News and Information Blog 03 2010

Performance Marketing Networks: Please Take Our 30 Second Survey

Which is the best performance marketing network?

Who do you love?

What makes them great?

Please take 30 seconds and help us rank the top 20 performance marketing networks. Be the first to receive survey results and a pdf version of the new Blue Book Guide To Ad Networks & Exchanges as soon as it's published. Click here to take survey

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Hangman: Countries & Cities

It's the old fashion Hangman game, but this time with a new look and additional features. You can choose to play from two categories: Capitals or Countries. Upon successfully guessing the word, detailed information (including the country's location, capital, neighbors, language, population and more) are revealed. Enjoy playing and enrich your knowledge.

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The Best of the Small Business Technology Summit

Small business analyst Laurie McCabe shares her thoughts and insight on the 2010 Small Business Technology Summit that recently took place in New York City.

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Baidu Closes Above $600 For First Time

To be a Baidu shareholder must be a wonderful thing. The Chinese company's stock went up yet again today and was at $608.50 when the closing bell rang, making this the first time it's ever ended a trading day above $600.

Here are a couple other numbers sure to make other investors jealous: shares of Baidu actually gained 2.29 percent today, which represents a significant increase, not a symbolic tic. Also, since January 12th (the day Google announced its "new approach to China"), shares are up a whopping 51.91 percent.

What's more, Goldman Sachs has taken the position that Baidu will do even better in the future, with the organization setting its price target at $675 (up from $575) yesterday.

Meanwhile, Google's experienced both ups and downs. Its stock performed well today, gaining 1.52 percent, but looking at its performance after January 12th, the search giant's down 7.28 percent. That'll be hard for execs to explain regardless of how much good the company's done.

A few more figures for comparison's sake: the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 lost 0.48 percent, 0.68 percent, and 0.55 percent today, respectively.

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Ingenix buys Lincoln health metrics firm

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. – Ingenix, the UnitedHealthGroup (NYSE: UNH) company that owns the former LighthouseMD in Providence, has bought another local health care IT firm, QualityMetric Inc., of …

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eBay Teams With FBI to Fight Retail Theft

The alliance, which also includes the National Retail Federation, aims to attack the billions of dollars in retail theft that occurs each year by limiting what can be fenced online.

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Twitter Business Lessons from Justin Bieber

If you're not familiar with Justin Bieber (you're excused if you're not a 12-year-old girl), he is 16-year -old singer, who was discovered by his manager on YouTube, apparently after his mom uploaded videos of his performances so his loved ones could see them.

According to What the Trend, Justin Bieber is popular right now because, he "has a lot of fans who like to tweet about him," and his new album was just released. It has to be more than that though. Bieber has frequently been a trending topic for over a month straight. The tweets just keep pouring in, and they're generally not spammy.

The week of Valentine's Day, What the Trend said, "the young Canadian R&B/pop singer has a lot of fans who like to tweet about him! He is trending these days because his solo begins the new version of We Are the World, a song for the relief efforts in Haiti."

The next week, it was attributed to the same thing. The week after that, it was: "the young Canadian R&B/pop singer is trending these days because his new song, ‘Never Let You Go’ was released for download on iTunes this week, as well as a duet with Sean Kingston, an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. He also had his birthday March 1st."

Last week, it was: "Justin Bieber's new album My World 2.0 comes out on March 23rd & his fans are excited. He also appeared on Z100.com, QVC, and GMTV in the UK."

(Hat tip to Mashable for keeping an archive of top ten tweets each week).

"It's pretty crazy to think about and just to have all the fans' support," Bieber said of his Twitter status in a recent interview. "Everything's just been wonderful."

So, Bieber has had a busy month. Still, the sheer domination over trending topics that has grown from these happenings has been quite remarkable. Have the Twitter stars just aligned for Bieber or is it all part of the marketing? Either way, perhaps there are lessons here that marketers could take away from Bieber's spark of Twitter interest.

