WebProNews » Guidelines http://www.webpronews.com Breaking News in Tech, Search, Social, & Business Fri, 24 May 2013 03:57:21 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 FTC Guidelines Raise Big Blogging Questions http://www.webpronews.com/potential-ftc-fines-raise-big-blogging-questions-2009-12 http://www.webpronews.com/potential-ftc-fines-raise-big-blogging-questions-2009-12#comments Sat, 26 Dec 2009 20:59:04 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=52539 Update 3: The new FTC Guidelines went into effect this week. A recent WebProNews interview with Wendy Piersall, Founder of the Woo! Jr. Network, looks at some interesting points about them that you may not have considered - some "gray areas" if you will.

]]> Update 3: The new FTC Guidelines went into effect this week. A recent WebProNews interview with Wendy Piersall, Founder of the Woo! Jr. Network, looks at some interesting points about them that you may not have considered – some "gray areas" if you will.

Update 2:  Now Cleland says, "If people think that the FTC is going to issue them a citation for $11,000 because they failed to disclose that they got a free box of Pampers, that’s not true. That’s not going to happen today, not ever." (via)

Update: The FTC is now saying that the $11,000 fine is not accurate, at least for the first violation. Fast company got some responses from Richard Cleland, assistant director, division of advertising practices at the FTC, who says:

“That $11,000 fine is not true. Worst-case scenario, someone receives a warning, refuses to comply, followed by a serious product defect; we would institute a proceeding with a cease-and-desist order and mandate compliance with the law. To the extent that I have seen and heard, people are not objecting to the disclosure requirements but to the fear of penalty if they inadvertently make a mistake. That’s the thing I don’t think people need to be concerned about. There’s no monetary penalty, in terms of the first violation, even in the worst case. Our approach is going to be educational, particularly with bloggers. We’re focusing on the advertisers: What kind of education are you providing them, are you monitoring the bloggers and whether what they’re saying is true?” [empahsis added]

Cleland addresses more of the concerns here.

Original Article: The Federal Trade Commission has released its revised guidelines concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising. The revisions include a focus on "bloggers" and social media users, requiring them to properly disclose when they have received payment in the form of either money or product from a company or organization and produce content regarding said company or organization. The word is that bloggers can be fined up to $11,000 per post for not disclosing.

Have you ever mentioned a free product you received online and not disclosed it? Comment here.

The reasoning behind the guidelines seems noble enough – provide transparency and keep consumers safe from hokey information. However, the concept of the government dictating how this happens does not sit well with a lot of people. The revisions (which can be found in this 81 page document [pdf], should you care to peruse them [they start around page 55]) have ruffled quite a few feathers and the conversation has become one about free speech.

Jeff JarvisWell-known author/editor/publisher Jeff Jarvis makes a really good point. He says the FTC assumes that the Internet is a medium. "It’s not. It’s a place where people talk. Most people who blog, as Pew found in a survey a few years ago, don’t think they are doing anything remotely connected to journalism. I imagine that virtually no one on Facebook thinks they’re making media. They’re connecting. They’re talking," he says. "So for the FTC to go after bloggers and social media – as they explicitly do – is the same as sending a government goon into Denny’s to listen to the conversations in the corner booth and demand that you disclose that your Uncle Vinnie owns the pizzeria whose product you just endorsed."

It’s not hard to find echoes of Jarvis’s sentiment all over the web. Although, I don’t believe I’ve seen it as eloquently put as with the Denny’s analogy. Still, not everyone sees the FTC regulations as a bad thing. In fact, Google’s Matt Cutts stepped into the conversation with Jeff Jarvis, expressing a bit more enthusiasm for the guidelines.

Google's Matt Cutts "As a Google engineer who has seen the damage done by fake blogs, sock puppets, and endless scams on the internet, I’m happy to take the opposite position: I think the FTC guidelines will make the web more useful and more trustworthy for consumers," he says. "Consumers don’t want to be shilled and they don’t want payola; they want a web that they can trust. The FTC guidelines just say that material connections should be disclosed. From having dealt with these issues over several years, I believe that will be a good thing for the web."

