Cyberspace Is No Place For The Dumb Or Dumber

Guidelines For Protecting Yourself, Your Family, Your Business

By David Miranda

Someone once said "ignorance means you don't know, stupidity means you'll never know". This said, there is a great deal of ignorance and stupidity exercised by people in this digitally connected and viral world we call cyberspace.

Everything you put in an email, a text message, a user-generated video, on a social networking site, on a blog, in a podcast, in a voice mail, etc. can be distributed to anyone else, anywhere else, at any time in the future - any once it's out there, it's out there to stand on its own - unvarnished with no context. We all know this, yet it does not stop us from continuing to be ignorant, stupid - just plain dumb about what we are digitally producing and distributing.

We witness countless examples of "digital dumbness" every day. The "Academy Award of Dumb Moves" in recent memory go to the following:

• Best Insert Of Foot in Mouth By A Presidential Hopeful - Republican President hopeful George Allen being taped making his infamous "macaca" statement at a rally forcing him out of the race.


• Best Parent In A Supportive Role - Alec Baldwin for his voice mail rant to his teenage daughter forcing him to make public mea culpas.


• Best Bigoted Performance By A Seinfeld Character - Michael Richards' phone camera video of his racially-epitheted incident at an LA comedy spot that resulted in him going into a self-induced exile.


• Best Defamation By A Radio Icon - Don Imus' infamous negative descripitions of the Rutger's women's varsity team resulting in his dismissal. Update: Mr. Imus is back on the air, although much chastened and careful with his comments.


• Best Unkept Secret Affair By A City Official - The Mayor of Detroit, who after denying any romantic relationship with a married aide (he's married to) now as to explain thousands of lurid text messages between the two now available on the Internet.

There are countless examples of these types of incidents. Smart people doing dumb things is nothing new. The difference is that in today's interconnected viral world, millions of people know about it. Cyberspace is today's Pandora's Box.

Today, we all send (and share) sensitive emails, correspondence, videos, and personal information hour by hour. In the blur of life today, we sometimes do these things without thinking or consideration of present or future consequences of this user-generated communication.

Here are some simple guidelines to protect yourself, your family, and your business in cyberspace:

• Think before you hit the send, enter, upload, share, blog this buttons. Remember that everything you communicate - emails, voice mails, text messages, blog and social networking entries, podcasts, chat rooms, videos, etc. will and can be distributed without impunity.


• Be careful who you cc or bcc in communications.


• Be smart about the personal information you enter on social networking sites including MySpace, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. Your current (and future employer), colleagues, etc. can view and share this information.


• Exercise discretion, good taste, and good manners in your digital behavior.


• Remember that today's friends could become tomorrow's adversary.


• Keep business, business and personal, personal. Don't intermingle the two.


• Know what your children are doing on the internet. Give them rules.


• It cannot get distributed in cyberspace, if you don't put it there in the first place.

Bottom Line: Once it's out there, it's out there for millions to see. There is no equivalent of an eraser or "White Out" in cyberspace.

Practice safe Internet.

Recognition Marketing - The Rise And (Potential) Fall Of The Holy Google Empire

By David Miranda

Achilles has his heel. Superman has his Kryptonite. The werewolf has his silver bullet. Dracula has his stake through the heart. Google has privacy.

As the search 8000-lb. gorilla enters 2008, it seems indomitable. Search share has increased; it owns YouTube, Blogger, G-Mail, Froogle, AdSense, Feedburner, and it's purchase of DoubleClick just got approved by regulatory authorities. Google fortunes (and stock price) continues on an upward trajectory.

Google's "Achilles Heel" is privacy.

Here is the case. Google (and its wholly-owned subsidiaries) is not really in the search business. It is in the data collection and analysis business. They collect and analyze data from all interactions with many millions of users - all this data is collected without the prior permission of the user. Think about this for a moment. If you search on Google, have a G-Mail account, have a blog on Blogger, visit any site with AdSense, visit any site using DoubleClick, have an RSS feed through Feedburner, or frequent YouTube; the odds are great that Google has been collecting and analyzing your behavior.

