Child Web Privacy Law Gets Updated

originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal:

In a move to update rules governing children's privacy online to cover new areas like smartphones, U.S. regulators broadened decade-old policies, but amid pressure from the technology industry backed away from proposals that could have made companies like Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. more responsible for violations.

The Federal Trade Commission said it would change how it implements the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, or Coppa, to reflect the growth of social networks and smartphone apps among children.

The commission also expanded the types of information it considers personal under the law. Kids' apps and websites will now have to obtain parental consent before gathering photos, videos or geographic location, and before tracking kids' online behavior and passing along the data to other companies.

But in a departure from rule changes the government proposed in August, the FTC explicitly exempted app stores like those run by Apple and Google Inc. from responsibility for privacy violations by the games and other software that are sold there.

The updated rules, which go into effect July 1, also make clear that software such as Facebook's "Like" button and ads placed by advertising networks will only have to meet child online privacy regulations if companies have "actual knowledge" that they're collecting information through a website or app that targets kids.

The commission's move ended one chapter in the long-running Washington debate over how closely the government should regulate online privacy, but set the stage for new battles.

Consumer advocates said they would continue their push to make Apple and Google more responsible for the data-gathering practices of the apps they distribute, while several members of Congress are pushing legislation to further tighten limits on online tracking of children and teenagers.

Just last week, the FTC put a spotlight on gaps in kids' online privacy with a report that found hundreds of popular kids' apps were collecting data without parental consent.

Coppa governs how companies must proceed when collecting personal data from children under the age of 13. Enforcement falls to the FTC, which has been reviewing how it should approach the law in the age of smartphones and social media for two years. Kids' entertainment and Internet companies have lobbied heavily to blunt the impact of the update.

Apple, for example, met with FTC officials five times this fall, in particular contesting the possibility that the updated rules might hold it responsible for the data-collection practices of the third-party apps it distributes on the iPhone and iPad. Google made a similar point in a filing with the commission.

Google said it was evaluating the changes and would continue to work on effective ways to protect children's privacy and security. Facebook said it was pleased with the FTC's decision on so-called plug-ins, such as the "Like" button.

In several cases, the industry got what it wanted. Reversing a prior proposal, the commission agreed to continue to allow parental consent to be obtained by email as long as apps and websites only collect data for internal use.

The FTC's Chairman said the final rules strike the right balance between protecting innovation that will provide rich and engaging content for children, and ensuring that parents are informed and involved in their children's online activities.

While Apple, Google and Facebook scored partial victories, some smaller developers were disappointed. The president of the Application Developers Alliance, said that the new regulations could prove so burdensome that talented and responsible developers will abandon the children's app marketplace.

One FTC commissioner voted against the updated rules. She argued the commission went too far with the update by holding websites responsible when third parties like advertising networks gather personal data from children.

But some government officials made clear Wednesday they would like to place additional regulations on technology companies. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D., W.Va.), a leading advocate on privacy issues, said he viewed the Coppa regulations as a step toward legislation that gives Americans more control of how they are tracked online.

The executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy and a consumer advocate who has been involved in the Coppa debate for years, said the FTC's decision was a step in the right direction but left loopholes for companies to mine kids' data inappropriately.

He said he would continue to push for more scrutiny of the role of the Internet giants that distribute kids' apps.

The FTC's chairman has made monitoring online privacy one of his priorities at the commission. At Wednesday's news conference announcing the revised rules, he repeatedly held up what he said was his 15-year-old daughter's white iPhone to illustrate how much technology has changed in the past decade.

It was enormously difficult for me to pry this away from my child today, he said.

Simple Tools Help Owners Sift Data for Eager Customers

originally appeared in The New York Times:

Velvet Palate sells artisanal wines that are made in small quantities around the world and typically not stocked in stores. Selling online, according to the co-founder, has allowed the company to zero in on a niche of geographically diverse customers.

Before helping to start Velvet Palate in New York in January, the owner worked for an online media company that analyzed how effectively subscription offers and other marketing tools attracted new customers.

We could see which Web sites people were coming from when they arrived on our Web pages, what they clicked, where they abandoned the process, she said. And that allowed us to constantly tweak and improve what we were offering and how we were communicating.

In her new venture, Velvet Palate's co-founder said her goal had been to use online data collection and Web analytics to cater to customers’ tastes.

