Twitter has taken the bold step to say what everyone is thinking – Google promotes it own social network Google+ at the expense of other social networks.

Twitter has not been tactful about it as well. The company outright complained that users and news organizations will all be disadvantaged if there are no tweets in the Google search results. Since news of important events often appear first on Twitter, then the news networks, and finally in search results, it goes without saying that the tweets are the most relevant when it comes to up to date reports on events.

The Google+ centred approach has been criticized widely, with Twitter being the most prominent of the complainers.  The company loves the traffic from the search giant, but with no direct advantage for Google to send traffic to tweets, one can understand the shift in focus to promote their own struggling social network.

Twitter’s Perspective on Google+

Google can still index the tweets which are public and most of them are. Twitter feels that people rely on the search giant to deliver accurate search results including breaking news and events. With Twitter being a major source of information fitting the profile, it goes without saying that the results should include searches in their 250 million or so daily tweets covering just about any given topic.

Twitter boasts about a 100 million users and as such their input should not be ignored. With the changes in Google’s focus and subsequent search results, the users and publishers definitely are at a disadvantage and the results cannot be given as the most accurate or relevant to the user.

Google hasn’t included any public Facebook content in its search results up to now and Twitter has thus just joined the low search results ranks together with other social networks.

Google’s Perspective on Social Networks

Google’s response is that they don’t have access to crawl the content of certain sites including social networks. They can thus only provide results on information not hidden behind password protection and pay-walls.

Google has also announced that they are surprised by Twitter’s outrage since the company chose not to renew the pay agreement and since then the search giant has simply observed the no follow instructions.

Review of the Twitter versus Google+ War

If one has to be completely objective then Google certainly has the right to promote Google+ more than any of the other social networks and if Twitter has not renewed their agreement, there is certainly no reason for the search engine giant to send traffic their way. Google also has the right to get others to play nice and open up their networks for crawling, but look closer and you will be able to see that the exclusion of such results and pushing sites down the rank, influence the accuracy and relevancy of results.

Even though a user with a Google+ account now has a more relevant search experience when taken into consideration that search results are adapted to the user’s past searches and profile, essential results don’t show up. For Google, it may seem relevant, but the user is suffering because of their policies. With that then the giant engine shouldn’t proclaim the best results when indeed they are self-promoting and then demoting others at the same time.

Google+ is struggling and with all its excellent privacy features, little circles and clean lay-out, it cannot compete with Facebook and Twitter following. The search engine wants access to Twitter and Facebook to crawl, but then one also has to look even deeper. Google doesn’t make ad revenue from Facebook accounts and being excluded from revenue on Twitter, it seems like another ploy to downsize competition.

One must appreciate Google’s effort to get all information accessible under one umbrella. Currently you will search your Facebook page, do a Twitter search and a Google one if you want to get up to date and really relevant results. But, Google has also been accused of bullying Android and Motorola has complained that they don’t have freedom of decision. It does seem that Google pressures every other network, platform, mobile provider and site into submission to fit their own agenda.

Does this Tug of War Hurt the User or the Company the Most?

Undoubtedly the ongoing monopoly tugging does hurt the Internet user. One should, however, ask whether another social network is needed. Does anyone have the time to login at Facebook and Google+, make your way to Twitter for some tweeting, chat at Skype and then move onto searching? Indeed, Google surely doesn’t have in mind to just add another social network, it is more an issue of taking down the one network where it doesn’t get an income from and then if they succeed in pushing tweets down the results far enough, they may even take the market there as well.

The search giant, cannot however, be criticized for being so large and marketing itself since they do give a lot of free stuff. If many of their competitors would have done the same, they may also have flooded the market. They certainly also have the right to put pressure on companies to use their products.

Twitter’s complaint against Google is somewhat legitimate and resembles how many of the smaller companies also feel. With the constant changes made by Google, several thousands of little AdSense publishers have seen their income dwindle and their sites pushed down far on the search results.

