Jim Kohm, Associate Director of the Enforcement Division of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, testified that the FTC supports the proposed Guarantee of a Legitimate Deal Act, which would strengthen the FTC’s ability to protect financially stressed consumers.

According to the testimony, the FTC has seen an increase in complaints from consumers selling gold jewelry, watches and other precious metals online. People are complaining that some online jewelry buyers provide a price quote only when asked.  In some cases, people mail in their items and receive payment only after buyers have melted their items, leaving dissatisfied consumers with limited options.

The proposed legislation would make sure that consumers have a chance to consider and reject a specific offer to buy their precious metals before an online purchaser melts or resells the items.

It also would require businesses that offer to buy consumers’ jewelry or precious metals to insure items they ship back to consumers who decline their offers. In addition, the measure would give the FTC the authority to seek civil penalties, which would serve as a deterrent and make it easier for the agency to take action against buyers who violate the law.
 

Does Open License Mean Open Season?

Slashdot blew the whistle on John Wiley and Sons (Wiley) and author George Orwel (note the one "L") for publishing a Wikipedia article on the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. The article appeared without attribution in Orwel’s Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors as though they were Orwel’s words, and not the collective writers of the article on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia contributor "Ydorb," who prefers to remain anonymous, says he wrote much, but not all, of the text that appeared in Black Gold, and provides a side-by-side comparison at Wikipedia. Ydorb says he was informed of the situation via another contributor who had read the book, prompting him to put together the comparison page.

In response to a WebProNews inquiry, Wiley’s Susan Spilka issued the following statement:

"In Black Gold by George Orwel, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., published a credentialed author and a thoroughly-sourced book.  However, it appears that a specific passage from Wikipedia was inadvertently added by our author to the text without attribution. George Orwel has assured us this was not intentional and has asked that we rectify the situation. Wiley will provide corrections to all future reprints of this book and make the changes to the ebook version.

"We take this situation very seriously.  We earn our readers’ trust by producing quality works by reputable authors.   On rare occasions, mistakes happen.  When they happen, we appreciate being alerted and do what is necessary to rectify any problems."

While it appears that Wiley will be doing just that, the incident brings up some important issues regarding open licenses used for collaborative works, including software, on the Internet. Because of the terms of the licensing agreement and the nature of the work, Ydorb and other contributors may have had no other recourse aside from media coverage.

Like much open source software, Wikipedia content is licensed under GNU Free Documentation License, also known as "copyleft." This type of licensing says that content can be reused or repurposed verbatim, either commercially or non-commercially "so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement)."

But what if the attribution requirement is not met? Who will pursue the matter of infringement?

 Wikipedia says not them. Though the staff at the Wikimedia Foundation found the situation "frustrating," spokespersons agreed the company "doesn’t really take any position on this. It is not the copyright holder, the individuals who wrote the article in question are. They have licensed their contributions to the Foundation to get them into Wikipedia.

"Realistically all these folks can do if they feel aggrieved is appeal to public opinion via the media, it is expensive to pursue a copyright infringement case, and for material under GFDL the process would not be to extract money from the plagiarist, but to make them release their work under a compatible license."

And then there’s the problem of multiple anonymous contributors. "That it’s been edited raises very big factual questions," Technology and Marketing Law blogger Eric Goldman tells WebProNews. "Who did what to whom?" And because it’s under an open license, "it’s a little hard to object if somebody actually takes it."

At least in the case of the Khobar Towers article, it is clear that non-attribution is cause for infringement of the license. But there’s nobody willing to pursue the case, and if attribution is made eventually, it becomes a sort of no-harm-no-foul situation.

"This is a really great example of some of the problems with taking content off the Internet," says Goldman. "The publisher may not realize they’re giving their stuff away."
    

Session Description: "Never has there been a medium in which marketing and advertising could be so closely measured (or manipulated). Some advertisers are entering the world of social media on tiptoes, hoping to retain control in an era of no control; others are intent on jumping into the deep end to see what happens; many are looking for the right mix in between the two extremes."

