Mediaboss Marketing

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Dublin - Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/84qqj2/internet_and_onlin) has announced the addition of the "Internet and Online Privacy: A Legal and Business Guide" book to their offering.

An Invaluable Reference For Anyone Trying To Understand The Law Governing Online Privacy And Companies' Use Of Personal Data

The collection of personal information on the Internet has been the focus of considerable public debate, litigation and legislation. This controversial area of law has not been explored in an in-depth, comprehensive manner until now.

Filled with scholarly analysis and pragmatic guidance, Internet and Online Privacy: A Legal and Business Guide addresses the state of the law of online and Internet privacy and its historical origins. It examines enforcement activity by the Federal Trade Commission, federal and state legislation and regulation, the U.S.-European Commission Safe Harbor Agreement, as well as some of the leading lawsuits in which claims of invasion of privacy on the Internet have been asserted. The book also compares U.S. law with approaches taken by our principal trading partners around the world. Readers will appreciate the authors' helpful practical advice on such matters as: how to draft a privacy policy to suit your company's needs; how to address privacy issues that are likely to arise in the workplace; and how technology can help you deal with these issues.

Key Topics Covered:

- Privacy: Definitions And Technology

- Why Business Cannot Afford To Disregard Consumer Privacy Concerns

- Development Of Regulatory Principles

- Relevant Federal Legislation: Privacy Provisions Of Coppa

Read more from the original source:
Research and Markets: Internet and Online Privacy: A Legal and Business Guide

ScienceDaily (May 16, 2012) In a new study analyzing Internet usage among college students, researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology have found that students who show signs of depression tend to use the Internet differently than those who show no symptoms of depression.

Using actual Internet usage data collected from the university's network, the researchers identified nine fine-grained patterns of Internet usage that may indicate depression. For example, students showing signs of depression tend to use file-sharing services more than their counterparts, and also use the Internet in a more random manner, frequently switching among several applications.

The researchers' findings provide new insights on the association between Internet use and depression compared to existing studies, says Dr. Sriram Chellappan, an assistant professor of computer science at Missouri S&T and the lead researcher in the study.

"The study is believed to be the first that uses actual Internet data, collected unobtrusively and anonymously, to associate Internet usage with signs of depression," Chellappan says. Previous research on Internet usage has relied on surveys, which are "a far less accurate way" of assessing how people use the Internet, he says.

"This is because when students themselves reported their volume and type of Internet activity, the amount of Internet usage data is limited because people's memories fade with time," Chellappan says. "There may be errors and social desirability bias when students report their own Internet usage." Social desirability bias refers to the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others.

Chellappan and his fellow researchers collected a month's worth of Internet data for 216 Missouri S&T undergraduate students. The data was collected anonymously and unobtrusively, and students involved in the study were assigned pseudonyms to keep their identities hidden from the researchers.

Before the researchers collected the usage data from the campus network, the students were tested to determine whether they showed signs of depression. The researchers then analyzed the usage data of the study participants. They found that students who showed signs of depression used the Internet much differently than the other study participants.

Chellappan and his colleagues found that depressed students tended to use file-sharing services, send email and chat online more than the other students. Depressed students also tended to use higher "packets per flow" applications, those high-bandwidth applications often associated with online videos and games, than their counterparts.

Students who showed signs of depression also tended to use the Internet in a more "random" manner -- frequently switching among applications, perhaps from chat rooms to games to email. Chellappan thinks that randomness may indicate trouble concentrating, a characteristic associated with depression.

The randomness stood out to Chellappan after his graduate student, Raghavendra Kotikalapudi, examined the "flow duration entropy" of students' online usage. Flow duration entropy refers to the consistency of Internet use during certain periods of time. The lower the flow duration entropy, the more consistent the Internet use.

Link:
Internet usage patterns may signify depression

As Googles Penguin update is having its fun, Bing has been relatively calm. There has not been a major update in a few months and everything seems perfect. Well, everything used to be perfect.

Theres a member on Webmaster World that noticed Bing was indexing fewer pages on his site. This wasnt a small change either. Bing used to index 500,000 URLs on the site, but was now only indexing 350,000. Thats a worrying change. The question now is whether or not Bing pushed some kind of update or if its just not indexing like it used to.

Search Engine Roundtable jumped on the case. They began to look at their own indexed pages and found the numbers to be fairly consistent. There we no major drops. OK, so what about impressions and clicks? They found that those numbers had exponentially increased. The crawl rate seemed to be normal as well.

So whats up with the guy who thinks Bing is not doing its fair share in indexing? We get a better idea by looking at the responses to his original post. Some Webmasters have shared in the original posters pain by saying their indexed pages have seen similar drops.

A later post sheds more light on the event though. They say that the people at Bing told them that all of their URLs are being indexed. Its just a problem with those numbers not showing up in results. Even so, thats a pretty serious problem if the Bing Webmaster Tools show sites being delisted or URLs no longer being indexed.

Weve reached out to Microsoft for comment and well update this story if we hear back.