One must ask whether Google has become so big that they have lost touch with their users in the quest to promote their Google+ and other products. One must also ask whether ad income from the large companies have become more important than accurate information as search results have become focused on the large sites recently. The Twitter versus Google+ war is far from over and one can expect to see more complaints surface in future.

Back to the question of whether Twitter’s complaint against Google for promoting their own social network while pushing others down should be supported – it depends on whether you still benefit from Google’s traffic and whether you want your searches and social network to be an integrated experience.

The Piracy Bay Highlights the File Sharing Copyright Infringement Controversy

Peer to peer (P2P), file sharing networks and file share hosts, so-called torrent hosts or  torrent search engines such as The Pirate Bay, Napster, Supernova.org, TorrentSpy and isoHunt have all come under fire for so-called copyright infringement or the facilitation of copyright infringement.

Most recent, is the controversial ordering of two Dutch cable companies to block access to The Pirate Bay website. Although the owners of the website have already been found guilty of copyright infringement facilitation, the website is still fully functional. Users can still download and share music, videos, games and other content.

Although file sharing may be illegal in some countries, not all countries are equally strict on such. The Pirate Bay is a Swedish based website, and with millions of users around the world, it certainly has a lot of support. Indeed, the governments will have a hard time in tracking down every single user of such sites.

Indeed, one doesn’t necessarily need a website or search engine to download torrents. With numerous P2P networks facilitating file sharing, it can become a full time job for police around the world to track and shut down every single network.

There is also the question of whether file sharing is illegal. Not all files shared are copyright protected. Public domain works can be freely downloaded and distributed. Many authors or creators of works share such works under shareware and freeware licenses. Most of them welcome file sharing as such ensures that their works can be distributed to more people.

Anti-piracy group BREIN and other firms in the entertainment industry, including EMI and Sony Universal Music, originally brought the case against the owners of The Piracy Bay. A Swedish court ruled for jail sentences and a hefty fine trailing in the millions.

The issue has highlighted the plight of musicians, film companies, record houses and television producers regarding piracy. Whether it does constitute copyright infringement or piracy to share a file with another person for personal usage remains a hotly debated issue.

Torrents

With torrents, a user downloads not from one person alone, but can download from several persons. Rather than downloading one large file from a single supplier, such is thus downloaded in many bits from several sites or computers acting as sources on a network. This is done simultaneously and there is normally no fee involved. With a person downloading only one bit from one seeder for instance, and the rest from several peers in the network, one is thus not technically involved in infringement if the file is downloaded for personal use or so everyone thought, until recently.

Torrents differ from the normal P2P networks in the sense that one doesn’t have to subscribe, but where the users actively share files. Users are encouraged to share their files which are known as seeding. Users, who only download and don’t seed, are penalized. Such users are known as leeching agents. Torrents download at amazing speeds and with an open source code; file sharing communities are becoming exceedingly popular.

Torrent Engine

The Pirate Bay has adverts, which makes it different. However, since it doesn’t actively host the files, but is rather a search engine to find torrents, some controversy still surrounds the banning of the site. Some arguments have been made that the site owners were enriched because of their advert income, but the counter arguments state that the costs for running such a search engine are extremely high and that the advert income thus just covers the costs.

Napster at the other end indexed and made the files available. As such the site was involved in copyright infringement and not just facilitating such or finding torrents for the purpose. A recent jury verdict in the USA highlighted the danger for personal computer users when it comes to file sharing. A verdict was awarded against a woman for wilfully sharing music files. Although the verdict was reduced based on her downloading and sharing files for personal usage, it shows that consumers should expect to be act against for large quantity file sharing.  Although most of the attention is focused on file sharing websites and Internet service providers allowing for such consumers may in future be cut off from services if they are found guilty of such actions.

What are the Consequences of File Sharing?

The heated debate continues with some arguing that file sharing causes lower ranking music albums to struggle whilst the high ranking albums get a boost. The smaller artists thus feel the brunt of file sharing effects.  In the same group the feeling is that author’s creativity is negatively affected. Some sources, however, suggest that it doesn’t affect the sales of albums and that the sales of books, films and music albums have increased rather than decreased because of file sharing.