It's tough for a brand to achieve the fandom of a teen idol (though the good news for brands is that they probably have a better shot at their own fandom lasting for the long run, as teen idols for the most part come and go, despite a few exceptions). Twitter is about what's happening right now, though, and pop culture is ALWAYS happening right now.

Lessons to Learn from Justin Bieber

1. A stream of Justin Beiber Twitter mentions appears on the Justin Beiber site. Any site can do this, and it helps promote your Twitter presence. However, use caution, because you can't control what people are saying about you. If you're ok with that openness, let it show, but if you take care of your customers, chances are they won't have much negative to say about you anyway.

2. Stay relevant to pop culture. Does that mean go and crank out a bunch of Justin Beiber articles? No, but it may help to show that you are "hip" to what's going on in some capacity.

3. Perhaps it is hasty to assume, but in this case, I'm fairly comfortable with going out on a limb and assuming that a good percentage of Bieber's fan-base is made up of young people. If there's any truth to that, it would appear to mean that Twitter is being more widely adopted by younger generations than previously thought. This could be helpful to keep in mind when considering your potential Twitter audience.

4. Stay relevant not only to pop culture, but to customers. Much of Bieber's Twitter popularity has been attributed to the various things he has been working on - appearances in songs, TV performances, new singles, an upcoming album, etc. He's doing things that his fans find interesting and worth tweeting about. Do things that your fans find interesting, and they will hopefully tweet about it.

Is it ok to say no to Twitter? Sure, but you can't deny the potential reach the service allows you, and this is only growing. A year from now, Twitter is likely going to be even more useful to businesses in a variety of capacities. They're expected to have an ad platform, for one. Last week, they announced the @anywhere platform.

Don't expect to get Justin Bieber-like fandom, but I'd wager that many businesses would consider a fraction of that to be a successful Twitter endeavor. By the way, a recent study found that brands on Facebook and Twitter are favored by consumers.

Why do you think Justin Bieber has dominated Twitter's trending topics so much more than other celebrities and topics? Discuss here.

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Internet Marketing Tools: Web Analytics Service

CrazyEgg offers a colorful twist on your small business Web site traffic. Plus, a site for downloading free books and a nifty stopwatch with loads of features.

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Carcieri signs $60M loan-guarantee law

Gov. Donald L. Carcieri signed a law Tuesday that increases to $60 million the amount of loan guarantees available for businesses through the R.I. Industrial Recreational Building Authority.

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Marketing Strategies: Commit to Customer Service

This week Andrew Lock's small business marketing tips include the power and simplicity of customer service, a free outsourcing tool and an update on GotBiz.TV (hint: it's no joke).

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BCBSRI to repay small businesses $1.8M

Blue Cross will reimburse about $1.8 million to small employers and pay the largest fine ever imposed by a Rhode Island health insurance regulator as punishment for misapplying the “health status” factor in setting rates.

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FileMaker Pro 11: Database Software Review

FileMaker Pro has been considered essential small business software for years. We review the latest iteration.

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Marketing Like Bing: The Farmville Example

There are many ways to market your business through Facebook. Some are obvious, and others not so much. One thing you can pretty much count on is that there are incredible masses of people on the social network that you can potentially reach, and in ways that will allow them not only to engage with your brand in a comfortable setting, but with other Facebook ecosystems they are already engaging with.

A perfect example of this was recently demonstrated by Microsoft in one of the company's many marketing strategies for its "decision engine" Bing. I sat in on a Bing panel this week at SXSW, where some of Bing's marketers talked about a variety of ways they have used social media to gain users. One of these ways was through none other than Farmville (if you're a Facebook user, and don't live under a rock, you've at least heard of it).

More people use Farmville than Twitter, according to Bing, and People are sharing all kinds of activities within Farmville itself. That's why the company saw a great opportunity to experiment. What they did was offer a special offer inside of Farmville, that would give users free "farm cash" if they became a fan of Bing on Facebook, which would encourage continued user interaction with Bing. As a result:

- Over 72% of users who clicked on the engagement became fans

- 59,000 people published the story to their news feed

- Over 70,000 clicks were received on secondary feeds

- In 24hours, Bing had over 400,000 new fans to keep

Microsoft said its goals for engagement and social media efforts have been to:

- Add or create relevant value (stuff that's not even necessarily a Microsoft property)

- Add depth to Bing's personality

- Lead someone to a relevant engagement with Bing or each other.