Panelists:

Jimmy Guterman, Editorial Producer, EconSM
Simon Assaad, Co-CEO, Heavy.com
John Battelle, Chairman, Federated Media
Shawn Gold, SVP, MySpace
Tina Sharkey, Chairman, BabyCenter
Rishad Tobaccowala, CIO, Publicis Group

My Take:

One thing became apparent during this panel: the existing (broken, vapid, disposable, push) world of marketing is still alive and kicking on places like MySpace, where it’s all about audience size and page views and the existing interruptive, advertising-driven marketing model. While the other members of the panel (outside the rep from MySpace) were saying the right things about conversation and customer connection, I came away from this panel feeling that the current scarcity of accepted metrics to show the results that are being achieved at the intersection of social media and marketing is hamstringing social media’s uptake on the customer-facing side of the enterprise.

Liveblogging notes:

Simon: Marketing needs to be conversational.

Battelle: "I think the reason we can’t measure things is that we haven’t tried. We are still using ‘panel based measurement’ for the internet. It works terribly for niche audiences. But when we get into marketing, we get into problems. How do you measure the value of a conversation with a customer we sell to once a year? What we need is experimentation and the willingness to try new things. It takes a lot of time. So far, no one has written an algorithm for conversations.

Guterman: In your own room, you put up your own pictures, and play your own music. On the internet, "your room" is MySpace. How do you advertise to people in their own room?

Shawn: When I talk to advertisers, I tell them you need to create a subnetwork that give people a sense of recognition and belonging. "There are a simple set of sociological guidelines to extend your value proposition in a social network."

Tina: Influence marketing is critical. Even a few people in an ecosystem can market on your behalf. (segue) With Live 8, AOL became the enabler. AOL wasn’t the concert, but it provided an interface that let the users create their own experience.

Rishad: In a world that is moving toward "no control," marketing still has control. Our clients need to sell millions of things, not five things. What are the incentives for marketers to change? What are the incentives for suppliers to change?

Guterman: The new marketing conversation always turns to Second Life. However, when I go there, SL is empty…except for marketers.

Rishad: We’re very bullish about virtual worlds. In Korea, we’re excited about CyWorld. In the U.S., we’re very bullish about online gaming.

Audience: In B2B websites vs. B2C oriented sites, what are the differences in revenue models or the difference in ad revenue based business models vs. subscription based business models?

Simon: A subscription service was difficult to make work for us, because there are millions of free options. Advertising is not going to solve everybody’s problems, not by a long shot. Subscription is not a viable option. Maybe selling stuff is. Advertising is going to be the only real revenue model for platforms for right now.

Shawn: The B2B side has the same models. I think "the exchange" is going to come back, as business social networking with commerce built in.

Audience: Are marketers are afraid to get in front of user-generated content?

Shawn: There are technologies that can read the words on the page. WalMart might put their ad supporting a Green cause, and it might show up next to a girl in a g-string. But hey, everyone needs to recycle.

Battelle: WalMart would never do that. Brands care about scale, safety and quality. They are used to controlling that message about their brand. They are afraid to get feedback.

Rishad: Marketing is about listening to your customer. (ed. – FINALLY)

Audience: Should people try the "egg" model — connect a social media on your site — or the "chicken" and connect on a large social network?

Rishad: You have to talk back. Marketers are not stupid. They might be concerned. They might be scared. They want to embrace this space. They should listen to what people are saying first, though.

Tina: Marketers need to engage on all media — TV, print, radio, social media.

Audience: Do you see participation (posting, contributing) as "what it’s about?" Or is social media merely a means to create content, with most people being "consumers" of that media in a traditional sense?

Shawn: There’s a saying, "we choose our friends by our ability to amuse them." That propels people. Youth culture is about sharing something first, about knowing something first. The content today is so share-able…when I was a kid, sharing a lighter or a cig was a form of social currency. Now the social currency is what goes on YouTube.

Battelle: Our culture is getting more used to having content that it can edit. When the White House releases something on Friday in hopes of burying it, the bloggers find the juicy bits over the weekend and the news outlets do something with it on Monday.

Audience: is anyone thinking about the marketing dialog on TV?

Simon: It’s been going on a long time, and it’s pretty much one way. The way it’s worked is that you light a fire on TV to get people talking, and then the conversation happens elsewhere. Broadband will drive the dialog on TV more than TV will drive the dialog on TV.

Audience: In Hollywood, we’ve stumbled. Snakes On A Plane had huge traction online, and bombed at the box office. While "awareness" might be high, consumption might not be. Can marketing change dialog and awareness into consumption?