There is nothing new, of course, about paying attention to customer needs and desires, but there is now far more data available — far less expensively — through Web analytics and customer-loyalty programs. Using basic e-commerce software along with free tools like Google Analytics and Bing Webmaster Tools, small businesses can perform sophisticated data collection and analysis that can help them compete with companies that have far greater resources.

Based on the experiences of business owners, this guide offers suggestions on how both Web-based businesses and traditional retailers can use data.


CAPTURE PREFERENCES
Velvet Palate offers highly rated wines along with information about how the wines are made and what foods they might best be paired with. Ms. Kooren asks customers who register with the site to fill out a questionnaire that helps her direct them to the right types of wines.

We can only offer a limited number of wines, she said. So we offer choices that are geared toward their preferences.

Velvet Palate’s e-commerce software, Magento Enterprise, tracks sales, but it also identifies tiers of customers, including those who have bought repeatedly, those who have bought once but not returned, and those who have visited the Web site but not made any purchases. This allows the co-founder to target each group in different ways.

To entice one-time buyers to come back, for example, she might offer free shipping for a limited time.  I try different ideas and see what kind of response I get, she said.

This kind of analysis can increase sales, according to a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and author of “Customer Centricity,” because it allows companies to adjust their offerings and even to design products to meet the needs of their customers. Businesses can more accurately predict which customers will visit again, what products will interest them and which special offers will appeal to them.

RESPOND QUICKLY
The founder of SimplySoles in Washington, sells women’s shoes both online and through a catalog. Like many retailers, she has found that some customers routinely go through the steps of browsing her site and putting an item in a virtual shopping cart — but then leave before completing the purchase. They may have gotten distracted, or they weren’t sure about buying the shoes, she said.

Those shoppers, she said, are more likely to make a purchase than a visitor who spends time on the site without selecting a product. To try to encourage them to complete a purchase, she has set up a proprietary system — created for her by a Web development company, the Richard Group — that automatically asks the customers by e-mail if they would like to complete the purchases they started. About 15 percent of them do so.

The SimplySoles founder, who has an agreement to sell her business this week, also uses a Google Analytics dashboard that reports Web traffic information, like where her visitors come from. Even before the social networking site Pinterest became popular, she saw that many of her customers were coming from the pinboard site. That data told us we needed to have a presence on Pinterest and start to monitor it, she said.

There are other tools that help small businesses generate and manage customer data.

Using Bing Webmaster search engine optimization tools, the SimplySoles founder gets advice on how to improve her ranking in search results, such as adding a descriptive image tag to an untagged photo. She can also watch what is happening live on her site by using an app called Chartbeat. When she noticed visitors viewing a Web page that described a wine that had recently sold out, she bought more.

The founder of Blogilates, which includes the oGorgeous shopping site and the Blogilates blog, offers exercise videos, healthy menus and advice. She also designs and sells a line of workout clothes and accessories. When the founder e-mails a newsletter to her 70,000 subscribers, she tracks how many click on links to view new offerings and products on sale.

Because fashion moves quickly, she said, getting immediate feedback helps keep her site fresh. The dashboard of her e-commerce software, Highwire, shows how many purchases have been made of, say, a recently offered neon hoodie and how many she has left in inventory.

Colors are very important, she said, and if we see one is selling very quickly, we can adapt right away and put in an additional order with our supplier.

LISTEN TO THE CHATTER
Customer opinions that used to require formal market research to discern are now readily available through feedback forms and discussion forums. When a frequent customer posted a note to other Velvet Palate members that Spanish Rose was a great summer wine for entertaining, SimplySoles' founder used that idea in a marketing message.

Services like Sentiment Metrics or Radian6 can help a company track how it is being discussed online. SimplySoles' founder uses Sentiment Metrics and is alerted when Velvet Palate or any of her specified search terms are mentioned. She can view totals or drill down to individual mentions to see how influential a poster might be, as judged, for example, by how many Twitter followers the person has.

BUILD RELATIONSHIPS
Even brick-and-mortar stores can use new data collection technology. The retailer who opened the Ben Franklin craft store 37 years ago in Monroe, Wash., added a customer-loyalty program to his point-of-sale software last year after an employee suggested that it was in keeping with the spirit of a country store that wanted to get to know its customers.

Store employees have signed up more than 20,000 customers since the BLoyal tracking and rewards system was installed. At first, the store owner used it to see which products and hobbies were popular, so he could adjust his orders. Then he started to reward frequent customers by e-mailing them sneak peeks at new merchandise, sales events and free classes. His tracking and rewards system identifies the store’s most valuable shoppers.