- Yield passionate or emotional response from people

- Be intimate and/or scalable (can we be both)?

Bing's Farmville experiment achieved all of these. However, the point of this is not that you should go out and immediately start a campaign through Farmville (although maybe it's worth looking into if you think it's a fit). The point is that there are more ways to harness a massive social network user-base (Facebook recently surpassed Google as the most-visited site in the U.S. for the week), according to Experian Hitwise). That's a pretty impressive feat. Also consider that consumers favor brands who are on Facebook and Twitter, according to a recent study.

Really, it's not even about Facebook or Twitter. It's about getting out there wherever people are, and this is where they happen to be at the moment. That may change by this time next year, or the year after, but the principle will not. We're at a point in history where it's never been so easy for consumers and brands to engage with one another. Perhaps even better for brands, is that it has never been easier to reach customers in places they choose to entertain themselves, and I don't mean just get in their faces, but actually reach them and get that engagement from them.

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Google, BofA Lauded For Web Performance

With consumers increasingly used to snappy, responsive Web sites, online sites across all industries face increasing pressure to keep pace with sites like Amazon and Google.

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Koller OKs 10% hike in BCBSRI rates

Health Insurance Commissioner Christopher Koller has approved rate factors that would boost the premiums of all three commercial insurers in Rhode Island, but only Tufts Health Plan got the full hike it requested.

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Web Marketing Tools: What's Your Reputation?

Is your small business reputation on the line? Use this handy Web tool to find out. Plus, a how-to video resource and Google offers free social networking tools.

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Facebook Tweaks Search Suggestions For Relevancy

Facebook's search suggestions are about to get significantly better. Rather than just suggest the names of people, events, groups, and Pages a person's already connected with, suggestions are going to draw from users' networks of friends and the entire site.

It is, of course, nice not to have to type out your closest pal's 17-letter last name multiple times a day. But this change overcomes a significant flaw in Facebook's existing approach to making suggestions, considering that it's the things people aren't familiar with they probably need the most help spelling and/or tracking down.

As for how the upgraded system will work, Wayne Kao, a Facebook engineer, explained on the company blog, "[I]f you start typing in 'MGM' to find the Facebook Page for the band MGMT, you may see it as the first result in the drop-down menu because you or one of your friends is a fan of MGMT on Facebook."

Or, "If you are searching for something else, like the MGM Grand Las Vegas hotel or the movie studio MGM, you can select one of those instead from the drop-down menu."

Look for this change to roll out over the course of the week. Then enjoy spending less time typing all sorts of stuff, and not just your best friend's name.

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Dunkin’ sales hit $5.7B; 351 stores added

Dunkin’ Donuts said this week its sales rose 4 percent last year as the ubiquitous coffee chain opened 351 new stores around the world. At left, Dunkin’s flagship store in Shanghai, China. The chain employs 1,034 in Rhode Island.

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A Small Business Guide to Buying a Netbook

Can a netbook be a small business computer? Our guide helps you choose a netbook PC that can handle everyday business tasks at a very affordable price.

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Twitter Announces @anywhere Platform

Twitter should soon become more ubiquitous across the Web. Today, the company's cofounders announced something called @anywhere that should help integrate the Twitter experience into standard sites, and a number of impressive organizations have agreed to take part in the initial rollout.

Evan Williams essentially handled the SXSW side of things this afternoon, discussing @anywhere during his keynote address. You can read our liveblogged coverage of that talk here.

As for what Biz Stone was up to, he explained on the official Twitter Blog, "We've developed a new set of frameworks for adding this Twitter experience anywhere on the web. Soon, sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com."

Stone then continued, "Our open technology platform is well known and Twitter APIs are already widely implemented but this is a different approach because we've created something incredibly simple. Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript."

Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, MSNBC, The New York Times, Yahoo, and YouTube are among Twitter's first partners in this effort. Target dates and many other details remain unknown, but it looks like Twitter's set to give its own version of Facebook Connect a solid start.

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Study: 1 in 5 in R.I. uninsured this year

More than 187,000 Rhode Islanders – or 21 percent of those under the age of 65 – will lack health insurance at some point this year, according to a study released Monday.

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Must Visit From....

If other sites links directly the sub-pages of your site or if previous required pages are being skipped, you can now require your visitors to come from a certain page! Those that did not come from the required page are alerted then send back to the required previous page. Clever!

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Google Offers Local Product Availability Search

The latest twist to Google's search gives users the ability to find out if the product they're looking for is available from a local retailer.

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Small Business Marketing Tips: How to Write Better Copy

This week's marketing tips include a free copywriting Web tool, productivity advice to reduce your workload and a look at how studying your customers can increase revenue.

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Liveblogging: SXSW Keynote: Valerie Casey

I'm sitting here in Exhibit Hall 1 waiting for the keynote to begin. I will be liveblogging/paraphrasing what is discussed (please excuse the inevitable typos).

Bio from the SXSW Booklet: Valerie Casey works with start-ups, governments, and companies all over the world on challenges ranging from creating new products and services to transforming organizational processes and behaviors....She is the founder and executive director of Designers Accord.

Liveblogging starts:
2:05: Introduction begins...

2:07: Delighted to be here.....despite the fact the interactive community has been absent in conversation about sustainability...the commuinty will take the greatest leadership role moving forward...

Narrative
I find that a lot of the interaction designers are fixated on narrative and story telling ....you can take any story from film/literature/politics...and plot them on the axis of good fortune/ill fortune and time from beginnign to end

03:11: You can take any story from test to John Grishm, or Jennife Anniston...

Shows three different graphs.

Things you see in the news all the time - heart wrenchign pictures: child sitting in ewaste dumps

gives stats about these stories...horrific

Shows image of baby albatross, taken on midway where albatross mate...the finding of these babies...nothing has been done to them....the mothers were flyign out around the ocean to find food for their babies, and they mistook pieces of plastic for food and fed them to their children...grotesque...perverse to think about the effect we're having on bio diversity...

political corruption....

Why does a salad cost more than a big mac (slide)

it's because the usda - the food triangle supports one version of a recomendatino and the government does somthing entirely different...millions of dollrs through lobbyists going to meat and dairy....out of control agricultural indsutry...

Bizarre corruption between health and politics...

Burn pits in Iraq/Afghanistan....set up by gov. contractors like haliburton..
02:28: Shows picture of Haiti devastation - scientists linking natural disasters with climate change...

Talks about more political corruption....snowballing effect of sustainability

What are we supposed to do with all of that? "It turns out you don't have to kill yourself."

Designers Accord to respond to doom and gloom...

bringing the creative community together, we can look at sustainability ...bring optimism...there's no one of us that can make real change by ourselves.we have to depend on collective wisdom.

personal accountability to colletive accountability.

Share my stories about not only my successes. industry ishellbent on successes....talk also about failurs nd compromises...thats what collective action is about.

Not just a digital network....we have town hall meetings....i want the ability to ask questions...

Each week in case studies in fast company - tell the story of sustainaiblity...not about a checklist its about a constant struggle...

try to educate product/interaction/communiation designers, and architects...

School by Design initiative (open source)

try to think about taking sustainabilit out of ghetttoized....

639 design firm adopters, 33 educational adopters, 32 corporate adopters, 100 countries, six continents, all design disciplines

despite fact that media still talks about sustainabiliy in very green terms...

the truth is that the converstions become much more complex and interesting....
someties miss the point.

even if you're in the interactive community...

02:26: We have to recognize that there's a consequence for everything we do.

I believe its the interactive community thats going to lead this movement next. thinking about systems problems

A system is more than the sum of its parts.