Simon: I think there is a lot of dialog going on right now around video. YouTube does millions of video streams a month; that’s what Comcast did last year. We’ll get better tools about understanding consumption.

Comments

Tracking Google’s rapid-fire releases and changes in recent weeks has been an exercise in itself. Pay Per Action ads, AdSense unit changes, and now an update to One Box.

It’s been a fixture on Google’s search results for some time, a blue box containing the top AdWords advertisements for a given query. Some people have spotted a different look for it from time to time, and now many more should start seeing the yellow-toned background on Google.com.

The official word comes from Daniel Dulitz on the Inside AdWordsblog about the color change, as well as a tweak to what’s clickable inside the One Box:

First, we thought it was time for a new look: after months of testing, we decided to switch the background color of the top ads from blue to yellow. Second, we’ve modified what counts as a click in this box to be consistent with what counts as a click for the ads on the right hand side. Instead of clicking anywhere in the box, users now need to click on the link in the top line of an ad in order to be taken to an advertiser’s site. Together, these changes help decrease the likelihood that a user will unintentionally click on an ad, while making our highest quality ads more visible.

Andrew Goodman suggested at his Traffick blog that perhaps banner blindness had set in for Google visitors:

Were CTR’s declining? We know that rotating ad design in banner campaigns sometimes props up CTR’s. Personally, I haven’t seen much evidence of declining CTR up there at the top, but you never know.

Considering Google’s continued financial success with online advertising, its bread and butter, those click-throughs probably perform just fine. But there’s always room for improvement.

Skeptics, however, doubt that such a strategy has any long-term sustainability and is just another example of the bandwagon mentality.

While no one would disagree that staying ahead of the technology curve is a good thing, one has to constantly gauge factors such as feasibility and return on investment when deciding to jump headlong into a new venture.

As Second Life continues to be inundated with brand marketing, these are the issues that now begin to spring up for marketers.

Indeed, this is one of those touchy subjects that makes you really examine the thought process associated with embracing new advertising platforms.

Eric Kintz, Vice President of Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence for HP, gives some great insight into the very real concerns that are facing marketers looking to set up shop in Second Life.

He gives ten points in all, but these two bear particular mention:

The model’s scaleability is further threatened by a corporate IT backlash. According to a recent survey by Sophos, 90.4 percent of IT pros want to block users from accessing Second Life and other similar sites; and 62 percent find it essential to block users from accessing from their corporate PCs. The reasons include increased IT security risks; burden to company bandwidth, and wasting valuable business time.

Brands are not staying true to the Second Life values. Second Life is about realizing your fantasies and being something different than you are in real life. Many avatars have a different gender than the subscriber or take animal forms. However most brands mimic their real life experiences and value proposition in Second Life.

Brands have also disrupted the local economy by offering some of their goods and services, prompting a backlash by residents. 70% of Second Life residents are disappointed by the branded experiences.

Kintz raises two valid points that have a fundamental impact:

·    It’s difficult to market to Second Lifers when their access is being blocked

·    When 70% of your audience is disappointed, your strategy isn’t working

Is it really worth it to invest so much time and energy to establish your presence in an online world that 1) really doesn’t want you there and 2) stands to have its access restricted by IT professionals?

If you’re just now deciding to set foot into the virtual realm with your advertising, Second Life may not be the sturdiest of ground to take your first step.

• Brad discusses how the thank you page is the most under-utilized page on the web, tips us off to Google’s retail specific knowledge base for adwords, and how to find your quality score.

• Matt disects Google local’s algorithm
• Jim talks about why new sites suck for search
• 11 Ways to increase your conversion rate – great stuff from T-bo

• 5 ways to promote your local biz for $888 a year – plus a local gold mine from Mr. Gray. He also asks – are you a baiter or a flasher?

• Is the world out of good ideas? – if you haven’t found this yet, Brant writes some nice stuff including posts on valuation for an exit, and how to handle an NDA

• Jarrod drops his definitive guide to blogging

• Joe has a nice roundup of Google filters

• Darren Dalasta tells us how to know if your friend is an SEO

• Brian coins the Paris Hilton rule, shows us how to drive traffic without SE’s, and illustrates competitive webmastering (aka SEO) for Jason Calacanis

• Andy explains how to escape Google’s supplemental results

• Shoemoney is a genius, and provides the goods with the Adwords arrow trick

• How social media impacts SEM from one of the guys who would know best.