All types of businesses can benefit from utilizing a Google Analytics Consultant who can provide actionable information to help improve their online presence.

We used to have an idea who our best customers were because we’d see them often in the store, he said. But using BLoyal, we can identify people we may not have noticed and can make sure someone recognizes them when they visit to say thank you and point out new items they might be interested in.

In the past, combing through sales records and categorizing customers would have taken too much time, according to the owner, but now he cannot imagine doing business without that information.

Netflix, CEO Hastings get SEC warning for Facebook Post

originally appeared in USA Today:

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a "Wells Notice" to online video streaming business Netflix and its CEO, the company said Thursday.

The move arises from regulators' determination that Netflix's CEO violated Regulation Fair Disclosure, a rule that requires companies to share material and non-public information with all investors. Netflix disclosed the receipt of the Wells Notice in a regulatory filing.

The Securities and Exchange Commission declined comment.

Netflix' CEO wrote in an regulatory filing the SEC's allegation stems from a posting he made on Facebook in early July. In that post, he told the 200,000 people who subscribe to his posts that Netflix members have viewed more than 1 billion hours of programming on the service in June. The company did not file an official regulatory filing disclosing that information.

He disputes the allegation, saying that having 200,000 followings on Facebook made the Facebook disclosure public. He says the fact regarding the 1 billion hours of viewing not only wasn't material, but had already been disclosed on a public blog.

He also says that while Netflix' stock rose the day he posted on Facebook, the stock's rise started before the mid-morning post as made and likely driven by a positive Citigroup research report.

Netflix' CEO wrote that he remains optimistic this can be cleared up quickly through the SEC's review process.

South Korea Taking Efforts to Stop Youth Digital Addiction

story first appeared in usatoday.com

An 11-year-old South Korean, sleeps with her Android smartphone instead of a teddy bear. When the screen beams with a morning alarm, she wakes up, picks up her glasses and scrolls through tens of unread messages from friends, shaking off drowsiness.

Throughout the day, the gadget is in her hands whether she is in school, in the restroom or in the street as she constantly types messages to her friends. Every hour or so, she taps open an application in her phone to feed her digital hamster.

Fiddling with the palm-sized gadget, she says he gets nervous when the battery is low and finds it stressful when out of a wi-fi hotspot.

In South Korea, where the government provides counseling programs and psychological treatment for an estimated 2 million people who cannot wean themselves from playing online computer games, youngsters such as Park have previously not been considered as potential addicts.

Here and in other parts of Asia, online addiction has long been associated with hardcore gamers who play online games for days on end, isolated from their school, work or family life and blurring the line between the real and fantasy online worlds. In a shocking 2010 case in South Korea, a 3-month-old girl died after being fed just once a day by her parents who were consumed with marathon online game sessions.

She does not play computer games and in class, she confidently raises her hand to answer a question. She also gets along well with her friends and likes to cook as a hobby. And yet, she set off more than eight red flags on an addiction test, enough to be considered unhealthily dependent on her smartphone. Park is not unique and the government is concerned enough to make it mandatory for children as young as 3 to be schooled in controlling their device and Internet use.

Her obsession with being online is a byproduct of being reared in one of the world's most digitally connected societies where 98 percent of households have broadband Internet and nearly two thirds of people have a smartphone. Being wired is an icon of South Korea's pride in its state-directed transformation from economic backwater to one of Asia's most advanced and wealthy nations. Always seeking an edge, the government plans to digitize all textbooks from 2015 and base all schooling around tablet computers.

But some now fret about the effects that South Korea's digital utopia is having on its children, part of the first generation to play online games on smartphones, tablets and other devices even before they can read and write.

New mobile devices that instantly respond to a touch of a finger seem to make children more restless than before and lack empathy, said Kim Jun-hee, a kindergarten teacher who conducted an eight-month study on Internet safety and addiction education for pre-school children.

In Suwon city south of Seoul, students in teacher Han Jeoung-hee's classroom now turn in their smartphones when they arrive at school in the morning. After that, he said kids forgot to eat lunch, completely absorbed with smartphones and some stayed in the classroom during a PE class.

Han who teaches sixth grade students at Chilbo elementary school. Smartphones are put in a plastic basket and returned when kids leave for home after classes.

The National Information Society Agency, or NIA, estimates 160,000 South Korean children between age 5 and 9 are addicted to the Internet either through smartphones, tablet computers or personal computers. Such children appear animated when using gadgets but distracted and nervous when they are cut off from the devices and will forgo eating or going to the toilet so they can continue playing online, according to the agency.