02:30: We cannot just focus on one part...it has to do with environmental, cultural, economic, etc.

Feedback delays plus bounded rationality equals design traps

Bounded rationality - i can only make decisions based on the knowledge right in front of me. barely looks at other groups or teams.. a design trap is when you design for the symptom rather than the problem - looks at dell studio hybrid. - I am a supporter of what dell is trying to do, but it's a classic case. misses the point that we should not be designing another desktop computer...when will we stop thinking that less bad is good.

There is no such thing as a side effect.

Sometimes we arbitrarilly design what we're resposnible for...global taco shed - students went to a taco truck and decided that each one of them would be responsible for tracing origin of ingredients..all for one taco had traveled over sixty four thousand miles....there's this underlying movement that says local is better. global is bad....but what these students did is also discover that salt and cheese were local, avocados were from chile...they combatted the idea of the polarity between global and local by looking at embodied energy in each ingredient. they learned a lot when comparing them.

02:36 Creating the right measurement of success

The Gross National Product

U.S. indicator of prosperity - but that indicator has nothing to do with health and wll being and relationships. out of sync...all sorts of inconsistencies
02:40 Selecting the correct lever for change

IN systems thinkng - people identify the wrong thing to change when theyr'e trying to change something.

mythology is all about lone inventor and silver bullet - they don't really exist....we continue that mythology and we need to change the rhetoric we use...

Talks about Naked Pizza...

02:44 The priority is to use the scale of concept to tackle people on their own turf...

what is the lever we use? the counter-intuitive one ?

Enabling new models by recognizing the relationship between structure and behavior...

She says she'll tweet references for all the stuff she's talking about....probably a good idea to check those out if you're interested....(to understand her points better)

02:47 No difference between a structure and the behavior that comes from it. when a new president comes in and you have all these hopes for change, and nothign really changes...its because the structure hasn't really changed

02:48: Talks about HUB...

02:49 Issue - attention cycle : degree of awareness is inversely correlated to the degree of productive action

Rising of public awareness about a problem...when the public starts to get greata attention around an issue, there's actually a point where the degree of product action is inversely correlated...

When you get a couple of hundred thousand people interested in a topic it has a tranquilzing effect...people think i don't need to do anything because there's already so many people doing it...

people believe someone else is looking after it.

A system is a collection of elements and interconnections that ar e highly organized to achieve an overall goal or purpose
if you change the purpose of a system you can effect change....
the interactive community is the one to do it we are architects and product designers and communicators all wrapped into one.
How can we change the narrative? What would happe if your purpose was oriented toward cultural sustainability instead of commerce?

What if social media was actually about social impact?

The interactive community is the connecting tissue...

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Race is on to lure America’s Cup to R.I.

The effort to win the 2013 Cup appears to be stronger than a similar attempt to lure the 2011-2012 Volvo Ocean Race to Newport.

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SEO and Social Media Matter for Press Coverage

When businesses think about search and social media, a great deal of the time, they are thinking about traffic, customer engagement, and brand awareness. While these are all good things to consider, there may be more to that last one that you have spent much time thinking about.

Brand awareness goes beyond just having a random customer find your site in a set of search results or through a link from their Facebook news feed. Have you considered how channels like search and social media are used by media outlets and journalists? The fact of the matter is that journalists and bloggers alike utilize both to a great extent while covering their beats.

Do you take press coverage into consideration? Comment here.

Search and social both play significant roles in PR. This is a topic that WebProNews recently discussed with TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden. Odden calls journalists customers, and in many ways they should be treated as such when it comes to getting your product or site in front of their eyeballs.

Odden says to look at what it is you can do as a marketer to make it easier for the journalist to do their job. Optimize your content for what a journalist is looking for. This is one way you can potentially increase your media coverage, which can obviously increase brand awareness.

Odden makes a great point online journalists often having tighter deadlines, and turning to blogs and social networks for sources and quotes. For example, the real-time nature of a Twitter search might be just what a journalist or blogger need to find someone who's talking about the subject they're writing about, at nearly the moment they're looking for it.