• Searchviews and reprise media gives us the superbowl ad scorecard (curses to whoever dropped Rand’s ad)

• Muhammad Saleem has joined up with Pronetadvertising, and is writing some fantastic stuff on social media including a post on digg narcissim among others (see ego hook)

• Loren’s guide to link buying rocks

• I could probably link just about anything Kathy Sierra writes – favorite recent post – Inspiring your user-evangelists=

• Brian Clark advises differentiate or die, and gives his usual great ideas on titles (note to self – listen to his podcast with Neil and Cameron on Rush Hour)

• Aaron talks about using scraper to improve relevance and probably some other awesome stuff I didn’t read:)

• Congrats to Duane on an SEO book deal (please educate the masses!!) – hat tip to Bill

• 50% off Reviewme -sweet! (no aff)

• Everyone involved in search marketing should thank their respectful Gods that we have Danny around to defend the reputation of SEO (cause the rest of us are too damn lazy or busy to try to convert those who don’t "get it") – Thanks Danny!

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About the Author

Todd Malicoat aka Stuntdubl made his first horrible looking website full of animated .gifs in 1997, and after fours years of failure and experimentation ended up in the world of SEO and internet marketing in early 2001. He is currently an independent marketing consultant from the SEO school of thought. Todd earned a bachelors of business adminstration from Northwood University in 2003 while running an web design and consulting firm Meta4creations, LLC. Todd is a speaker at both Webmasterworld and Search Engine Strategies conferences.

…what’s beginning to catch the attention of IBM and other huge corporations is something potentially far more profound than a new online pastime. It’s the ability to use Second Life as a platform for a whole new Net-this one in 3-D and even more social than the original-with huge opportunities to sell products and services.

Exactly, although I’m not 100% convinced that whole new Net will be based on the Second Life engine. But to me, it’s a whole lot more intuitive to navigate down a street, into a building, and into a room to buy a product than it is to click through left-hand navigation panels. Plenty of writers of speculative fiction (e.g., William Gibson, Neal Stephenson) have predicted this development.

You don’t have to get excited about the culture of Second Life as it now exists in order to understand that the underlying idea could well be the kernel of the Internet’s next significant evolution. The reason to embrace Second Life now is to understand the principles so your organization can be ready when the transition begins. (Remember all those companies that shrugged off the Web for years saying, “Who needs a website?”)

I think that transition is inevitable, although I certainly could be wrong, but here’s the issue: If I’m right and your organization hasn’t figured it out, you’ll be playing catch-up while your competitors are out in front. If I’m wrong, you really haven’t lost anything.

Anyway, read the article. No registration required.

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Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.

As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.

AOL Hopes “X” Marks The Spot For Gold

The odd news comes the same week AOL announced $20 million in sponsorships for its upcoming online reality show “Gold Rush,” where contestants navigate around the country looking for over $2 million in hidden treasure, payable in, you guessed it: gold.

AOL’s own gold rush comes on the heels of an attempt collect on a $12.8 million judgment against convicted spammer Hawke, who has disappeared. Hawke, a reported white supremacist who made $600,000 per week spamming AOL inboxes with ads for loans, adult material, jewelry, and pharmaceuticals, spent much of his cash on gold and platinum bars, to make it harder to seize his assets.

AOL believes he sank it into his parents’ yard and plans to dig it up unless Hawke’s family can get a court order to block it. His mother denies there’s any gold on their property. Rather, it is probably buried in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, over 100 miles away.

That jives with Hawke’s ex-girlfriend’s recounting of a statement he made saying collectors would to dig up five states to find his treasure. His father, Simon Greenbaum, is nearly daring AOL to dig up his property, as anything found there is technically his.

“So if they hit oil, I’ll put up a gas station,” he said.

Hawke’s ex reported that he regularly went hiking at night carrying a fireproof safe and a shovel with him, but would not reveal what he was up to.

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It’s raising $35 million to help East Africa deal with a drought-inflicted crisis. Like many non-profits, Oxfam did not have the budget to launch a traditional multinational awareness campaign.

Instead the Gold Group helped Oxfam capitalize on a unique donation from actress Keira Knightley-a Vera Wang dress she wore to the 2006 Oscars. The strategy was to promote the eBay auction of the famous dress to highlight the Oxfam campaign. Vera Wang also displayed the dress in her Madison Avenue flagship store. Jeff Greene answered a few questions from Strategic Public Relations about the project.