Across the entire population, South Korea's government estimated 2.55 million people are addicted to smartphones, using the devices for 8 hours a day or more, in its first survey of smartphone addiction released earlier this year. Smartphone addicts find it difficult to live without their handsets and their constant use disrupts work and social life, according to NIA. Most of their personal interaction is carried out on the mobile handset. Overuse of smartphones may be accompanied by physical symptoms such as turtle neck syndrome caused by having the head in a constant forward position and a pain or numbness in fingers or wrists.

Though Internet addiction is not recognized as a mental illness, there is a growing call from medical practitioners and health officials worldwide to treat it as an illness rather than a social problem.

The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders lists Internet Use Disorder as meriting further study. It is unclear whether it will be recognized as a mental illness in a major revision of the standard-setting manual due out next year. But as the Internet becomes more pervasive and mobile, more societies are grappling with its downside. In Asia, countries that have experienced explosive growth in the Internet such as Taiwan, China and South Korea are most active in carrying out research into whether Internet addiction should be recognized as a mental illness, according to Lee Hae-kook, a psychiatry professor at Catholic University of Korea, College of Medicine.

South Korea already provides taxpayer-funded counselors for those who cannot control their online gaming or other Internet use. But the emergence of the smartphone as a mainstream, must-have device even for children is changing the government's focus to proactive measures from reactive.

South Korea's government is widening efforts to prevent Web and digital addiction in school-age children and preschoolers. Starting next year, South Korean children from the age 3 to 5 will be taught to protect themselves from overusing digital gadgets and the Internet.

Nearly 90 percent children from that age group will learn at kindergartens how to control their exposure to digital devices and the danger of staying online for long hours. The Ministry of Public Administration and Security is revising laws so that teaching the danger of Internet addiction becomes mandatory from pre-school institutions to high schools.

Kim, the kindergarten teacher, said educating children against digital and web addiction should start early because smartphones are their new toys.

From next year, her program for 3-year-olds will focus on introducing them to the positive activities they can do with the computers, such listening to music. Children aged 4 and 5, will learn the dangers of overuse and how to control their desire to use computers.

Programs also include making and learning the moves for "computer exercises" and singing songs with lyrics that instruct kids to close their eyes and stretch their bodies after playing computer games. They read fairy tales where a character falls prey to Internet addiction and learn alternative games they can play without computers or the Internet.

Kim said parents have to be involved in the education. Some of the children are even calling out parents to change lifestyles along with them.

Holiday Shoppers May be Influenced by Social Media

story first appeared in USA Today

Retailers may have hit record sales over the shopping weekend from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, but the impact of social media campaigns many of them invested in is less certain.

Offerpop, which helps retailers including Amazon, Sears and Walmart run social-marketing campaigns, says it saw a 40% increase in social-media campaigns by its clients for the Black Friday shopping weekend compared with last year.

Yet social media made up less than 1% of online traffic and sales on Black Friday, according to IBM Smarter Commerce, which tracks sales for 500 of the top retail sites. And that's down from last year.

That's based on customers who were referred to a retailer's site through social media and made a purchase right then.

It may not necessarily be a bad thing though, given retailers were using social media more to raise brand awareness than to push sales this year, says Jay Henderson, strategy director for IBM Smarter Commerce.

Target rewarded a number of customers that were tweeting about the company with electronic gift cards over the weekend, spokesman Joe Curry says. It also used an interactive Facebook app to reveal its Black Friday deals by pitting a series of items against each other and asking users to pick which product they thought would go on sale for Black Friday. The game had almost 1 million users in a four-day span, Curry says.

Twitter mentions for retailers also jumped. Mentions of the @DisneyStore handle increased 42% over the weekend, the company reports. And tweets with the hashtag #FairyGodmother, which customers included when they had a question or needed help with a product, were up 40% from last year.

While it may be hard to track how much this kind of social-media activity benefits retailers in terms of sales, Erin Robbins O'Brien, head of business intelligence at Viralheat, a data analytics company whose software helps companies track social-media sentiment, says that most of the retailers they've worked with have all agreed that people talking about their particular store or brand is always going to be better than not.

And social media's influence on purchases is stronger than the IBM numbers let on, she says.

Social media in some way, shape or form is oftentimes one of the first ways someone will hear about something, according to O'Brien.

