We’ve had similar features on sites like ClaimID to help establish which online identities are really ours, and which ones are not.

This would shift the onus for celebrities and high-profile users to get verified, instead of suing retrospectively when others create an account in their name.  And indeed, Twitter is starting with these folks first before expanding the feature to everyone else.

But you still have to be using Twitter in order to get this feature.  Meaning that if you’re at all concerned about protecting your name or brand, you should be signing up for Twitter now, if you haven’t already.

Even if you refuse to Tweet even once.

Cross-posted from Slaw

The parliament in that country has approved a new law that would allow criminal prosecution for blogs, chat rooms and social networking sites.  Foreign sites considered unsuitable can also be blocked.

The government defends the recent move, saying it is intended for child pornography and extremist literature.  But critics cay that it can also be used to censor content on elections, strikes, demonstrations, and inter-ethnic strife.

The popular blog site, LiveJournal.com, is already inaccessible to people in the country. In 2007, a pro-opposition blogger was given an extended sentence for insulting the president.  Concerns of rendition to other states for the purposes of torture have also been raised.

Harout Semerdjian of UCLA accuses the country of a history of unlawful arrests of journalists and arson against Ak Zhaiyk, one of the largest independant publications in the country.

However, Kazakhstan is not part of the Axis, and will probably use these “untraditional methods” to oppress political groups in the name of fighting terrorism, so we probably won’t get as much coverage as recent political strife in Iran.  Unfortunately this situation is hardly limited to these two countries, but the instances we do hear about are selective based on unrelated political tensions.

The main human rights watchdog in Europe, The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), has also offered up their criticism.  Perhaps slightly ironically, Kazakhstan is expected to assume the  chair of this same organization in the next six months.

Cross-posted from Slaw

FBHive, a new blog all about Facebook, premiered today with a revelation that they can access certain profile information, even if the user has made it private.

Robin Wauters of TechCrunch confirmed that they were indeed able to access his private information.

FBHive claim that it has taken over 15 days for Facebook to fix they security hole.  And they promise to give their secrets on how they do it within the next few days.

Yet another reminder that no matter how secure we think online data is, there are always ways to get around it.  And for some “computer terrorists,” it will be as simple as a walk in the park.

Cross-posted from Slaw

Update

Here’s a video on how they did it.

The session started by stating that lawyers and accountants will almost always interfere with best practices in a crisis by wanting to wait before speaking to the public.  They typically want to collect all of the information to assess liability and costs to the company before deciding on a course of action.

I’ve said before that the new Apology Act in Ontario may change things in Canada, but it hasn’t been around long enough to know for sure.  The reality is that with new media, public citizens will often “report” on events via social media before first responders or reporters even arrive.  This can influence perceptions of a crisis enormously, and it is the perception of an event that will usually give rise to litigation after the fact.

If you don’t at least try to give your message, others will give it for you.

In addition to social media monitoring, the panel suggested that companies create “dark site,” pre-formatted style sheets and web pages prepared in advance to a disaster that can be quickly formatted and filled in for a specific incident.

Ed Lee, one of my PR contacts prior to law, explains,

A dark site is a pre-developed, non-public Web site that can be published to the live Web in the event of a crisis….

Typically, a dark site contains pre-approved messaging and documents such news releases, pictures, official statements and other background information, as the specific details will only be added right before their release.

A dark site can be placed on a separate domain, be a distinct section of the main organizational Web site or totally replace the original. It could be saved on any of the corporate servers or be kept securely on a preferred external device.

A dark site would also allow social media widgets like Twitter feeds for real-time updates. This pre-crisis planning stage might be a more appropriate place for attorneys to be involved, in providing input about the type of information that should be included.

But if lawyers really want to be involved during a crisis, there may be other areas they can assist with.  I asked the panel about moderating comments on a company Q&A dark site during a disaster.  Neil said that it should be done, but with full disclosure, ensuring that all privacy legislation about suspects, victims, customers, etc. is adhered to.

Lawyers shouldn’t be left out simply because litigation concerns from disclosure are less of a concern - because everyone wants a piece of the action when a crisis hits.

