachs. Not entirely sure of the ins and outs (here’s a link to a guy who does), but it has made for an interesting week on the web!

A branch of the Obama campaign with a website linked to the White House – went to Google, purchased PPC for term Goldman Sachs SEC . On April 20th, the New York Post stated: “Internet surfers who entered ‘Goldman Sachs SEC’” as a search term, Goldman Sachs, Securities Exchange Commission, “were directed to the president’s campaign website via a sponsored link titled ‘Help Change Wall Street.’ The White House’s political arm paid for the keywords — but would not say how much.” Interesting to note that a guy who claimed to be from Google called in to Rush Limbaugh’s show and said that while he had to speak anonymously. He wanted to tell Rush’s listeners that the PPC term ‘Goldman Sachs SEC’ had indeed been purchased and that it held a certain budget and he was sure that if Rush could get his listeners to go and click the term, the budget for the term would be used up and the sponsored link to the Obama site would come down. He was right, the sponsored link was down by 2pm that afternoon. Of course it was back up later, but so was one right above it, purchased by Goldman Sachs. Note the screen shot I have included below:

I find it interesting to note that there is another sponsored link jumping on the bandwagon as of this weekend, making the most of the brewhaha – it’s for a book by a reporter from the Wall Street Journal.

Of course, the Obama Administration denies any sort of knowledge or cooperation with this whole PPC campaign, even though the link goes straight to an Obama Campaign site. Rush had lots to say about it on his show the other day, but just going on gut instinct, I’d say they knew exactly what they were doing, and folks, it’s illegal. Using propaganda to sway the American people is supposed to be against the law. You may disagree with me, you may think it’s perfectly okay for a campaign website connected to the White House to buy links so that the Americans using the web find more information on a particular subject get the Prez’s spin on it first. And maybe we should be grateful it’s a sponsored link – that way you know that what you are getting is spin. Politics, politicians and lawyers using the web to their own advantage is nothing new, and is only going to get worse.
What do you think? Is it okay for campaign funds, and a campaign website for the president to use PPC and other means to propagandize the American people? What’s your take?

YStark and TKG’s 1st Annual Battle of the Bags is going to be a great time – food from Pete’s Grill and Pizza, cornhole, and a little friendly competition for some cash prizes- doesn’t get much better!
The who, what, when and where:
Cornhole Tournament – 2 people per team
Saturday, May 15th – (rain date – June 19th)
11:30 a.m. – practice begins;
12:00 p.m. – 1st round begins
$50 bucks per team

Pete’s Grill & Pizza
401 Cherry Ave., NE, Canton

Register for this fun event!

Cornhole is a time honored tradition at TKG. Anyone will tell you I’m always up for a little friendly cornhole competition, and if that happens to include a little socializing and great food, I’m there! Come help us get summer started!

guest author: Megan Jeffery
Was there ever any doubt that women and social media would be a perfect fit? I mean, it’s like it was invented just for us, especially those of us who spend long hours yearning for some adult conversation.
Twitter, blogs, even message boards and forums offer women the chance to voice their opinions, seek advice, and gain information on any conceivable topic. Plus, we get to talk, and be heard!

I have often written about tribes forming around bloggers. A virtual community grows up around and defends a popular blog, topic, even a thread on a forum or Facebook. Women are natural networkers, community builders. It’s a no brainer that we would grab onto the opportunity offered by the web to expand our communities. Community used to mean those who lived and worked near one another. Now, the web has created an opportunity for us to be a part of a community with like minded people all over the globe. Within these communities people, especially women, often seek advice or recommendations on everything from child rearing to the type of washer they should purchase. Not too sound too domestic, but these are issues most women deal with, married or not, working outside the home or not.

While we’ve known and discussed the purchasing power of women on the web here many times, studies are finally being done that support the idea that women turn to social media when making a new purchase or financial decision. The annual Social Media study done by BlogHer, the extensive blogger network and the older but still very popular, iVillage community, for 2010 states that 3 out of 4 online women use some form (if not several) of social media. I actually think the number has to be even higher. How many women do you know who use the web, but don’t have a Facebook or Twitter? Even my mom has a Facebook account.