For that matter, Google's real-time search can help for the same reason, and most journalists and bloggers frequently use Google to search for what they're looking for. If what they're looking for happens to be related to a newsy topic, they just might see Google's real-time results literally before anything else. If that topic happens to be related to something you're talking about, you just might end up in those results too. Google is also indexing updates from Facebook Pages here now, by the way.

The point is, if you are looking for increased media coverage, there are ways to increase your chances of getting in front of the right people, and it is certainly not limited to real-time search. Sometimes journalists/bloggers will simply tap their contacts within their social networks (or email of course) to find sources. This is as good a reason as any to engage in social media on a regular basis and network with lots of relevant people.

If attracting media attention is what you're after, consider these five tips I offered in a SmallBusinessNewz article last year:

1. Do something that's different - Simply do something that makes you stand out: something that gets people talking. If it creates enough buzz, the media coverage will likely follow.

2. Look for niche publications - the more niche the publication, the more likely they probably are to cover you.

3. Personalize your message - When you're writing an email to a publication to talk about your business, for example, personalize the message for the specific person you're contacting, so they know it's not just a manufactured piece that you're sending all over the web. Journalists like exclusivity.

4. Find multiple contacts - If you can find more than one contact for a particular publication, it may be wise to send your story pitch to them. This will increase the potential visibility among the publication's staff.

5. Provide plenty of details - When sending such a pitch, it's a good idea to include as many details about the product/story as possible. The more details available, the less research is required, and time is more valuable than ever, especially for a journalist.

Another piece of advice I would give is to not let your press center hold back your marketing opportunities. I've seen a lot of companies fail to keep their own press centers up to date with the latest news, even as big announcements are made, and even if they have issued press releases. Often times, these releases won't even be available on the site until later. If you want to increase your chances of more media coverage, you should always have your latest news readily available in your press center, or via your blog - wherever you make announcements. And always provide contact info.

Share your tips for increasing press coverage.

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Rocky Point Foundation hopes to beat developers

A new foundation wants to convert the 83 acres that until 1995 were home to the Warwick amusement park into a public waterfront oasis.

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Google Acquires DocVerse, Takes Aim At MS Office

The acquisitive arm of Google reached out again today, and this time, grabbed DocVerse, a company that specializes in the real-time sharing and editing of documents. The unusual thing is that DocVerse doesn't deal with just any documents; instead, it focuses on Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word documents.

A post on the Official Google Enterprise Blog explained the purchase by stating, "[A]s we continue to improve Google Docs and Google Sites as rich collaboration tools, we're also making it easier for people to transition to the cloud, and interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office."

Then here's another important piece of information, hinting that a significant integration or upgrade already in the works: "Current DocVerse users can keep using the product as usual, though we've suspended new sign-ups until we're ready to share what's next."

Anyway, DocVerse sold for $25 million, according to Jessica E. Vascellaro, which would appear to make it less expensive than Picnik and Aardvark, two other recent Google acquisitions.

It should be interesting to see what happens next, considering this development could correspond to either a small Google Docs upgrade or a major move against Microsoft's software empire.

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Marketing Tips: How to Transfer Big Video Files

We look at ways to store and transfer large files over the Internet, affordable stock photos, and a tip from the OutBack restaurant that you can easily adapt to your small business marketing strategy.

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Isis Biopolymer gets $3M for trials, R&D

Medical device firm Isis Biopolymer Inc. said Friday its investors put another $3 million into the company last month to fund clinical trials, manufacturing, and research and development.

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Looking for Mobile Apps? AT&T Can Help

AT&T opened a mobile apps portal designed specifically to help small businesses find the right mobile tools for the job.

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Google Apps Billed As Disaster-Ready Solution

We'll let you decide whether, given the recent loss of life in Haiti and Chile, Google's timing is a little off here. But for better or for worse, the search giant picked today to promote Google Apps in a blog post titled "Disaster Recovery by Google."