SPR: How did you decide your online targets?

Greene: Gold Group identified major online hubs for entertainment and celebrity gossip and information. Working closely with bloggers and webmasters, we engaged with these online communities. Gold Group also built a landing site for the auction, enabling us to measure traffic.

SPR: What was your social media angle/pitch? Was it different from the offline pitch? What were your target outlets and overall timing with the auction?

Greene: Timing is always of the essence when creating a buzz before the start of a campaign, and so is relevancy. Probably the most important thing is to do your research.

In this particular campaign, the auction was first pitched to Keira Knightley fan sites – she has rabid fans in the UK and the U.S. – and some of these sites are highly search-optimized. We found sites the paparazzi check out for tips, which helped us gain a foothold in traditional media before the release was distributed. We also identified the relief boards and blogs that write about such efforts.

For the offline pitch the story was much more about going out to see the dress physically, the novelty of this gorgeous dress in a store window, while the online pitch was more about building a buzz around the auction and driving traffic to Oxfam’s web site.

SPR: Did social input/feedback impact follow-up pitches? I’m assuming the campaign was altered based on feedback or insight from “citizen outlets.”

Greene: Absolutely. On the social side, when bloggers came back asking for something we tried to accommodate them as much as possible – more details, extra photos. A conversation thread in one of the fan forums helped influence a messaging point that went out in a follow-up release. These are small examples, but taught us to see social media not just as a “target” but a potential collaborator in the conversation.

SPR: How did you track results and mentions social vs. offline?

Greene: By doing a lot of Google searches! Seriously, it was a challenge. We tracked certain direct phrases that were used in the official release, for example, but wouldn’t appear in most social mentions (unless they were quoting the whole release verbatim). For a while, we were able to track the hits differential between our landing page and the eBay auction page, until the Associated Press mentioned the landing page. The Keira fans were really helpful in sending us links as they found them. Offline was much easier to track, using US Newswire tools.

SPR: What were the campaign results? How much money was Oxfam hoping to raise?

Greene: Oxfam has participated in eBay auctions before, so they know that bidding is unpredictable. They were more concerned with traffic and awareness of Oxfam initiatives in East Africa. The eBay auction of Keira Knightley’s dress brought in nearly $8,000 USD. 79 bidders competed for the gown and 2,500 users watched the final bidding. This set a record for Oxfam according to the UK’s Independent.

The landing page received more than 30,000 visits and the effort over 150+ traditional media mentions across the U.S. —

Here are some elements the Bad Pitch Blog feels helped Oxfam succeed.

• Live Online & Offline The balance of online auction and store window helped reach more fans and helped build more buzz.
• Spread the Word Oxfam made it easy for fans to spread the word with buttons, banners, pics and movies they could add to their own sites.
• Fly the Flag All online content was clearly branded by Oxfam. There were also plenty of hooks into the Oxfam site to engage new visitors beyond the auction.

It’s inspiring to see how non-profits can benefit from social media relations. The Oxfam story is one of a growing number of social media relations case studies. Hat Tip to Shel Holtz.

Cross-posted to The Bad Pitch Blog.

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Kevin Dugan is the author of the popular Strategic Public Relations blog. Kevin is Director of Marketing Communications for FRCH Design Worldwide.

Visit Kevin’s blog: Strategic Public Relations.

The first podcast is now available for download, audio stream, and RSS subscription from In Session, the new conference blog that will formally launch on Monday.

The first podcast features interviews with members of the Gold Quill Awards Blue Ribbon judging panel which Shel conducted last month. Winners of this year’s Gold Quill Awards will be announced this month.

The ConferenceCast podcast series will feature interviews with speakers, conference planners, members of staff, members of the IABC executive board, and members who plan on attending the conference. Both Shel and I will be there as well and we’ll be conducting on-site interviews. We hope to podcast a few complete sessions, too.

Do let us know what you think of the first ConferenceCast by leaving a comment on the conference blog.

The new In Session blog has a clear objective:

Our goal with In Session is to engage participants before they arrive in Vancouver for a richer conference experience and to capture the conference experience onsite for those who don’t attend conference.

Both Shel and I are among the bloggers at In Session. Posting will begin next week.

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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.