Mediaboss Marketing

Social Marketing Drives Revenue, Builds Social Assets

Mountain View, CA and Amsterdam, NL (PRWEB) February 22, 2012

SocialTwist, a customer acquisition and retention platform that generates viral referrals for businesses, using the social connections of their customers, and Adversitement, a leading online analytics and optimization provider, today announced a partnership to bring social referral marketing to businesses in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

In the United States, SocialTwist’s platform has been adopted by more than 40 leading brands. Using its customer connections and local expertise, Adversitement will work with brands and agencies to develop and execute similar programs in Europe. As an expert in online analytics, Adversitement will also integrate SocialTwist's reports into its customers' web analytics tools, providing transparency and measurement.

"Businesses have high expectations for social media in 2012 and CMOs are committing even bigger investments,” said Jan Buis, CEO of Adversitement. “What’s needed here is a proven platform that uses social media to drive new customers and generate incremental revenue. Our clients know their customers and we will provide them with all the capabilities they need to integrate social referrals into their programs.”

SocialTwist has integrated social referrals into marketing programs across several industries, including consumer packaged goods, financial services, retail and hospitality. The potential reach of a campaign increases exponentially when consumers are presented with credible offers that motivate them to reach across their personal social connections. Social referral marketing can be built into multiple marketing programs, such as coupons and promotions, membership and loyalty programs, lead generation, brand and event marketing, new product launches, and cause marketing.

“Well-constructed social referral programs have the potential to reach four to six times the initial planned audience, increasing a marketers reach", said Mark Dillon, Chief Revenue Officer of SocialTwist. “What’s often overlooked is the phenomenal quality of the referred parties, who drive higher return for our customers across all acquisition and retention marketing programs. We are delighted to work with Adversitement to bring this marketing innovation to the EMEA market.

SocialTwist programs generate new and repeat customers. When integrated into a marketing campaign, SocialTwist’s platform makes it easy for consumers to share offers and make referrals using Facebook, Twitter, email, blogs and a host of other social connectors. Social referrals can be integrated into almost any marketing program within weeks. Brands and retailers can completely customize a program with branded elements that are hugely effective in driving awareness and recall in addition to new sales.

For a short video about how SocialTwist works, click here.

About Adversitement

Adversitement is a leading full service consultancy and technology company, able to turn online analytics data into a valuable strategic instrument. Adversitement supports customers with actionable customer insights to make data driven decisions.

Adversitement was set up in 2001 and became the first company to offer an appropriate response to the demand for online analytics and customer intelligence. To this end, Adversitement has a strong focus on cutting edge knowledge, technical innovation and the development of customer-specific solutions to enable our clients getting the most out of their marketing efforts. We have offices in The Netherlands, Paris, Hamburg, London and Istanbul. We work on numerous projects for over 200 reputable customers including Vodafone, ING, Disney, BMW and IG Index. Visit Adversitement at http://www.adversitement.com.    

About SocialTwist

SocialTwist is a customer acquisition and retention platform that generates viral referrals for businesses, using the social connections of their customers. Since 2008, more than 40 of the world's largest brands, including Sara Lee, Procter & Gamble, ConAgra Foods, Jamba Juice, Barnes & Noble and others have worked with SocialTwist to integrate social marketing referrals into their customer acquisition programs. Visit SocialTwist at http://www.socialtwist.com or at http://facebook.com/SocialTwist.

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Kathleen Miller
SocialTwist
415 285 0360
Email Information

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SocialTwist and Adversitement Bring Social Referral Marketing to European Markets

Tunisia's court of cassation on Wednesday threw out a ruling banning pornographic websites, a judicial source and a press freedom watchdog said.

"The court quashed the first instance and appeals ruling that ordered the censorship of pornographic websites," the judicial source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The source added the case would go back to an appeals court.

"This is rather good news," said Olivia Gre, whose organisation Reporters Without Borders had warned against returning to the censorship that prevailed in pre-revolution Tunisia, under the ousted regime of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

"I respect the court's decision but I think the judiciary has shirked the issue. We will use the same arguments to win this case in the appeals court," lawyer Monaem Turki, one of the plaintiffs, said.

He had said earlier this month that pornographic websites offended Muslim values and should be accessible from Tunisia.

"In France, Hitler apologist websites are censored. Likewise, in Tunisia, there should also be prohibitions and pornographic sites are not tolerable," Turki said.

But rights groups and the internet agency (ATI) itself, which was already ordered twice to filter porn sites, have spoken out against censorship.

"It's a step backwards," ATI's chief executive Moez ChakChouk had said. "Under Ben Ali, the ATI was an instrument of political control and censorship. Today we are fighting for the neutrality of the Internet, but they want to put the old cloak back on us."

He also said filtering would compromise the quality and speed of data transfers, and that his agency did not have sufficient funds to carry out such censorship anyway.

Link:
Tunisia court throws out porn websites ban

London, Feb 22 (ANI): The rules Facebook uses to decide whether to censor users' postings has been published for the first time which shows the social networking giant blocks mild nudity, but allows images of death and disfigurement.