Commenters essentially tell Matt the whole thing would smell a lot better if he were the one regulating it. The reasoning for this is that Matt is involved with the industry. He is not a government worker that has been one his whole life. He’s been in the field. He knows the score. The argument coming from most of the opposition is not about the fundamental principle of making content more trustworthy for consumers. At the root of it, it appears that people are much more concerned about a government body of regulators who aren’t necessarily involved with online content production telling them how it is, when there are many, many questions about what falls under the criteria.

A number of these questions are nicely placed in an "open letter to the FTC" from Ron Hogan at MediaBistro’s GalleyCat. Here are a few of them:

 

- If an unpaid blogger at the Huffington Post "endorses" a consumer product without meeting the FTC guidelines for disclosure of "material connections" to the makers of that consumer product, who’s liable: the blogger or the Huffington Post?

-  If a blogger prints out a series of blog posts and distributes those printed copies, is he now the publisher of a newspaper or magazine? If so, the Village Voice is distributed for free, so can a blogger/publisher distribute his newspaper or magazine for free, too?

-  What if a blogger confines herself to stating demonstrably proven facts about a book, its author, its contents, and the matter of its publication? Does the FTC consider that an endorsement? What if she confines herself to stating such facts and includes links to an ecommerce site? Has her writing somehow been transformed from a statement of fact to an endorsement? 

There are plenty more where that came from. The list goes on. You can probably think of a few yourself. It may be hard for the guidelines to be enforced. The FTC does acknowledge that its guidelines aren’t exactly the law themselves. The FTC says:

The Guides are administrative interpretations of the law intended to help advertisers comply with the Federal Trade Commission Act; they are not binding law themselves. In any law enforcement action challenging the allegedly deceptive use of testimonials or endorsements, the Commission would have the burden of proving that the challenged conduct violates the FTC Act.

It should also be noted that the rules presumably apply to publications beyond bloggers and social media users, but for some reason it appears that "bloggers" are the ones with whom the FTC had on its collective mind when drafting these guidelines. You have to wonder if they are able to come up with a definition for "blogging" (others have had trouble in the past. Even those directly involved in the online content industry). The rules are scheduled to take effect on December 1st.

What questions do you have about the FTC’s guidelines? Share them here.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/potential-ftc-fines-raise-big-blogging-questions-2009-12/feed 82 IAB Updates Video Ad Guidelines http://www.webpronews.com/iab-updates-video-ad-guidelines-2009-12 http://www.webpronews.com/iab-updates-video-ad-guidelines-2009-12#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:44:40 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=52464 The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has announced an update to its Digital Video Ad Impression Measurement Guidelines. The update addresses digital video content and ads that play automatically when a web page loads, which the IAB says is an increasingly common occurrence.
]]> The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has announced an update to its Digital Video Ad Impression Measurement Guidelines. The update addresses digital video content and ads that play automatically when a web page loads, which the IAB says is an increasingly common occurrence.

The IAB defines an auto-play ad as a video ad or a video ad linked with video content that initiates "play" with out a user interaction or without a user activity starting the video. The guidelines now:

iab

- Require companies that have obtained certification against the IAB guidelines to disclose the presence of auto-play ads and their parameters, such as frequency settings, site location, initiation environment (for example, upon first arrival on a home page) and the type of video ads involved.

- Don’t require web sites to disclose the presence of auto-play if users have a reasonable expectation that they are entering a video environment.

"The IAB’s measurement efforts over the past seven years have been focused on ensuring the continued high level of accountability the industry expects from interactive advertising,” said Jeremy Fain, vice president of Industry Services at the IAB. “Digital video advertising is growing exponentially and the transparency this update brings will enable that growth to continue.”

"Auto-play content and ads are a material part of the ecosystem and the IAB and the MRC want the marketplace to be clear on how they are used," said George Ivie, Executive Director and CEO of the MRC. "This update will allow buyers to make informed decisions on how their digital video ad impressions are being presented."

The IAB’s updated guidelines will go into effect for all certification audits starting in January. The guidelines can be viewed here.


