Ads-Click equates MicroSocialAds (still in beta), its new social media advertising platform, with AdBrite or AdSense. Just slap the app onto your Facebook page and when your friends click on the targeted, contextual ads, you get 80% of the click-through cut.

Sound golden? Well, it might, except that it may seriously annoy your friends – but maybe not; most likely they’d learn to ignore them like the rest – and adding the ads to your Facebook page is a violation of Facebook’s terms of service.

Nobody’s allowed to pimp your friends on Facebook except for Facebook. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your point of view), Eric Schonfeld at TechCrunch says MicroSocialAds will also be available for Twitter, MSN Messenger, Yahoo IM, Skype, and Open Social.

Or at least anywhere it’s not immediately kyboshed.  
 

Privacy Group Slaps Google, Fans Slap Back

Boiling down Danny Sullivan’s response to the report to two or three words might be selling him short by about 5,000 words and 13 pages. And Google’s Matt Cutts had more than a few choice words of his own.

In a study that examined the biggest online presences, Google came out at the bottom and Privacy International (PI) was heavy on the shame. When Google heads accused the group of having too close a relationship with Microsoft, the indignation coming from across the Pond was so palpable that it was nearly French (gratuitous cheap shot, no emails please ).

From PI’s Open Letter to Google:

_{I believe an apology from you [Eric Schmidt] is in order, but if you cannot deliver this then I think you should reflect carefully on the actions of your representatives before embarking on what I believe amounts to a smear campaign. As with Microsoft, eBay and any other organization we are more than happy to work with you to help resolve the many privacy challenges for Google that our report has highlighted.}

Yours sincerely
Simon Davies,
Director
Privacy International

Sullivan responded with the aforementioned verbosity, calling the report "haphazard" and "inept." Why such a white-gloved slap? Sullivan thinks they’ve relied on more second-hand information than on primary sources, and the result is that the study’s authors ignored some significant measurements.

Danny went through the study’s conclusions one by one, examining administrative details, corporate leadership, data collection and processing, data retention, responsiveness, "ethical compass," customer control, fair gateways and authentication, and privacy innovations.

After all that, Danny could only agree on a couple of points, mainly regarding Google’s data retention policies.

_{Overall, looking at just the performance of the best companies PI found shows that Google measures up well — and thus ranking it the worse simply doesn’t seem fair. But the bigger issue is that the report itself doesn’t appear to be as comprehensive or fully researched as it is billed.}

_{Frankly, about the only thing saving Privacy International from many more companies or services being upset over this report is that they singled out Google as the wors[t]. That’s almost guaranteed to make players like Microsoft and Yahoo shut their mouths and point at this silently as vindication they aren’t so bad.}

Google’s Matt Cutts decided to sleep on it before responding, but he still woke up angry. On his blog notes these counterpoints:

• Google didn’t leak user queries (AOL did)
• Google didn’t fold to DOJ demands (everyone else did)
• Google agreed to anonymize its logs after a certain amount of time

"I believe this report could corrode earnest efforts to improve privacy at companies around the internet, wrote Cutts. "Why? Because the bottom-line takeaway message that I got from the report is that a company can work hard on privacy issues and still get dragged into the mud.

"Consider: in the last year or so, other companies gave users’ queries to the government, leaked millions of raw user queries, or even sold user queries and still came off better than Google did."

Looks like this argument is far from over. Stay tuned.
 

My take, generally speaking, is that iterative efforts are a good thing. The more energy and effort we (the PR industry) collectively invest in this concept, the closer we move toward an accepted standard.

If, however, we’re not all working toward this same goal, and instead get caught up with using proprietary formats and tools to posture and advance competitive agendas, then, sadly, the Social Media Press Release will die, die, die, quickly. [Update] Read Brian Oberkirch’s post on the SMPR, he makes some valid counterpoints regarding the approach and execution of this concept to date.

A random aside: despite the industry bitch slap heard around the world, I’m amazed at the way Edelman continues to outpace, out-innovate and if nothing else, out-market the big PR conglomerates when it comes to social media….

More Info:

New Media Release Google Group

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Mike Manuel is the founder of the award winning Media Guerrilla blog. Media Guerrilla is an insiders take on the practice of technology public relations with a focus on the issues, tactics and trends that are specific to the tech industry.

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This is presumptuous.

When I watch South American soap operas, I notice the only guys getting slapped are usually pretty handsome devils – they just stepped over the line a little bit. They’ve got the goods, they just pushed a little too hard. (Metaphorically speaking. I do not advocate actual pushing – or shoving.)