Cross-posted from Slaw.ca

The contest - aside from serving as a not-too-subtle reminder that Western civilization is decaying more rapidly than I’d originally thought, revealed something about the nature of Twitter: this medium, which is supposedly about participating in conversations, runs the risk of being converted to just another broadcast marketing medium. As of today, Ashton Kutcher has over 2 million followers. CNN has 1.7 million followers. Do you think Ashton and CNN are participating in 3.7 million conversations? Between the two of them, they follow 175 people. By my count, that’s 175 conversations, not 3.7 million. They are broadcasting.

I don’t have any problem with people who have exponentially more followers than people they follow (I think a viable case for not liking Ashton Kutcher can be made without including his Twitter habits). After all, they are in the business of broadcasting.

While celebrities and media outlets may be excused for using the medium however they damn well please, thank you very much, we should not be so lenient with people who claim to be social pundits and new media experts. One of the most admired people in the social media sphere follows more than 7,300 people. SEVEN THOUSAND PEOPLE. I don’t know seven thousand people. I daresay, in the sum total of my entire 35 years of existence, I’ve not even met seven thousand people. How conversational can you be when SEVEN THOUSAND PEOPLE are talking at the same time?

You can’t be.

Programs like Tweetlater enable Twitterers to quickly build a seemingly impressive list of friends by automatically following everyone who follows you. Twollow searches for keywords you select and automatically follows people who use them - pick the right words and you can have an enormous list of people you follow. If many of these people use programs like Tweetlater to autofollow (and presumably they do)…. you do the math.

Artificially-inflated Twitter numbers facilitated by programs like these are starting to dominate the Twitterverse. Worse, this kind of automation suggests Twitter is reaching a sort of tipping point, where the usage of the medium is switching from one-to-one to one-to-many. Automation is a corrosive force in social media.

I’ve heard variations of those excited proclamations more than a few times over the years - usually from some otherwise well-intentioned marketer at the stunning realization that his phone really is a whole lot more than a device for talking. The allure is certainly understandable; mobile redemption and click-through rates do frequently beat their web-based brethren, and mobile’s comparatively low cost warrants a closer look, particularly in this down economy. But extending traditional digital marketing practices into mobile is not only fraught with peril, it’s also the surest way to spoil the bigger mobile opportunity.

Mobile is a game changer. Its transient physical properties make it so. It is the only digital screen that isn’t essentially a termination point. Mobile is NOT something you go to - unlike a TV, which is normally turned on to watch something, and then turned off. It is also unlike a desktop computer, which is stationary and still, ultimately task-oriented. Even a laptop is fundamentally different - when was the last time you honked at someone because they were on a laptop? Mobile devices are inherently personal, more wristwatch than computer. Failing to address the implied behavioral differences of mobile devices reduces the platform to a direct marketing receptacle, the next in a long line of screens offering results that don’t suck as badly as its predecessors. Does anyone else find it weird when a marketer brags about a single digit conversion rate, essentially ignoring the fact that 90%+ people DID NOT DO WHAT THE MARKETER WANTED THEM TO DO? Name me another profession where you’re allowed to be satisfied with such a crappy result.

Mobile devices should be conduits for physical activation. Where are the mobile marketing applications that get many people excited and engaged, not a few simply converted? They’re not here yet, because social marketers have yet to wrest the discussion away from direct marketers - who are too busy turning the platform into a media buy to realize that the advantage mobile has over traditional digital mediums is temporary and fleeting - and make it about conversation. A conversation where brands use mobile not to shout, but to listen. Not to blast the latest offer to, but as a way to get people excited.

Why don’t baseball games have ringtone waves sponsored by big brands? Why aren’t brands rewarding camera phone owners for snapping pictures of themselves using their products in novel ways? Why are banks focusing so heavily on extending web-based banking systems to mobile instead of thinking about the mobile device as a replacement for credit/debit cards (full disclosure: I hate carrying a wallet)?

Those questions can only be answered by people who’ve already had to think about a technology from the ground up: the social marketer.

Audio of the talk available here.

Dany Sullivan has a great piece on them at search engine land.