Whether or not torrents or P2P file sharing communities should be allowed to exist is another hotly debated issue.  Understandably, musicians, actors, artists and writers want to benefit commercially from their work. With that in mind, it has been suggested that sites such as The Pirate Bay be allowed to exist, but that a membership fee should be charged. Proceeds can then be shared amongst the contributors to the site.

It seems a plausible solution, but not one that will be accepted by large entertainment companies needing a lot of profit. The sheer volume of administration can be another problem when it comes to royalty payments.

SOPA

The Stop Online Privacy Act, a bill being discussed in the US Senate and House may significantly change the online environment for millions of users who will no longer be able to download and share files. Google and Facebook are some of the larger players opposing the Bill while supporters include the large entertainment companies. If the bill passes through, it could mean that the US government would be able to block out certain sites deemed to be involved or facilitating illegal downloading and file sharing.

Google, Facebook and YouTube may lose thousands to millions of visits and ad revenue. Content creators may also feel the pinch. As such the opposition to be bill is extremely strong. What do you think? Should Internet file sharing sites be blocked out and should consumers be prosecuted for downloading and sharing files in P2P networks?

Online Reputation Management to Prevent Social Media Scandals

Online reputation management, known by many as ORM, is not just a trendy term thrown around by SEO companies in the hope to attract more customers and offer a new service. It is indeed an important part of image protection in the virtual world.

Online reputation management is the ongoing process of monitoring the online environment for any accusations, writing or mentioning of a company, brand, product or person’s name in an effort to improve the party’s reputation and to protect against the results of damaging Internet content.

A few techniques used in Online Reputation Management include, but are not limited to:

• Writing of positive articles, blog posts and press releases which are all optimized according to the latest search engine algorithms to push the negative search results further down to the sandpit pages.
• Continues monitoring of social media pages including Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Blog site and YouTube for any negative comments and developing strategies to counter the negative image development.
• Promotion of neutral content in an effort to take out fires.

The Uncontrollable Social Media Monster

A careless Facebook post, advert, picture or tweet can cost a company to lose a lot of influence even with their own loyal supporters. Knowing how to address mistakes and how to deal with the uncertainties of user generated content are what the ORM specialists are best at.

In many instances, a company owner or celebrity will be better off to let the SEO specialists run their Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts. A recent embarrassment which made headlines on the Internet has highlighted the importance of a sound online reputation management policy.

Durex Twitter Scandal

Durex South Africa, the condom company, made a Tweet joke in an effort to push up awareness. Unfortunately the joke was in bad taste and although negative publicity can work in a person’s favour, it certainly has not been the case for Durex.

The joke was not well received by the public and a blogger quickly mentioned the bad taste of the joke. It wasn’t long before the feminist groups joined in the attack and the team of Durex landed with their backs against the wall. What started out as a publicity stunt quickly grew into a full scale public scandal for the company. Had they managed the situation correctly right from the start, they could have limited damage quickly.

Instead, they chose to fight the accusations instead of simply apologizing for the offense caused. The sooner they did so, the quicker the gossip could stop. It took them several hours before they finally caved in and apologized. It was the end of that, but the fire was already spreading far and wide, and as can be seen by this blog – is still burning high.

The above just goes to show that one should think before you ink. Tweets are made to be followed and quickly get a lot of attention. You, however, don’t want negative attention because of a simple one line joke. Also treat customers with respect even if you disagree with them. Don’t defend, but rather work together to get to a solution that will save your reputation.

McDonalds – Hoax Victim

Another instance where social media caused severe image damage was that of McDonalds who fell victim to a Twitter hoax tag with a picture showing a sign on the company’s door that indicated that because of robberies that the African-American customers would be required to pay $1.50 extra for every transaction at McDonalds. It was a complete hoax, but it caused severe image damage and the company had to act fast to protect its online reputation. They responded with continues tweets that the picture was a hoax and relentlessly responded to all queries relating to that. It wasn’t the first time that the company had to do crisis online reputation management because of hoaxes, but they have done well so far to manage their online reputation.