Related Articles:

> IAB Releases Ad Unit Guidelines Update

> IAB Releases New Guidelines for Email Monetization

> IAB Announces Guidelines for In-Game Ad Standards

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/iab-updates-video-ad-guidelines-2009-12/feed 0 A Few Guidelines for Drafting Social Media Guidelines http://www.webpronews.com/a-few-guidelines-for-drafting-social-media-guidelines-2009-11 http://www.webpronews.com/a-few-guidelines-for-drafting-social-media-guidelines-2009-11#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:30:05 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=52180 For all of the great opportunities that can come from social media, there are plenty of negatives that come with it as well. This is of course why many businesses are hesitant to adopt social media strategies and/or let their employees engage with different social networking tools. It is also why many of the companies that do have social media strategies in tact, and do allow employees to use these tools have guidelines in place.
]]> For all of the great opportunities that can come from social media, there are plenty of negatives that come with it as well. This is of course why many businesses are hesitant to adopt social media strategies and/or let their employees engage with different social networking tools. It is also why many of the companies that do have social media strategies in tact, and do allow employees to use these tools have guidelines in place.

Does your company have social media guidelines? Tell us about them.

The merit of such guidelines is often debated throughout the blogosphere and on various social media platforms, but a business has to do what it has to do to protect its brand, and ultimately, nobody can make that decision but the managers and owners of those businesses. A business must do what is right for itself, and guidelines that may work well for one business may not necessarily fit the mold for another.

If a business does choose to seek the opportunities that await it with a social media strategy, it is probably for the best that they not go into it haphazardly and expect a great outcome. As has been discussed repeatedly in the past, there have to be goals.

As Wayne Sutton of OurHashtag mentioned in a recent interview with WebProNews, companies should do research before engaging with social media personas that can have an impact on their brand. He says, for example, that you should research a person’s audience before sending them a product to review just because they have a significant number of Twitter followers.

If you feel that your company requires some guidelines for social media use, you may want to consider putting something in there about not putting the company’s brand in situations where its trust may be sacrificed. For example, companies will often have somebody saying positive things about their product on blogs and social networks, when that person will actually work for or be affiliated with the company, without actually disclosing such information.

This is why the FTC felt it necessary to draft some guidelines on this practice (whether or not such guidelines are justified – it is a topic frequently debated). Regardless of what you feel about the FTC stepping in, you will probably agree that such a practice is not the best way to build trust for your brand. As Patrick O’Keefe of the iFroggy Network mentioned in another WebProNews interview, you will likely be found out sooner or later if you engage in this kind of practice, and the damage that can do to the trust of your brand may well be beyond repair.

Another point O’Keefe mentioned in that same interview was that it is not wise to force people to use various social media tools in the same manner. Just because you find a tool to be valuable a certain way, does not mean that someone else will not find it more effective in a different way. With that point in mind, perhaps you should pick the brains of employees to find out how they would go about using social media to help the company if given the opportunity.

The fact of the matter is, there are many, many ways to utilize all of the different social tools out there. If you are going to draft guidelines, you should get all the perspectives you can before you set anything in stone. If you don’t, you may potentially be shutting out some great opportunities, business, and sales simply because you banned employees from using tools in ways that you hadn’t thought of. Granted, you don’t have to accept all of these ideas as good ones.

The topics discussed in this article are certainly not the only ones to consider when drafting a social media policy. What are some key points that you include in yours? Discuss here.

Related Articles:

> 5 Less Obvious Online Reputation Management Issues

> Baby Food Recall Shows Social Media Done Right

> Online Reputation Management in the Future

> Avoiding The Pitfalls Of Social Media

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/a-few-guidelines-for-drafting-social-media-guidelines-2009-11/feed 4 Marketing Best Practices for Long Form Video http://www.webpronews.com/marketing-best-practices-for-long-form-video-2009-09 http://www.webpronews.com/marketing-best-practices-for-long-form-video-2009-09#comments Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:01:49 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=51478 The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released its "Long Form Video Overview." The organization says that long form video is forecasted to be the driving factor in the growth of digital video advertising over the next five years. The overview is designed to provide marketers and agencies with guidelines to better understand and make the most out of their digital video campaigns.
]]> The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released its "Long Form Video Overview." The organization says that long form video is forecasted to be the driving factor in the growth of digital video advertising over the next five years. The overview is designed to provide marketers and agencies with guidelines to better understand and make the most out of their digital video campaigns.

The IAB defines long form video as any professionally produced or user-generated video that lasts longer than 10 minutes, and consists of a content arc, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

iab"Broadband penetration and the convergence of the television with the PC are accelerating, making long form video advertising a strong focus for marketers," said Jeremy Fain, Vice President of Industry Services at the IAB. "Our goal is to describe clearly the outlook and opportunities for anyone who is interested in learning more about long form video."