A few points in Google's defense: it created a Person Finder tool in response to the earthquake in Haiti, which it pulled out again following the earthquake in Chile. Also, the company used its homepage and official blogs to solicit aid donations and spread awareness both times around.

So on to the new development. In a lengthy post on the Official Google Enterprise Blog, Rajen Sheth, a senior product manager over Google Apps, asserted that the service can save businesses from losing any information in the event their hardware is damaged or destroyed. Physical backups will only help businesses restore things up to the latest backup point.

Sheth then noted that storing information with Google Apps can be cheaper than relying on physical solutions and storage area networks, too.

He at last concluded, "No one likes preparing for worst-case scenarios. When you use Google Apps, you have one less critical thing to worry about."

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R.I. eyes new Web site for firms’ filings

Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis, left, wants to bring all 307 forms state agencies request from new businesses under one roof with a new Web site. He needs $250,000 to do it, but says he has support from the governor and leading lawmakers.

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Magic Squares

Here is a fun JavaScript game. Try to put the squares back in order. The '0' repesents the empty spot, and click a square next to the 0 to make them trade places! Get the squares back in order and you win!

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Facebook To Position Public Policy Experts In D.C.

It looks like Facebook will soon begin trying harder to bend the ears of our nation's leaders. Listings for a public policy manager and public policy associate have both been posted on the social network's "Open Positions" page, and Facebook's decided that these people will work in Washington, D.C.

This isn't a simple matter of having a couple of folks sit around, answering questions and maybe defending the company when necessary. Facebook wants the new hires to be quite active.

The public policy manager will be expected to "monitor legislative and regulatory matters at the state governmental level, participate in federal policy discussions, and lead company's interactions with consumer organizations," according to the official listing. He (or she) is supposed to "[b]uild coalitions to advance policy goals of Facebook," too.

As for the associate, this individual is meant to attend Congressional Committees, deal with nonprofits, and help with Facebook's "election and voter action activities," whatever those may be. Plus have a sense of humor that his or her boss isn't required to possess.

Anyway, Cecilia Kang, who deserves a hat tip, noted, "Those jobs would bring Facebook's staff in Washington to five. It recently hired journalist Andrew Noyes for public policy communications and Tim Sparapani from the ACLU, who is now director of public policy. Adam Conner began the office and deals with lobbying and policy issues including privacy."

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SugarSync: Online Backup and Synchronization

Despite a few flaws, SugarSync offers small businesses a way to synchronize files across multiple computers and smartphones. Plus, it includes online data backup.

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Block Island wind power on ‘high end’

A consultant for the R.I. Division of Public Utilities and Carriers said in testimony that the price of electricity from a proposed offshore wind farm was on the high end of price ranges for renewable energy projects.

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Web Tools: Blogging Made Easy

NinjaWeb Setup takes the pain out of small business blogging. Plus, a free marketing resource to help you get interviewed on TV or radio and the 'Pandora' for books.

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Google Reiterates Support For Uncensored Results In China

When Google made its dramatic "new approach to China" announcement in January, it sounded as if the company might leave the country within the month. Obviously, that didn't happen. But according to testimony given today before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, Google hasn't forgotten its ultimatum.

Nicole Wong, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, spoke today about China, the Internet, and censorship, and by way of recap, said, "The attack on our corporate infrastructure and the surveillance it uncovered - as well as attempts over the past year to limit free speech on the Web even further - led us to conclude that we are no longer willing to censor our results in China and we are currently reviewing our options."

Wong then argued, "This decision is in keeping with out pledge when we launched Google.cn that we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. As we stated then, if we determine that we are unable to achieve our objectives, we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."

This should provide some reassurance to free speech advocates who feared Google was backing down from a fight (and/or trying not to abandon a potential profit center).

Unfortunately, Wong didn't provide any sort of timetable with regards to when Google will reach a decision, which seems to leave the figurative door open to weeks or months of waffling.

