Online Anonymity? Surely You Must Be Joking 183.145.34.104…

The next time you find yourself wanting to add a comment to a blog post think twice about what you write. A man in St. Louis recently resigned after his management confronted him about an obscene comment he left on a blog post at the site of the St. Louis Post-Dispatcher. The comment was vulgar (a one word response to the question “What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten?”) and was deleted immediately. The commenter posted it again, though, and that’s when things got interesting. The blog editor, Kurt Greenbaum, looked up the commenter’s IP address, learned where it was coming from and called the location (a local school) to notify them. The school’s IT person had the time and did a bit more legwork and determined it was a school employee. When confronted, the man resigned on the spot.

Most people have a perception they can function online with as much or as little anonymity as they want, that it’s up to them to decide how much they want to reveal. The truth is, though, unless you’re taking very specific, active measures to protect your identity, it’s not too difficult for someone with the the time and desire to find out who you really are. That said, there’s an trust between blogger and commenter, often codified in a site’s terms of use, that the blogger will never use the commenter’s IP, considered personal information, to identify them. Ban them, sure, if necessary, but what Kurt Greenbaum of the stltoday.com site did shattered that expectation of privacy and brought into question his integrity and that of his company.

Greenbaum has so far been unapologetic about his actions, insisting they were appropriate and that he’s not responsible for the man losing his job. He’s right about that. The man resigned, he wasn’t fired. But the first part, the appropriate action stuff? Yeah, totally in the wrong. Kurt has compromised the trust any of his readers had in him and the St. Louis Post-Dispatcher. For his efforts in undermining the trust of his readership and setting an awful precedent, Kurt Greenbaum is awarded one Fizzle-Pop™ brand Fizzle!

If you knew your employer could be contacted because of a comment you made on a blog, how would this affect your online activities? Did Kurt do the right thing here?

Aw, T-Mobile, You Didn’t Have To Do That…(You Totally Had To Do That)

Remember the Sidekick, that little cellular device favored by teenage mall denizens and, apparently, professional cretin Perez Hilton? Recently, dozens of Hot Topic shoppers were hit hard when a back-end system failure made accessing any data not on the device itself impossible. At first, it looked like the data was lost permanently.

Perez was not pleased.

In between algebra and gym, the other Sidekick users handled it using all of the behavioral tools they had at their disposal.

Microsoft, the folks who bought the company that makes the device, Danger, said they were working around the clock trying to recover the data (and save face), but it wasn’t looking good.

But then something wonderful happened.

T-Mobile offered to let anyone using a Sidekick to leave their service contract with no penalty. This ups the number of kind, generous and sensible acts perpetrated by the cellular industry to “1”.

Turns out, though, MS was able to recover the data for most customers. A sigh of relief was heard throughout America’s high school cafeterias.

This guy was happy, too.

You really can find anything on eBay

The internet is big. You can announce your break-up, find a mac-and-cheese recipe pretty dang close to your grandma's, challenge other people at jewel-matching games and make sand art.

And now you can also be a "journalist". As PR people, we constantly find ourselves discussing the "new face of journalism" and how citizen journalists and traditional journalists can peacefully co-exist. We've shifted the methods we use to reach our clients' targets, including bloggers in our outreach efforts and debating regularly who our markets' influencers are.

As our view of credible sources shifts, here's something to keep in mind:
A traditional journalist who reviews a restaurant is going to disclose the fact that the chef comped his meal to get the story.
A blogger may not.

At the recent IFBC in Seattle, panelists brought up this very point, suggesting that for a blog to earn street cred, transparency is key.

Given that:
A traditional journalist will return the product you sent him to review, so that no one can claim that his review was positive because he benefited financially from the opportunity.
A blogger may not. Or as I witnessed today, a blogger may even keep the review product you sent him (which you suggested he giveaway to his readers) and attempt to sell it on eBay.

We're becoming more and more internet savvy. There are Boomers on Facebook and the emails from the Prince of Africa, offering millions of dollars are luring fewer people. Hopefully, the bloggers with higher standards will earn credibility and those without will get ignored.

Hopefully.

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

[this is pulled from another blog]

We really can’t deny the fact that businesses are testing out Twitter as part of their steps into the social media landscape. You can say it’s a stupid application, that no business gets done there, but there are too many of us (including me) that can disagree and point out business value. I’m not going to address the naysayers much with this. Instead, I’m going to offer 50 thoughts for people looking to use Twitter for business. And by “business,” I mean anything from a solo act to a huge enterprise customer.

Your mileage may vary, and that’s okay. Further, you might have some really great ideas to add. That’s why we have lively conversations here at [chrisbrogan.com] in the comments section. Jump right in!

First Steps
-Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
-Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
-Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
-Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
-Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
-Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
-Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
-Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
-Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
-Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout and @jstorerj from Mzinga.

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet
-Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
-Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
-When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
-Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
-Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
-Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
-When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
-Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
-Don’t toot your own horn too much. (Man, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I do it all the time. - ---Side note: I’ve gotta stop tooting my own horn). Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

Some Sanity For You
-You don’t have to read every tweet.
-You don’t have to reply to every @ tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty).
-Use direct messages for 1-to-1 conversations if you feel there’s no value to Twitter at large to hear the conversation ( got this from @pistachio).
-Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.
-3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter.
-If you tweet all day while your coworkers are busy, you’re going to hear about it.
-If you’re representing clients and billing hours, and tweeting all the time, you might hear about it.
-Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL and all the variants. It helps tidy up your tweets.
-If someone says you’re using twitter wrong, forget it. It’s an opt out society. They can unfollow if they don’t like how you use it.
-Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.

The Negatives People Will Throw At You
-Twitter takes up time.
-Twitter takes you away from other productive work.
-Without a strategy, it’s just typing.
-There are other ways to do this.
-As Frank hears often, Twitter doesn’t replace customer service (Frank is @comcastcares and is a superhero for what he’s started.)
-Twitter is buggy and not enterprise-ready.
-Twitter is just for technonerds.
-Twitter’s only a few million people. (only)
-Twitter doesn’t replace direct email marketing.
-Twitter opens the company up to more criticism and griping.

Some Positives to Throw Back
-Twitter helps one organize great, instant meetups (tweetups).
-Twitter works swell as an opinion poll.
-Twitter can help direct people’s attention to good things.
-Twitter at events helps people build an instant “backchannel.”
-Twitter breaks news faster than other sources, often (especially if the news impacts online denizens).
-Twitter gives businesses a glimpse at what status messaging can do for an organization. -Remember presence in the 1990s?
-Twitter brings great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn (if you look for it, and/or if you follow the right folks).
-Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.
-Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (mine are).
-Twitter can augment customer service. (but see above)

Root of All Evil - Bloggers!

It is official the root of all evil are Bloggers. They beat UFC. And even though Lewis Black did not send down this punishment I think all blogers should have to line up and take their turn in the octagon with UFC's elite. So I guess that inlcudes me right now. And I am friends with a UFC fighter and let me tell you he would beat my a*#!!! So Ivan if for some reason you read this please be kind, remember it does not take much to send me to the ground in pain, no need for you to work up a sweat.

But for those of you in our industry watch the episode there are some great lines about the popularity and absurdity of blogging and even twitter.