"Long form video online is a natural fit for a lot of brands, not just those that do well on television," said Geoff Coco, a Group Product Manager with Microsoft and Co-Chair of the IAB Digital Video Committee. "Long form video is close enough to the television experience that comparing its effectiveness is a no-brainer. But the future success of long form lies in giving marketers the ability to enlist viewers to engage with their brands in new and powerful ways."

The Long Form Video Overview covers the current digital video ad marketplace, multiple forecasts for future ad revenue, common long form ad formats & other ad-buying opportunities, and definitions of key terms associated with long form video.

Along with the Long Form Video Overview document, the IAB has released the digital video in-stream ad format guidelines and best practices, the digital video ad-serving template, and the digital video in-stream ad metrics definitions. All of them can be found here.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/marketing-best-practices-for-long-form-video-2009-09/feed 0 New Mobile Marketing Guidelines Open for Public Review http://www.webpronews.com/new-mobile-marketing-guidelines-open-for-public-review-2009-08 http://www.webpronews.com/new-mobile-marketing-guidelines-open-for-public-review-2009-08#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:12:46 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=50979 Mobile marketing is going to become increasingly hard for businesses to ignore. Just look at how much mobile advertising is already going on.

]]> Mobile marketing is going to become increasingly hard for businesses to ignore. Just look at how much mobile advertising is already going on.

The key of course (which could really be said of other kinds of marketing), is to not be annoying about it. WebProNews recently interviewed former Yahoo executive and current Chief Revenue Officer of mobile marketing firm Crisp Wireless, Tom Foran, about this.

There are some new guidelines for mobile marketing in the works from none other than the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), whom I like to think of as kind of like the Interactive Advertising Bureau for mobile marketing. The MMA consists of agencies, advertisers, hand-held device manufacturers, carriers and operators, retailers, software providers and service providers, and other companies focused on marketing with mobile devices.

Sidenote: See our interview with MMA President and CEO Mike Wehrs below:

The MMA has opened up a public review period for the guidelines, which runs through the end of the month. They new guidelines will be published in September. News updates and additions to the guidelines include:

- The MMA’s new Universal Mobile Advertising Package (UMAP), which provides industry-standard ad units.

- The Mobile Application section has been expanded from North America only to worldwide.

- An expanded MMS section, including new ad units and guidelines.

- An expanded Mobile Video & TV section with new ad units and guidelines.

- An expanded Mobile Applications section with new ad units and guidelines

"The MMA’s Global Mobile Advertising Guidelines are designed to provide the timely, actionable guidance and insights necessary to continue mobile advertising’s phenomenal growth," said Mike Wehrs, MMA president and CEO. "By making each new version of the Global Mobile Advertising Guidelines available for public review, the MMA ensures that this resource meets the needs of the entire mobile advertising ecosystem."

eMarketer estimates that there will be 280.8 million mobile phone subscribers by the end of the  year, while comScore says there will be 29 million smartphone users. Meanwhile, AdMob is getting ready to serve its 100 billionth mobile ad.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/new-mobile-marketing-guidelines-open-for-public-review-2009-08/feed 5 Mobile Marketing Will Likely Become Unavoidable http://www.webpronews.com/mobile-marketing-will-likely-become-unavoidable-2009-07 http://www.webpronews.com/mobile-marketing-will-likely-become-unavoidable-2009-07#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:27:36 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=50519 A recent study showed that spending for mobile advertising was expected to reach over $760 million in 2009. That's about 20% more than last year. Do you dedicate any portion of your budget to mobile marketing? Let WebProNews readers know.
]]> A recent study showed that spending for mobile advertising was expected to reach over $760 million in 2009. That’s about 20% more than last year. Do you dedicate any portion of your budget to mobile marketing? Let WebProNews readers know.

Mike McDonald recently cited these numbers when he told us why we should be marketing via mobile. It seems that marketers are going to have little choice but to market via mobile in the future as devices get smarter, and become must-have items for more people.

People have their mobile devices with them 18 hours a day, Mike Wehrs, President and CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) recently told WebProNews. "Why wouldn’t you want to be able to deliver relevant information to them?" he added. "Because if you do it well, it doesn’t become an advertisement. It becomes information that they were looking for anyway."