That was the case for Alan Cavanna, who bought a Dell laptop after seeing a tweet sent out by Best Buy on Cyber Monday.

Marketing On The Web

Story first appeared on NYTimes.com.

Publishers and broadcasters have long tried to offer advertisers the right audience for their products. Want to sell pick-ups to people who like sports? Buy ads at halftime during a football game. Selling luggage or airline tickets? Buy ads in the travel section of a newspaper or Web site. 

In digital advertising, that formula is being increasingly tested by fast-paced, algorithmic bidding systems that target individual consumers rather than the aggregate audience publishers serve up. In the world of “programmatic buying” technologies, context matters less than tracking those consumers wherever they go. And that kind of buying is the reason that shoe ad follow you whether you’re on Weather.com or on a local news blog.

That shift is punishing traditional online publishers, like newspaper, broadcast and magazine sites, who are receiving a much lower percentage of ad dollars as marketers use programmatic buying across a much broader canvas. Some sites, like CNN.com, refuse to even accept advertising through programmatic buying because they do not want to cede control over what ads will appear.

About 10 percent of the display ads that consumers see online have been sold through programmatic bidding channels.

Advertisers like Nike, Comcast, Progressive and Procter & Gamble are now using the programmatic buying, and luxury advertisers are starting to follow. According to data from Forrester Research, all ads traded on exchanges, as programmatic ads are, increased more than 17.5 percent to about 629 billion impressions (the number of times an ad appears) in 2012, from 535 billion in 2011.

That growth is affecting publishers of all stripes, but few are willing to discuss their internal numbers.

When The New York Times Company announced its earnings last month, the company posted a profit, but said that digital advertising fell 2.2 percent. They attributed the dip, in part, on a shift toward ad exchanges, real-time bidding and other programmatic buying channels that allow advertisers to buy audience at scale.

Programmatic buying began as a way for advertisers to place lower-cost ads for products like teeth-whitening products and belly fat pills that filled up the back pages of Web sites. But the practice has gained in sophistication and breadth, with major advertisers and many of the world’s largest ad agencies creating private exchanges to automate the buying and selling of ads.

Programmatic buying includes a number of different technologies and strategies, but it essentially allows advertisers to bid, often in real time, on ad space largely based on the value they have assigned to the consumer on the other side of the screen. Say, for example, that Nike wants to sell running gear to a particular consumer who has a high likelihood of buying shoes based on the data it has collected, including the type of Web sites that consumer typically visits. Because the ad-buying is done through computer trading, the price for that space can change rapidly.

In the short run, the growth in programmatic buying has forced overall ad prices to fall. A media buyer who would have once spent $50,000 worth of advertising on a publisher’s site, at, say, an $8 cost-per-thousand, can now buy ad impressions on any Web site on which they happen to find their intended audience and pay less per ad, Mr. Ebbert said.

While the “halo effect” of buying an ad against premium content has not disappeared entirely — many advertisers still want front-page placement on popular Web sites — the shift is prompting publishers to rethink how they sell their ads.

And some publishers are jumping into the game themselves. During the most recent AOL earnings call, Tim Armstrong, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said it was pushing programmatic buying, despite being a publisher itself with properties that include TechCrunch and The Huffington Post. The company trades its ads through its own ad network, Ad.com, and others like it.

Neal Mohan, the vice president for product management at Google, which sells advertising though its DoubleClick network, says that in the long run, publishers could see higher returns from programmatic advertising. In the last year, the number of advertisers and publishers using the DoubleClick platform has doubled, Mr. Mohan said, while the rates for those using the platform have increased 11 percent. But that means publishers will have to play by different rules.

Government Surveillance Revealed in Google Transparency Report

story first appeared on latimes.com

Requests from governments around the globe to remove content from Google search results and its other services spiked more than 70% in the first half of the year, the Internet search giant said.

Google said there were 1,791 requests to remove 17,746 pieces of content through June. That's according to the company's Transparency Report, which breaks down requests by country to illustrate the rising pressures Google faces over what type of content it can show to its more than 1 billion users.

The government of Turkey made 501 requests to remove content, up dramatically from 45 in the previous six months. U.S. authorities followed with 273 requests, up from 187.

Google releases the data twice a year. It's the sixth time that Google has issued a Transparency Report since its tense 2010 standoff with Chinese government officials over online censorship.

Google is a frequent target of such requests because it has become an indispensable part of many people's digital lives. In addition to its ubiquitous search engine, Google also runs the world's largest video-sharing site, YouTube. Its report casts a light on take-down requests that largely take place beyond the public purview.