Some of these MFA (“Made for AdSense”) sites, on the other hand, are little more than scraper sites at best, with duplicate content patched together on ugly pages, combined with ad links. No one visits them of their own accord. That’s not a general account of all arbitrage in the business world or online, it’s a specific comment on those particular sites and pages.

The world has zero interest in your pages, and thus, no longer does Google want to run your ads through their system. A low quality score is assigned. You’re now officially invisible.

Basically, they just said “we’ll call you.” And they didn’t call you. You got dumped.

Being dumped is not the same as getting slapped.

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Andrew Goodman is Principal of Page Zero Media, a marketing consultancy which focuses on maximizing clients’ paid search marketing campaigns.

In 1999 Andrew co-founded Traffick.com, an acclaimed “guide to portals” which foresaw the rise of trends such as paid search and semantic analysis.

Every business, no matter what the industry, can locate businesses that market to the same target market and find ways to create joint ventures and cooperative marketing campaigns.

It’s a pretty good bet that people who buy plumbing services also need heating and cooling repair, appliance repair, or maybe they need an electrician who can put in a ceiling fan in the bedroom.

People want to buy from businesses they know and trust so if you can partner with those businesses you can borrow that trust and gain new customers at a fraction of the marketing cost.

Let’s say our electrical contractor goes out on a service call. As the technician is leaving he hands the client a little card with a prearranged discount from a plumber. Just our way of saying thanks.

Now every time that plumbing coupon get cashed in the electrician gets a piece of the sale and the plumber gets a new client.

The key here is that both parties can gain from the relationship. Gain by acquiring new customers, gain by increasing revenue, gain by being associated with a well established firm.

Think about this one for a while. Anyone who sells to the same client or anyone who sells a complimentary service in a target.

You can even reverse this one. Say you have a nice little client base. Look around and see if there is a product or service that you would like to offer to them and then structure an offer so that you get some of the profits. Endorsed mailings, where one party sends a letter to their client base endorsing another business or product, can be a great way to generate additional clients and revenue. >From a value standpoint, being able to refer quality vendors to your own clients helps make you more of an asset to that client.

I know a graphic designer who is very sought after and very pricey. When people come to him with a project that won’t work for his ability or price he sends them to lesser priced competitor and takes a piece of the action.

This tactic can be a great way to jump start a new business but entire businesses are built this way as well.

Opportunities for joint ventures are everywhere. The only real requirement is a bit of tenacity and a dash of creativity. Look for deals that are win/win, look for partners that value quality, customer service and fairness as much as you do and then when you slap their back they’ll slap yours.

John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide published by Thomas Nelson – due out in the fall of 2006 He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting http://www.ducttapemarketing.com

Here’s one that struck me as being a rather poor translation – and it therefore immediately inclined me not to believe it. The first paragraph read:

Stephan Ducharme, the “Free Ad Guru” just released his new 9 steps ! It is what everybody is waiting for since weeks now and it just was released.’

Well, for a start what does his new 9 steps’ mean? An aerobic exercise? A dance? It might make more sense to say his new 9-step program’ or his new 9-step course’. And the second sentence would of course make more sense if it read: It is what everybody has been waiting for for weeks now, and it’s just been released.’

Next paragraph: ‘Thousands of marketers just jumped on it in the same day. Don’t wonder why.’

That makes three justs’ in three sentences so far. And perhaps this really is a dance routine – all this jumping, after all.

The ad doesn’t improve. We get the usual stuff about Stephan Ducharme being an internet millionaire at 31, and then:

‘His top affiliates are making $5000.00 a week selling his ebook right now. It sells like hot bread.’

I think the expression should be: It sells like hot cakes.’ When I look at the hot bread’ version, my eye trips me up and sees: It *smells* like hot bread.’

The 9 steps which are making everybody jump came about as a result, apparently, of 2 years of brain sweat’. Yuck – give me hot bread any time.

But if I ignore this offer I will, I am told, slap myself’. Ouch.

Well, I know it’s difficult to write an eye-catching ad. I know some of them all sound the same – indeed, *are* the same (how many times have you read similar ones about Stephan Ducharme?), so of course it can be a good idea to vary the text a bit, make it more your own. But if in doing so, you become incomprehensible or inadvertently funny – perhaps because the language you’re writing in isn’t your mother tongue – your efforts are almost bound to be counter-productive. In short, no one’s going to trust you to know what you’re talking about.

It’s always worth getting a friendly someone – and someone who’s a native speaker of the language you’re writing in – to read through your ad before you send it out. And if you don’t know any other friendly someone, send it to me at webmaster@virginiarounding.com and I’ll be happy to advise.

Virginia Rounding is a published writer whose website of
Internet Resources for Writers looks at additional ways for
writers to earn money, in the hope of making it possible
for them to keep writing without having to resort either to
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