The MMA has now released the latest version (pdf) of its US Consumer Best Practices Guidelines for Cross-carrier mobile content services. These are essentially the guidelines for services like text messaging (SMS), multimedia messaging (MMS), shortcode programs, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and the mobile web.

This is the first version of the guidelines that consolidates best practices for the four major US wireless service providers: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. The MMA calls it a milestone toward continued growth of mobile marketing.

Marketers and anybody dealing with the mobile industry should really check out the lengthy document (pdf). Here are some guidelines from it, although they really don’t begin to scratch the surface of the amount of information found within the actual document.

MMA Guidelines
MMA Guidelines
MMA Guidelines
MMA Guidelines

"The latest MMA Consumer Best Practices Guidelines are an industry milestone toward meeting the ecosystem’s need for a concise yet comprehensive set of rules at a time when rapid growth increases the challenge of following multiple playbooks," says Wehrs. "By providing a single, industry-standard reference, the new guidelines free carriers, technology companies, brands, media companies and consumer advocates to focus on protecting consumers, providing the optimal user experience and continuing the mobile channel’s growth."

This week, the MMA also announced its new global board members. For an interesting video interview with Wehrs on mobile marketing, check this out.

Are you doing any mobile marketing yet? Tell us how it’s going. 

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/mobile-marketing-will-likely-become-unavoidable-2009-07/feed 2 IAB Releases Video Ad Guidelines http://www.webpronews.com/iab-releases-video-ad-guidelines-2009-04 http://www.webpronews.com/iab-releases-video-ad-guidelines-2009-04#comments Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:19:44 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=49527 The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has announced Video Player-Ad Interface Definition Guidelines in an effort to simplify the buying and selling of digital video media. The guidelines outline methods of communication between video players and video ads while providing specs for planning, production, and implementation of video advertising.

]]> The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has announced Video Player-Ad Interface Definition Guidelines in an effort to simplify the buying and selling of digital video media. The guidelines outline methods of communication between video players and video ads while providing specs for planning, production, and implementation of video advertising.

IAB Video Ads

Click here to See Larger Version and Digital Video Overview (pdf)

The IAB says the guidelines will help all stakeholders in the interactive advertising industry—marketers profit from reduced costs of production, creative agencies benefit from the decreased time it takes to execute a campaign and publishers gain from the expansion of the marketplace to more interactive digital advertising. According to the IAB, the guidelines help the industry:

- Define a standard method for video ads to communicate with video players and enable ad compatibility across all VPAID-compliant players

- Provide specifications that can be implemented by any type of video player

- Cut production costs and improve ROI for advertisers while enabling a less intrusive experience for video content viewers.

"Digital video is one of the most critical growth areas for interactive advertising because it provides marketers with the power of sight sound and motion," says IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg. "The standards that the IAB has created have played a key role in paving the way for a greater breadth of marketers across vertical industries to tap its power and I have no doubt that we are only at the very beginning."

The guidelines can be perused in a group of documents located at the IAB’s site here. Documents include an overview, in-stream ad format guidelines and best practices, an ad serving template, and in-stream ad metrics definitions.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/iab-releases-video-ad-guidelines-2009-04/feed 0 Google Debunks Link Sabotage Theories http://www.webpronews.com/google-debunks-link-sabotage-theories-2008-06 http://www.webpronews.com/google-debunks-link-sabotage-theories-2008-06#comments Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:05:41 +0000 WebProNews Staff http://www.webpronews.com/?p=45913 The search engine thinks the apocryphal talk about webmasters being able to wreck their competitors by creating bad links to them is just a bunch of talk.

]]> The search engine thinks the apocryphal talk about webmasters being able to wreck their competitors by creating bad links to them is just a bunch of talk.

One webmaster who believes he has suffered at the hands of such "Googlebowling" tactics isn’t convinced that Google looks closely enough at potential abuse coming from specially crafted inbound links.

At Search Engine Roundtable, the assertion exists that a little sneakiness by a webmaster will be the only item needed to build and target a rival, and drop it from Google’s rankings. A post at Google Groups detailed how the targeted webmaster would experience such a sudden loss:

 

Create a bunch of links pointing toward of all your enemies and competitors’ websites then use some really nasty porn Anchor text Keywords. Don’t link the porn keywords to the site’s main or index page, DO link the porn to a single specific page on the site and use that same page as the only page to link the porn too. Googlebowling works better if you embed the links into a video or flash (please note the example).