A former employee who used to filter out offensive content on Facebook has leaked the website's secret rulebook detailing its more liberal attitude to gore than to nudity.

According to The Daily Mail, an aggrieved Moroccan worker who was paid a mere 1 dollar an hour by oDesk, a third-party content-moderation firm used by Facebook, revealed that the site tells them to delete "any OBVIOUS sexual activity, even if naked parts are hidden from view".

But "deep flesh wounds are ok to show; excessive blood is ok to show" and "crushed heads, limbs, etc are ok as long as no insides are showing".

The staff working for oDesk are also instructed that Facebook will not condone 'slurs or racial comments of any kind', and that any such comments should be deleted as soon as possible. However, they should be allowed to stay online if the comments are made in a humourous or ironic way.

The rules are used by the third party firm to screen photographs, text and videos that have been "flagged" by one of Facebook's 850 million users.

According to the report, versus photos, where users are asked to rate photos of people set side-by-side, are also prohibited, as are pictures of unconscious or sleeping drunk people with 'things drawn on their faces'.

Yet it is acceptable to leave up footage of children physically assaulting each other at school, unless 'the video has been posted to continue tormenting the person targeted in the video'.

California-based oDesk was launched full-scale in 2005 by co-founders Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis.

It provides content moderation services to Google and Facebook, Wikipedia and AOL.

A team of about 50 people from all over the third world, India, Turkey, Mexico and the Philippines, work to moderate Facebook content. (ANI)

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Facebook's censorship policy 'show liberal attitude to gore than to nudity'

A disgruntled agency worker has revealed Facebook's rules for blocking offensive content - and while 'crushed heads' are fine, female nipples aren't.

Moroccan-born  worker Amine Derkaoui was employed by oDesk to filter out offensive comment from Facebook, but released the policy to gossip site Gawker when he'd finally had enough of being paid $1 per hour.

It makes entertaining reading. On the banned list are 'naked private parts including female nipple bulges and naked butt cracks; male nipples are OK'.

Also out are 'blatant (obvious depiction of camel toes and moose knuckles' and 'images of drunk and unconscious peiple, or speeping people with things drawn on their faces'.

School fight videos are okay, though, as long as the video hasn't been posted to continue tormenting the person targeted in the video'. Deep flesh wounds are fine, as are 'excessive blood', and even crushed heads - 'as long as no insides are showing'.

Earwax is out; snot is fine.

California-based oDesk is an agency offering remote freelance workers, and provides content moderation services to Google, Wikipedia and AOL as well as Facebook.

Derkaoui told Gawker that around 50 people from developing countries worked from home on the Facebook account, for just $1 per hour plus commission.
 

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Facebook censorship rulebook leaked

NEW YORK (AP) — A global coalition against censorship is needed to protect online journalists and bloggers who are being targeted by repressive governments, a leading advocacy group said Tuesday.

At least 46 journalists died around the world in 2011, the Committee to Protect Journalists said, an increase from the estimate it released in December. Seven journalists were killed in Pakistan, where 29 journalists have been killed in the past five years.

Freelancers, bloggers and citizen journalists like those reporting in the Middle East have few resources to defend themselves against censorship and attacks, the CPJ said. Authoritarian states are buying communications surveillance equipment from Western manufacturers and using it to monitor and target journalists and bloggers, the group said.

The report cited people in Syria who smuggled video footage to reporters across the world and were consequently tracked and tortured by government authorities after their Facebook accounts were hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army, a government-sponsored hacking group.

The New York-based group said the number of deaths while covering dangerous assignments, such as street protests, reached the highest level since 1992. Most of the deaths were in the Middle East and North Africa, where 19 journalists died last year, most while covering the Arab world uprisings.

One third of those killed were freelance journalists, more than double the proportion that freelancers have constituted over the years.

Nine online journalists were killed for their work, including Mexican reporter Maria Elizabeth Macías Castro, whose decapitated body was found with a note saying she had been killed for reporting news on social media websites. Her death was the ?rst documented by CPJ that was directly tied to journalism published on social media.

The committee found that 179 journalists were imprisoned as of Dec. 1, an increase driven by widespread imprisonment across the Middle East and North Africa. About half of those work primarily online, the committee said.

The highest number of jailed journalists was in Iran, where 42 reporters were behind bars.

While the Internet and social media has helped democratize the dissemination of information, the nature of such newsgathering leaves journalists especially vulnerable to censorship and retaliation, the CPJ said in its annual survey. There are few legal mechanisms to fight censorship on an international level, the group said.

The CPJ said governments, the business community and human rights organizations must urge intergovernmental groups to create a legal framework to adjudicate press freedom cases at the international level.

In 2010, CPJ hired its ?rst Internet advocacy coordinator to act as a liaison between Silicon Valley and the journalists who depend on their products — "not only to get the news out, but also to protect them and their sources from physical harm," the report said.

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NY group: Online journalists censored, attacked