Being a part of a community is very important to most women. We rely on one another for support, advice and friendship. So many women spend much of their day shuffling between work, school, housework, children and so on, they don’t have a lot of time to socialize. The web offers the opportunity to communicate with other people who understand what you are going through. It also offers the opportunity to shop, make purchasing decisions, and balance your checkbook in the wee small hours.

One thing I found very interesting was that while Millenials (18-25 year olds) use social media, especially Facebook, it is the Generations X and Y (women 26 to 42) who rely on blogs second only to search for information. Millenials really aren’t into the blogs nearly as much, only 3-4% of them read blogs. Twitter is used more often by the Gens X and Y, but Millenials are gaining ground there. It’s interesting to me to see how the technology flows back and forth. Millenials (and some Gen Ys) were the first Facebook users, but Gens X and Y have caught on to that, but Millenials were much slower to embrace Twitter, and even slower to move on to blogs.

Business Wire has a great article that details much of the study done. I highly suggest you read it. I am betting, if you have a product for sale, you might want to learn how to market it to women.
Here is a link to the actual study: http://www.blogher.com/files/Social_Media_Matters_2010.pdf

A couple of buddies and I have a site dedicated to helping other Jeep and 4×4 enthusiasts find parts for their vehicles. It is a niche site, and we have found a lot of like minded folks on forums of Jeep clubs and whatnot. There are probably thousands of Jeep sites, and most of them have forums. I am sure some of these clubs also have Facebook pages, but a forum just works better for these folks. They have a private, password protected place to talk about their exploits. They don’t have to worry about privacy of Facebook someday taking ownership of any pictures they post. They can post their stories, photos, trip plans and questions without worrying that uninvited folks are going to read them. A Forum also fosters a sense of community, a more close knit community than the Facebook experience offers. There need to be rules in a forum, so make sure you lay those down, or read through them if you are visitor, otherwise you may get some arguments among users.

I think that a forum might work better than other forms of social media for a lot of different industries. I have said before, and I am sticking with the idea that social media is not for everyone, or every site. That being said, I think that if your business does not lend itself to Facebook and Twitter, a forum might work well, especially for a niche industry. One of our longstanding clients, Snyder’s Antique Auto has utilized a question and answer type of forum for years. It works well, their customers know they will have an expert answering their question, and the backlog of questions itself often provides the answer a user needed. I have a hard time imagining that the person who answers the questions on the site would have the same amount of interest and success on a Facebook page, especially since many of the customers are in an age bracket that just really has not embraced Facebook yet.

This forum theory was recently a post by Chris Crum over at WebProNews. Chris makes some interesting points about how forums can impact your business.

Obviously, I realize forums are nothing new. Far from it. Another small example of older, simpler technologies sometimes offering a “common sense” option.

Yeah, I’m sure they don’t, because it’s killing their bottom line and stealing their scoop on a constant basis, but can they do anything about it? I really don’t think they can. It’s the nature of the beast. If people are involved in a news worthy event, they are going to Tweet it, there’s no way to stop that now.

While they can’t stop the general public from Tweeting news stories, they have apparently made an amendment to their handbook requiring that reporters not scoop the wire. The handbook features a whole new section on “Reporting from the Internet and using social media”.

It’s understandable that they want to protect the business model, but they are going to have to focus on making the way they get news out faster and to a wider audience to compete with social media. Big stories will continue to be broken via social, but for the time being people will see the tweets, and then go in search of more information, probably to a ‘reliable’ news source, i.e. Reuters or Associated Press.

For more conversation on this topic, check out:
1. http://technorati.com/blogging/article/reuters-discourages-breaking-news-on-twitter/
2. http://www.sfnblog.com/ownership_and_regulations/2010/03/reuters_adds_social_media_rules_to_its_h.php
3.http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php/Reporting_from_the_internet

It’ll continue to be interesting to see how the traditional media outlets compete with the speed of social. There’s certainly a value in bringing reliability in terms of getting the facts straight.