Have you seen any changes in the amount of sites being indexed by Bing? I find it highly unlikely that Bing has rolled out an update, but the impending release of the new Bing may be having an effect on indexing for certain sites.

Read the original post:
Bing Might Be Dropping The Number Of URLs It Indexes

Facebook loses GM's advertising business - does this have larger implications on the state of social media and e-ads?

Talk about poor timing: the same day that Bloomberg reported that Facebooks IPO is falling short of investors expectations, GM announces it has decided to pull all of its Facebook advertising. And thats no small account Facebook has lost it was a $10 million account.

According to the Wall Street Journal, GM decided to nix its Facebook campaign efforts after concluding the paid ads didnt significantly impact buyers. While the company says its business page is still a product it intends to invest in, it will no longer use the Facebook paid advertisement system.

This is bad news for Facebook for a few reasons. Losing an account especially a big one hurts, especially when its been made this public. But the larger impact is that this fuels the overvalued fire that just wont be extinguished. The skeptics have been crying foul since whispers of the word billions starting being thrown around: Facebook is big, sure, but its unproven. And a big part of all this caution has been uncertainly about the companys ad platform.

Facebook is trying to better corner mobile, where ads have been noticeably absent until recently. In fact Facebook recently edited its S-1 filing in order to reflect this change. Based upon our experience in the second quarter of 2012 to date, the trend we saw in the first quarter of DAUs increasing more rapidly than the increase in number of ads delivered has continued, an added section of the document reads. We believe this trend is driven in part by increased usage of Facebook on mobile devices where we have only recently begun showering an immaterial number of sponsored stories in News Feed, and in part due to certain pages having fewer ads per page as a result of product decisions.

Basically, Facebook user numbers are increasing but ads arent part of this is because of mobile growth, but youre certainly welcome to wonder if it also means the ratio of users to ad buyers is increasingly at odds.

Facebook isnt the only social site to raise eyebrows over ad monetization platforms. The stories of Twitters revenue struggles are almost as old as the site. Even after launching its self-serve ad platform, not everyone is convinced of its effectiveness as a marketing medium.

But theres a conflict here: Facebook and Twitter have the users these numbers are climbing, no doubt about it. And pundits continue to predict that social media ad spending will only increase. At the same time, there seems to be general confusion on making certain these campaigns are working. It doesnt help that while marketers are trying to adapt to this system, the likes of Facebook and Twitter are reinventing it. Everyones moving at different paces with different agendas, and considering the fact its not surprise that e-advertising has yet to hit its stride with even our most popular social networks.

So will this hurt the Facebook IPO? Dont get too caught up in the pre-May 18 (probably?) hype. Whether or not Facebook worked for GM, advertisers simply cannot and will not ignore it, but they might have to struggle with it. And because Facebook is Facebook, they will.

Go here to read the rest:
GM pulls Facebook advertising amid growing concerns over social media marketing

General Motors has announced that it will no longer advertise its cars and trucks on Facebook according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The poor performance of GM ads on the social network isnt necessarily an indictment of Facebook advertising, though. It may just be the wrong thing to market on Facebook.

The beauty of Facebook--and Facebook marketing--is the social aspect of it all. A commercial like the post-apocalyptic Silverado ad GM ran during the 2012 Super Bowl has tremendous appealon television. However, a social network is a different medium entirely, and it takes a completely different strategy to conduct a successful marketing campaign.

Facebook will miss GM's $10 million, but not much.Facebook is about word-of-mouth. The value of marketing on a social network is the sharing between friends and family. One person tries a restaurant and likes it, and shares that experience with the rest of their social network. Someone finds a pair of shoes that are comfortable, and posts it online for everyone to see. That type of interaction is less likely for big-ticket items like cars, but its a gold mine for small businesses that cant afford Super Bowl ads.

One of my PCWorld peers shared research from a Wordstream research study indicating that the click-through rate of Google ads beats Facebook ten to one. Based on that information alone, it would seem that any business would be better off marketing with Google ads instead of Facebook.

Facebook is nowhere near as mature as Google--its primary rival--when it comes to online advertising. But, it has the audience, and that audience spends more of its online time engaged on the social network than doing anything else, so the potential is there. As Facebook evolves and expands its marketing options, it will be fertile ground for online advertising--just maybe not for General Motors.

Larger companies like General Motors, or Coca Cola, or McDonalds can still benefit from marketing on Facebook or other social networks, but it should probably be viewed from the context of brand penetration and recognition as opposed to trying to measure sales resulting directly from the ads. Smaller businesses, on the other hand, can hit the jackpot with the right Facebook marketing campaign, and word-of-mouth advertising of the social network.

The $10 million account was a lucrative advertiser for the social network, and the ad revenue will be missed. But, the loss of GM as an advertiser wont exactly break Facebook. Facebook generated $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011 from advertising, making GM a mere fraction of a percent of the overall pool.

You can follow Tony on his Facebook page, his Google+ profile, or contact him by email at tony_bradley@pcworld.com. He also tweets as @TheTonyBradley.

More here:
Why Facebook Marketing Doesn't Work for GM