Want a scary non-Google example? How about Yahoo!. Yahoo! provided information on a Chinese dissendent to the Chinese government. The dissident was arrested and now sits in prison. Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo, was called to testify before Congress and apologized. The Chinese dissident, however, remains in prison.

I use Google in this example because they are the biggest and most powerful, but not the only company on the privacy radar screen.

What happens to Google's fortunes if every person using a Google site or service is asked to opt-in and give their approval before their personal online behavior is shared with third parties for economic benefit to Google and their advertisers, etc.? What happens when privacy advocates take Google to task through litigation? When the government decides to intervene? When Google has to divulge to the public what they collect and how they use the information?

The bottom line is this. Without the prior expressed approval of each use, i.e. opt-in/opt-out, Google's current business model is compromised. It is the elephant in the room in Mountain View.

Stay tuned.

Recognition Marketing - What To Look Out For In 2008

Be Prepared For The New Year

By David Miranda

2008 will be an interesting year. It is a presidential election year with the most diverse slate of candidates in a generation. US. economic growth is slowing. World oil prices remain high. Toyota is expected to claim GM's long-held spot as the world's Number One automaker. The American dollar is soft against major world currencies. Credit is getting tighter after the sub-prime debacle. The Summer Olympic Games will be held in Beijing. Yes, it should be an interesting year, but there are a few areas that a marketer should pay special attention to since they will have a dynamic impact on marketing strategy moving forward. These include:

1. The privacy issue - The assault on privacy has been both overt (opt-in/opt-out programs); covert (Patriot Act; data collection such as from cookies without the expressed prior approval of the consumer) over the past few years and criminal (ID theft, mishandled, stolen or lost consumer data occuring both in the public and private sectors. Marketing Implication: The Do-Not-Call List will be followed by Do-Not-Email, Do-Not-Mail, and Do-Not-Text lists, etc, etc.. Opt-in programs will become the norm. It will be more difficult in the future to get consumers to provide confidential information and there will be more government oversight due to consumer backlash. Search engines and other web sites will be required to get a consumer's prior approval to collect data from personal searches, browsing/surfing, etc. Bottom line: Advantage to the consumer.


2. The copyright issue - As this article is written, there is a prolonged writer's strike that has put the brakes on many productions in Hollywood. The main sticking point? Writers want a piece of the revenue derived from new channels of distribution of their work, e.g. the internet, mobile, podcasts, etc. Video-sharing sites, like YouTube, are the targets of litigation regarding copyright infringement with the copyright owners demanding either compensation or removal of their protected material. Other owners of copyrighted material such as magazines, newspapers, book publishers, etc. are seeking financial remedies for the unauthorized use of their content by third parties. Marketing implication: The free ride is over for those financially benefitting from using unauthorized copyrighted content. It is the distributor of the content who must either pay or do without. This includes search engines, audio & video sharing sites, etc. Bottom line: Look for a change in current business models.


3. Great ideas will cut through media clutter - Media channels have proliferated and will continue to do so as newer channels, like mobile, find their critical mass audience. Consumers, using new technology, are now determining their own individual media consumption patterns. In this world of uber-choice and uber-noise, great creativity is the key factor in cutting through the clutter. Marketing implication: Great ideas will be the most valuable marketing currency for a brand. Bottom Line: If your marketing is very, very, very good, it's not going to be good enough. It must be great, driven by world-class creativity.

Online Marketing - Big Brother Or Much Ado About Nothing?

Did We Give Permission On Who's Analyzing and Profiting From Our Internet Behavior?

By David Miranda

Consumer databases have been aggregated for many years in both the private and public sectors. Historically this information has been protected from dissemination to third parties by law unless a consumer has agreed for it to be shared with others. Despite this fact, databases are collected and aggregated by firms and sold to other firms for lead generation, market research, etc. This is, of course, how mailing lists and telemarketing campaigns acquire their prospects. Here consumers have a modest defense - do-not-call and do-not-mail lists.