 

A Google staffer followed up on the post, claiming the site targeted by the Googlebowling ought to be looked at more closely, and in the context of Google’s quality guildelines.

"Looking at the site that you mentioned, I could imagine that studying our Google Webmaster Guidelines, in particular the quality guidelines, would be time well spent," Google’s John Mueller said.

"Most of these guidelines involve the content on the site itself, something which generally can’t be changed through links pointing to the site."

In a mildly direct way, Mueller suggested the site’s low quality, not the inbound links, needs work. As far as evil linking and site rankings go, Mueller said in a follow-up that in theory the linking cited could cause a problem in some "borderline situations," but still suggested the webmaster in question needs to study Google’s quality guidelines.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/google-debunks-link-sabotage-theories-2008-06/feed 38 Google Likes Your Content First-Click Free http://www.webpronews.com/google-likes-your-content-first-click-free-2008-06 http://www.webpronews.com/google-likes-your-content-first-click-free-2008-06#comments Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:22:26 +0000 WebProNews Staff http://www.webpronews.com/?p=45691 Punishing a visitor from Google with a subscription login page, where the visitor expected to find content based on the search result, could draw a penalty from the search ad company.

Quality guidelines are on the minds of advertisers in particular this month, as Google continues to tweak what it thinks is and is not a quality experience for the arriving visitor. Much has been made of the advertiser side of quality guidelines, but they certainly apply in other ways on Google.

The company’s Maile Ohye talked about serving pages and their indexing by Google’s crawler as part of her post at Google Webmaster Central. The post comes in response to webmasters interested in a discussion of certain webserving techniques.

Webmasters who use geolocation or IP tracking to deliver content based on location need to be careful not to accidentally “cloak” their pages. In cloaking, a site delivers one type of content to the Googlebot crawler, and by extension to people finding the site in Google Search, and much different content to an arriving visitor.

Google doesn’t approve of the practice. “This is a violation of our webmaster guidelines. If the file that Googlebot sees is not identical to the file that a typical user sees, then you’re in a high-risk category,” said Ohye.

Google likes the first-click free approach to web content, just as it does for content showing up in news results. Someone arriving at a page from Google expecting to read a story, and slamming into a login screen instead, won’t care for the experience.

Worse, since Google sent the person to the page in question, the person will more likely blame Google for the poor experience, rather than the cagey webmaster hoping to pull a conversion this way.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/google-likes-your-content-first-click-free-2008-06/feed 1 Canadians Favor Internet Guidelines At Work http://www.webpronews.com/canadians-favor-internet-guidelines-at-work-2007-12 http://www.webpronews.com/canadians-favor-internet-guidelines-at-work-2007-12#comments Fri, 07 Dec 2007 17:13:09 +0000 Mike Sachoff http://www.webpronews.com/?p=42515 Canadians think that too much time is being wasted on personal email and Internet use at work. More than half want clearer guidelines from their employers, according to a new poll from Monster.ca.

]]> Canadians think that too much time is being wasted on personal email and Internet use at work. More than half want clearer guidelines from their employers, according to a new poll from Monster.ca.

Canadians Favor Internet Guidelines At WorkFifty-seven percent were against having employers monitor their Internet use but the same percentage agreed that clearer guidelines would help with productivity and trust in the workplace.

Twenty-nine percent were in favor of the idea of employers monitoring email and Internet use, agreeing "people spend an excessive amount of time on personal email and surfing the Internet." Fourteen percent were opposed to the idea of employers monitoring email and Internet use saying it was "an invasion of privacy that shows a lack of trust."

"Canadians seem to be providing an honest assessment of what is happening on the job and it makes sense for employers to listen and to consider what can be done to strike the right balance between respecting employee privacy and keeping productivity up amid email and Internet use by staff," said Gabriel Bouchard, Monster Canada’s vice-president and general manager.

"A workplace built on trust and transparency will be far more productive than one where the boss monitors every conversation, move or mouse-click."

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/canadians-favor-internet-guidelines-at-work-2007-12/feed 1