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Sasse takes role with House leaders

Gary S. Sasse has been hired to serve as a part-time adviser to the Democrat-controlled House leadership, just days after stepping down from the Carcieri administration. Speaker of the House Gordon D. Fox says Sasse will focus on government …

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Top 10 Small Business Tax Sites, Software & Services

Do you need a little tax help? If you're not the type to just dump it all on your CPA (well, even if you are), here are our favorite tools to make the next few weeks as painless as possible.

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Google's CFO: "It's Been A Great Time For Us"

Patrick Pichette joined Google as its CFO on August 12, 2008, and since then, he's seen the company through both good times (a stock price of $620 per share) and bad (try $262). So Google fans should find it comforting that Pichette, with his range of experience, has said the company's doing quite well again.

Pichette spoke during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, and according to John Letzing, stated, "[T]he mood at Google kind of continues to be electric," which is certainly a positive sign. Not that he'd admit to low morale, but using the term "electric" says a lot.

The CFO then continued, "It's true there is a recession out there, but for the broad data world, everything that's the data space, there's really no recession. It's been a great time for us in the last 12 months, 18 months."

Pichette also shrugged off the idea that Google's being anticompetitive, arguing that large companies are often scrutinized, and acknowledged that display ads, apps, and mobile have become increasingly important to the organization.

Here's the only catch: investors may or may not be impressed by all this, considering that Google's stock is down a little in after-hours trading at $532.30.

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Free Wi-Fi service starts on Acela trains

Amtrak on Monday began offering AmtrakConnect, a new free wireless Internet service, on all 20 high-speed Acela Express trains that run between Boston and Washington.

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Most Businesses Still Only "Experiment" with Social Media

Social media use among businesses has grown significantly over the past year or two, but new research from E-Consultancy, in association with the Online Marketing Summit (where WebProNews is conducting exclusive interviews this week), indicates that most businesses are largely still in the experimental stage when it comes to their efforts.

There are a great deal of interesting stats to pick through in the report, but to me, one of the most striking is that 61% (nearly 2/3) say they have experimented with social media, but not done that much. Various stats suggest businesses are starting to get to the place where they view social media as crucial, however. For example, the vast majority (90%) say they expect social media to take up more time internally "in a year's time," while only 8% expect it will take up the same amount of time, and 2% expect less time to be spent on social media next year.

Some other highlights from the report:

- The majority of companies have difficulty measuring the return on investment (ROI) from social media. Almost two-thirds of respondents (61%) say their organizations are “poor” (34%) or “very poor” (27%) at measuring ROI.

- Increased traffic to Web site is the business goal that marketers are most likely to be trying to influence through social media marketing. Three quarters (74%) of companies say they use social media to increase traffic.

- Direct traffic to Web site is by far the metric most commonly used to measure the impact of off-site social media, measured by just under two-thirds of company respondents (63%).

- More brand recognition (64%) is the second most important business objective in terms of impact of social media. A similar proportion of respondents (62%) cite better brand reputation.

- Despite the widespread recognition that social media marketing impacts brand reputation and brand visibility, only a quarter of all respondents (25%) surveyed use online brand mentions and brand awareness as a metric for measuring off-site social media success. Just 15% use brand perception as a metric.

- Just over half of companies (56%) say that they try to achieve increased sales through social media activity. But only a quarter of companies (24%) use sales as a metric for measuring social media success.

Facebook is the Web property mostly commonly used in social media, with 85% of companies surveyed using it as part of their marketing strategy. This is followed by Twitter (perhaps more closely than expected, given Facebook's much larger user base) at 77%, LinkedIn at 58% and YouTube at 49%.

Over two-thirds of company respondents say that the amount of money spent on social media has increased since last year, while 30% say it has stayed the same, and 81% of companies expect social media budgets to increase over the next year, while 18% expect spending to stay the same. So while companies are still experimenting, they must be generally seeing good enough results to keep at it, or see the potential to use it on an expanded basis.
Do you have a concrete social media strategy or do you simply experiment? Discuss.

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Twitter Feeding Frenzy Coming?

Twitter reasserted itself this week with the publication of two pieces of data designed to blow people's minds and a rumor that should send a little quiver of excitement up your leg (if you like that sort of thing).read more

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