ChapStick Upset the Feminine Rights Groups

Another incident also made waves on the Internet quite recently. The ChapStick lip balm advertisement showing the backside of a female bending over a couch with the wording “Where do lost ChapSticks go?” was a complete failure because the picture implied something unsavoury. Not their intention, but nevertheless it caused tremendous uproar in the female community. The company eventually removed the ad and apologized for it, obviously a bit red in the face altogether. And where did the fire spread? In the social media front where it is not so easy to control user input.

A blogger spurred more comments on the ad, and some complained that ChapStick removed negative comments at their Facebook page. Many users were upset with the censoring of their comments. The company could have prevented more drama if they simply removed the ad immediately and explained their intention to the consumers rather than going on the defence.

Domino Pizza Employees Joked Around On YouTube

One more example to show how important effective reputation management is in the online world: Employees of Domino’s Pizza a few years ago filmed them while doing some rather disgusting acts while delivering pizzas. They placed the videos on YouTube and it wasn’t long before thousands of viewers saw it. Dominos responded in the correct way by posting an apology video for the behaviour of their employees and needless to say, fired the culprits before taking further legal action. The company lost millions and had their reputation scattered by only two employees who made a joke.

Guidelines for Effective Online Presence Management

The online presence should never be tainted with any negative comments or profiles. As such consider what others see when they type your name, the names of your employees, your brand and company name in. There should never be any unanswered comments or questions about you or any of the above mentioned. This also applies to forums and social media sites.

In terms of negative comments, don’t just let them be. Apologize where necessary and take corrective steps. Explain where appropriate and engage with the client to get a positive response. Be careful though there are online trolls who simply love to create even more negativity. Online reputation management teams can assist in identifying the best responses or ways to deal with such.

Scan the online environment for any plagiarism of your website content. Get legal advice as how to act to minimize fuzz, but also to protect the image of your company. Regularly visit high traffic blog sites to scan for any comments about your company which could put you in a bad light and follow the advice of the Online Reputation Management crew in dealing with such. If the tasks seem exhausting, simply outsource such to an SEO and ORM company to help you protect your reputation.

The web strike against SOPA and PIPA is to go ahead on Wednesday 18 January, 2012. The web is to be a dark and silent place with many of the major sites going on a black-out. The occasion – SOPA and PIPA. One the 18^th of January 2012, the unprecedented will occur. Never in the history of the Internet have so many sites protested censorship at once. Wikipedia will also strike in protest against SOPA and PIPA as will thousands of other sites.

Do Your Homework Today

If you have research to do, it will be best to get to work today as for tomorrow, you will find the web on strike against SOPA, PIPA and web censorship. The protest across the web is against the Internet censorship bills to be voted on in the USA Congress on 24 January 2012. The idea behind the blackout, including the Wikipedia strike, is to create enough public opposition against SOPA in the USA House and PIPA in the Senate.

Core Protest

Protesting sites state that web censorship attacks the very core of the Internet. It takes away freedom of speech, creativity, and privacy. Should a government not like what is said about it on a website, it will be easy to ban the site and block access to it, pretending that it has violated copyright through file sharing facilitation or the likes. The Internet belongs to the users and not the governments of the world. If the USA is allowed to enact SOPA and PIPA, they will in effect exert control over the information flow on the web.

Wikipedia Will Not Be Available

Sites such as Wikipedia and Reddit are at the forefront of the all-out strike against SOPA, PIPA, and web censorship. If you are using Mozilla Firefox as your browser, you may very well find it offline tomorrow. DowntownMiamiNews.com will also join the SOPA Blackout. According to them, the MPAA and RIAA, as driving forces behind the bill are the only ones to benefit whilst thousands to millions of users will be negatively affected by the regulations.

Even if you haven’t paid any attention to the information war between large corporations, including the likes of Google, Wikipedia and Facebook and the USA government hoping to push through legislation to censor the web and to prevent online piracy, you will be affected by the all-out one day blackout strike.