Top Choices

bit.ly: It offers all the key features you’d want in a service, with nice stats that show number of clicks over time, what sites are referring traffic to your twitted URL, locations clicks are coming from and Twitter conversations using the URL. It’s also the default in three of the four major clients — or three of the major clients, if you exclude Twitter itself.

tr.im: Offers all that bit.ly does other than not being built into Twirl. Tweetdeck support is coming soon. Stats are nice. Bit.ly perhaps offers more drilldown on the referrer front, from my fast review. Remember, a more in-depth review of tracking stats will come in the future.

cli.gs: Offers the same as the others above, though it is not built into either of the major clients TweetDeck or Twhirl. You do get TweetFeed support. Stats include showing which search engines have spidered your links. There’s a nice “social media mentions” section that show clicks coming off My Yahoo, FriendFeed, Google Blog Search and others.

More Choices

Snipurl / Snurl / Snipr / Sn.im: You kind of want them to pick a name and settle on it (like Sn.im). The service is currently in three clients, but it’s to be dropped from TweetDeck. Within Twhirl, it also uses the long Snurl.com domain. If you want sn.im URLs, you have to go outside the client to make them. Stats are simply the number of clicks — it’s not in the same class as services above. Finally, ZoneAlarm flagged it as spyware. It’s not, but that’s something to consider in case your visitors are running that software and trying to click on your links.

budURL: Being dropped from TweetDeck. Stats look extensive, if you want to pay. One of the longest domain names of any service.

Short.ie: Originally I had this down as not recommended, as it issued a 302 redirect. They got in touch with me and said not so! I tested again, and they are issuing 301s. They also provide custom URLs –I missed that. Both have been updated. Finally, they say that Twitterfeed support is coming. That with basic stats make them a nice alternative choice. However, they still can’t handle URLs with parameters (I tested that again, and it’s still an issue).

kl.am: Not built into any clients and the stats are fairly rudimentary.

POPrl: Semi-basic stats, being dropped from TweetDeck. No custom URLs.

idek.net: Very basic stats only, being dropped from TweetDeck. No custom URLs.

A new study suggests that Twitter is the root cause of the current economic malaise. Policy experts predict a Twitter moratorium may be declared for Summer 2009 as part of an effort to stimulate economic production and reverse GDP declines.

Is there a lesson in all of this?

On Monday, while attending SXSW in Austin, Owyang tweeted this about mZinga, a social media software vendor: “I’m getting more information (nearly 4 reference today) that Mzinga is having financial difficulties. They need to brief me immediately.”

My initial reaction was mixed and dispassionate. On one hand, part of Owyang’s job is to disclose information - the good, the bad and the fugly - to the clients who rely on him to help them make buying decisions. On the other hand, it seemed as Owyang was tweeting a bit out of turn, based on incomplete, dubious information.

But he didn’t stop with that tweet, adding in a subsequent tweet a link to this blog entry where he said, “I strongly recommend that any Mzinga clients or prospects stall any additional movement till they brief me next Monday.”

Owyang’s blog is extremely popular - if the chest thumping on it is true, Technobabble has ranked it the #1 analyst blog, while it comes in at #31 on AdAge’s Power 150. Owyang has more than 33K people following him on Twitter. The numbers suggest that the overwhelming majority of people paying attention to what he says are, in fact, not clients. My hackles were raised.

Add to this the fact that Forrester is on the take from mZinga, who, like many other social media software companies covered in Owyang’s WAVE report, pay Forrester for consulting services*. Apparently mZinga didn’t schedule a briefing with Owyang quickly enough to dissuade him from telling tens of thousands of people not to buy their products until further notice.

I’m foaming at the mouth.

The shady world of software analysis has avoided the public ire for long enough. Taking money from clients looking to buy AND vendors looking to sell, and claiming ANY amount of objectivity is, flatly, a ruse. We can thank Owyang’s stunning lack of judgment for exposing a little more of the emperor, but dude’s been naked all along. (I remember waiting with a gut full of nerves the arrival of Gartner’s latest “Magic Quadrant” covering the mobile industry. I can assure you it was always many things, but never magical.)

In the Web 2.0 world, can’t software analysts be rendered obsolete? How about a community where the masses describe and rate vendors, and where those ratings are rated based on how helpful/true/bogus they are?

At the very least, analysts should pick who they want to shill for, and disclose it thoroughly. Forrester can start exhibiting the same transparency they extol by naming every single vendor who pays them and appears on their WAVE report.

*We help business and marketing executives at technology providers with:

- Market and competitive assessments.
- Go-to-market strategy.
- Custom market research.
- Product development.
- Message tuning.
- Case study development.
- ROI proof.

From the Forrester site.