Today, however, there is a different, more powerful weapon to target consumers - the Internet.

Most web sites collect and aggregate information on visitors to their sites without the expressed permission of the consumer. Google, for example, collects and analyzes search behavior on millions of consumers daily. Imagine, for a moment, all the searches you have conducted on Google. Now consider all this search history on a Google server for analysis by complete strangers with little or no oversight other than the covenant by Google that it is only using the information properly, whatever that means.

Google has recently stated it keeps the information for only 18 months, but will reduce this time to 12 months. The question is why does it need to be kept for any amount of time and if it does what the purpose?

The new buzz word in online marketing today is behavioral targeting (BT). It means that information is collected and analyzed to create predictive models for targeting appropriate and relevant ads to consumers. The question is when did consumers agree to this? When did a consumer's search history or behavior become the property of Google to monetize?

I have used Google in this example, but only because they are the largest and most sophisticated and, one might argue, the most powerful. They have acquired YouTube and is in the process of acquiring DoubleClick, the largest online ad server. Why? Vertically integrating more information on consumers for monetization. The DoubleClick purchase is being scrutinized by regulatory authorities, so stay tuned.

The real issue here is consumer privacy in a generally unregulated medium. Will it take a major faux pas to awaken consumer concern and , if so, what will be the consequences on this powerful new medium?

Are we witnessing Big Brother or is this much ado about nothing? It's worth considering.

You decide.

Consumer Privacy - The Elephant In The Room

How A Consumer Backlash Could Change The Landscape

By David Miranda

Both the public and private sectors have an insatiable appetite for intelligence. Insightful intelligence provides the owner of the intelligence with a strategic (and tactical) competitive advantage, i.e. the better the intelligence, the lower the risks, the better the plan, and the better chance for positive outcomes.

Here lies the ongoing dilemma. At what point does collecting intelligence step over the line - the line of invading someone's privacy? At what point is the end not justified by the means?

We are witnessing this conflict today, both in the public and private sectors.

After 9/11, the government passed The Patriot Act that has expanded the power of government agencies to initiate wiretaps, peruse emails, and analyze internet behavior with the cooperation of telecommunications companies, search engines, and social networking sites. All in the name of national security. The debate over privacy and the government's right to know to protect the country continues.

In the private sector, companies collect intimate personal information on their customers for their own purposes as well as for renting and selling to third parties. Some companies like Equifax and Hyperion collect consumer information from many sources and sell this information to third parties like credit card and mortgage companies. There are numerous web sites that collect consumer information for sale to other consumers as well.

Most, if not all, web sites collect and aggregate information on visitors and can track their visits and navigation using what is known as "cookies" which are loaded onto the visitor's computer indefinitely unless removed or blocked by the user. Google, among others, collects information on the searches people conduct; the web sites they visit and targets paid advertising based on a consumer's imputed keywords. Google is not a search engine or a media company - it is an intelligence-gathering company and it is attracting the attention of regulatory groups.

Those in the marketing arena need to take heed. A consumer backlash could dramatically alter the business landscape. They are already beginning to "techno-barricade" themselves from unsolicited commercial messages. Over 150 million people, for example, have registered with the government's "Do Not Call List". They are rebuking spam, both on their computers and mobile devices. They are concerned about the ever-growing problem of ID theft. There have been countless cases in both the public and private sectors of lost computers and hacking into supposedly secure consumer databases containing sensitive data on millions of consumers.

All this has caused a ground swell of consumer concern over privacy protection. A consumer backlash means the potential for government intervention and the federal government is already dealing with the scope of The Patriot Act.

What is a responsble company to do in these circumstances?

The answer is be pre-emptive. Proactively communicate with both potential and existing customers that their privacy is your top priority - and mean it. Do not wait until there is a fiduciary breach and it makes the evening news or 60 Minutes.

The consumer privacy elephant is in the room and it's time to offer it a seat at the table.