Wikipedia is a popular research source on the Internet, used by students, writers, and the general public to get a background on any topic before conducting more in-depth research. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, announced that the site will not be available for a full 24 hours in support of protest against the shutting down of sites such as The Piracy Bay and other file sharing sites and the proposed bills.

Entertainment Companies Support SOPA and PIPA

At the other end of the spectrum, the movie and entertainment companies fight hard to get SOPA and PIPA through because they lose money according to them, because of piracy, file sharing, and illegal downloading of movies and music on the Internet. Wikipedia has warned students to do their work early because the site will be off for the whole of Wednesday.

The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has indicated that such laws will help to fight piracy and general intellectual property theft. According to them, the protest in the form of a web strike or black-out distracts from the real issue of ongoing piracy. They feel that foreigners, that is users outside the USA, are stealing from the USA by means of downloads; facilitating downloads, and file sharing.

Large Sites Join Opposition to Legislation

Notably, rather useful sites and resources on the Internet are against the proposed SOPA and PIPA including WordPress and TwitPic. WordPress provides free content management blog templates, plugins and resources and with such has the right to oppose such bills. As a free resource with contributions from developers around the world, willing to share their knowledge, it is understandable that they will oppose legislation.

Online Piracy is a Problem

Online piracy is definitely a huge problem for the entertainment industry, but although the large companies complain that file sharing costs them millions in revenue, research reports have indicated that book, music and film sales have increased rather than decreased because of or despite file sharing practices.

Information Flow at Risk

The dynamic nature of the Internet is in jeopardy should the USA be allowed to control web access to so-called pirate sites or file sharing sites considered as facilitators of intellectual property theft. It does, however, ring alarm bells even with free information contribution sites such as Wikipedia since legislation will open the doors for more web censorship. It creates the risk of a completely USA controlled Internet.

Google has indicated that they support such a web strike because SOPA would allow for governments and companies to take action against so-called perpetrators without a proper trial or investigation. The free flow of information is at risk with such legislation.

Internet companies joining the web strike said the proposed legislation — SOPA in the House and the Protect Intellectual Property Act in the Senate — would allow operators no real chance before government actions could be taken against them. The web strike also including the Wikipedia blackout is a desperate cry-out by the public against web censorship and control over the information flow and freedom of expression that will come about with SOPA and PIPA.

Voting to Go Ahead

The USA Chamber of Commerce has reacted to the proposed web strike with an announcement by Steven Tepp (Chief Intellectual Property Counsel) that concerns about the bills have already been addressed including the wholesale blockage of infringing sites. Accordingly, the criminal activity of intellectual property theft is robbing companies of their rightful income.

The web strike against SOPA and PIPA will reach far and wide with many Facebook pages also joining. It is expected that as many as 5000 websites could join the black-out. There are even sites promoting the black-out in protest with the inclusion of an HTML code or JavaScript in the site’s theme. People are encouraged to Tweet about the blackout and to join the strike effort by adding their sites to the protest sites such as ProtestSOPA.org and Sopastrike.com.

The reports on the latest social networking growth stats indicate that Facebook is the leader of the pack with Twitter second and LinkedIn trailing in third place. More significant is continues growth of the networks with Facebook, showing tremendous increase in usage. With over 1.1 billion users globally and attracting more than 81% of the Internet users, Facebook is by far the biggest gun in the social network industry.

Globally, social networking growth stats show that citizens in Israel spend the most time at social networking with more than 11 hours a month per user. The people of Argentina are not far behind with over 10.6 hours a month per user and then Russians with their more than 10.3 hours monthly. Turkey, Chile, The Philippines and Colombia are not far behind. Trailing the top ten are Peru, Venezuela and Canada. Surprisingly, the US citizens spend less time on social networks than the citizens in the above countries, with South Africans not yet coming close.

Gender Profiles

Reports further indicate that women use the social media sites for comparison with their female peers whilst the men use such for finding friends. Men love the idea of body photos whilst women tend to add facial photos.  Men use the platforms for finding information about people whilst females tend to use such for personal engagement.

Social Networking in South Africa Compared To the USA and Europe

Studies indicate that more than 75% of Americans use social networks with European users slightly behind them, but when it comes to South Africa, the picture looks different. Reports show that Twitter has grown its market tremendously to now include more than a million users with estimates indicating that more than 39% of the users are active. With the majority of users in South Africa, only joining during 2010-2011, it is definitely the hottest new thing on the social media scene when it comes to South Africa.

The South African Social Media Landscape 2011 released by World Wide Worx and Fuseware indicated that the SA media is mostly responsible for the tremendous growth in Twitter usage. Accordingly, many use the platform for retrieval and for following of news.

When it comes to Facebook, the social network growth stats indicate that many of the users didn’t even log in during 2010-2011. With more than 4.1 million users and only around 3.1 million plus, who logged in during the period, it seems as if the obsession with Facebook in South Africa has subsided a bit.

Numerous users now utilize BBM and MXit as well as Twitter instead, whilst some, and only some, have begun to use Google+.  Many of the Facebook users have accounts, but only occasionally visit their profile pages to upload new pictures or to play a game or two.

Surprisingly, LinkedIn has also passed the million user mark with reports indicating 1.1 million users. It shows tremendous growth with active usage also on the increase. It has indeed shown more than 86% growth in one year. Only a tenth of the users are businesses.

MXit, though certainly not forming part of the international social networking growth stats, is still the largest mobile social media platform for the country. Its user profile shows that more than 74% of the users are teens and younger kids. It is thus, apart from BBM, the preferred platform for social networking when it comes to the youth of the country.

USA Usage

When it comes to the USA, Facebook is definitely the most important of the social networks with reports indicating that more than 57% for the users use the platform on a daily basis. LinkedIn has a smaller market penetration with just over a fifth of the user profile and Twitter in the same region.

European Usage

The Europeans are surprisingly conservative in social media usage with about half the profile logging into one social platform only. Around two thirds of Europeans use at least one of the social media networks with over 60% logging in at Facebook on a regular basis and around 15-17% on Twitter. Another social network called Vkontakte that takes around 11-13% of the user profile.

New Networks

Apart from BBM that has made its mark, reports indicate that users don’t easily migrate to other networks or add them to their profiles.  It may explain the low usage level of Google+, although it certainly has enough subscribers, just not active users. Smaller social media networks will have an even harder time in penetrating the market. It can be ascribed to persons already having all their contacts at Facebook or LinkedIn and with them already following tweets they don’t seem to have more time or willingness to add another platform to their schedule. People, according to experts in the field, tend to ignore smaller social networks because of the low level of interactivity.

 Social Networking and Branding Growth

According to the various reports, globally the USA and European users follow brands, although international figures suggest that only half the number of users from other countries, including South Africa, actively follows brands on the social networks.

Other reports indicate that MySpace usage is on the fast track downwards with Tumblr surprisingly showing growth. Accordingly, the average time spent at Facebook has increased to more than six hours a month for the USA profile. Market dominance of the big players in social networking will continue, and currently only around five networks show massive growth while the thousands of other networks have indeed shown a decrease in activity.

Social Networking Growth Stats in Japan

The Japanese, according to reports, love Facebook and Twitter just about the same, but when it comes to usage, Facebook leads with more than 52% of the sharing whilst Twitter is only used for just under 14%. Twitter has, however, shown tremendous growth in 2011 with more than 576% growth in one year. Google has shown a drop in usage of around 7-8%. Reports indicate that more than 11 million of social networking users globally are in Japan.

Social networking growth stats clearly indicate Facebook as the leader. Twitter and LinkedIn are the two other big players, but usage trends differ from country to country. In South Africa, as shown, MXit and BBM are also big, with Google+ not really a threat to any network. What is important is to take note of the tremendous growth in social media and networking. Any business hoping to reach their target audience must make use of the social platforms where their users are in addition to offline marketing and their websites.