In Turkey, for instance, the company received requests to remove content considered critical of the government and the republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Google said.

Google also said government surveillance of digital citizens is surging, with demands for user data increasing in the first half of 2012. There were 20,938 requests for user data, up 15% from the second half of 2011, it said. The U.S. had the most requests for user data requests -- nearly 8,000, up 26% from the prior period.

Google gets more requests from the U.S. because it has such a large number of users and U.S. authorities are more familiar with the protocol of making the requests than officials from some other countries.

The rise in take-down requests has alarmed people in the technology community. Entrepreneur John Battelle questioned why other companies don't produce similar reports so that the public can get a much broader glimpse of online suppression.

Google noted its report only details "an isolated sliver" of government take-down requests, because it is unaware of what requests are being made of other technology companies.

How to Hijack Search Results in Google

story first appeared on Search Engine Land

Dan Petrovic has explained how he hijacked a few pages in Google to show his copied version over the original version of the page.

For example, he was able to confuse Google into thinking a page on MarketBizz should really show on dejanseo.com.au instead of on marketbizz.nl.

How did he do it? He simply copied the full page, source code and everything and put it on a new URL on his site. He linked to the page and gave it a +1 and the result worked days later. He is a picture of Google’s search results for the page using an info command and also searching for the title of the page:

He did the same thing on three other domains with varied levels of success.

We emailed Google last week for a comment but have yet to hear back.

In some cases, using a rel=canonical seemed to prevent it from hijacking the result fully but not in all cases. There also seems to be a case where using the authorship might be prevent this as well.

Dan Petrovic was even able to hijack the first result for Rand Fishkin’s name (with Rand’s permission):

The way this seems to work is that Google’s duplicate content system feels that the new URL is the more important page and thus replaces the original page with the more important page. It is how the competitive link trick seemed to have worked as well.

Postscript: Google has taken action against these attempts with a notification sent to the webmaster for “copied content.” Those pages were removed from the index.

Microsoft Switches IM to Skype

story first appeared on mercurynews.com

NEW YORK -- Microsoft is scrapping its instant-messaging program and forcing most users to switch to Skype.

Maintaining Windows Live Messenger made less sense after Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion last year. A new version of Skype released a few weeks ago allows users to sign in with a Microsoft account. By merging the two services, people won't have to maintain two separate contact lists.

Microsoft says much has changed in how people communicate. There's more use of text messaging and social networking, for instance.

Microsoft said in Tuesday's announcement that Messenger users who switch to Skype will get benefits such as the ability to call land-line and mobile phones and better support on mobile devices.

Except for mainland China, Messenger will be discontinued worldwide after the first quarter of 2013.

Hurricane Sandy Social Media News Blunders

story first appeared on usatoday.com

The story of Hurricane Sandy unfolded quickly on social media: a poignant photo of soldiers standing guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns, a picture of a giant wave slamming into the Statue of Liberty and a TV report that 3 feet of water flooded the New York Stock Exchange.

None of it was true.

Social media served as a useful tool for family and friends to keep tabs on each other during the storm, but Hurricane Sandy exposed a dangerous underbelly of social media: False information can go viral.

"There were a lot of rumors going around," said Emily Rahimi, the social media strategist for the New York Fire Department, who writes and monitors its Twitter feed.

She said even though rumors spread on the fire department's social media, it was just as easy to use the site to debunk rumors. At one point, she posted a message that read, "There is much misinformation being spread about #Sandy's impact on #NYC," and pointed people to official city Twitter feeds for accurate information.

Several photos went viral. The photo of the soldiers at Arlington Cemetery was taken in September, not Monday. Others that showed ominous clouds over the New York City skyline were photoshopped, or were screen grabs from a movie, or were stock photos.

A post that the 109-year-old building that is home to the stock exchange was flooded with water became the subject of debate Tuesday after CNN reported it.

In an e-mail, CNN spokeswoman Bridget Leininger said the station's weather correspondent Chad Myers referenced a National Weather Service report that turned out to be incorrect.

The National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro said the news came from several local New York City media outlets who had posted it on Twitter, though he didn't know which specifically.

The digital news website BuzzFeed identified the original source of the tweet as Twitter user @comfortablysmug, who identifies himself as a Mitt Romney supporter interested in finance and politics. His Twitter feed included other erroneous tweets, including one that all subways would be closed for the rest of the week and that major lines were flooded and another that Con Edison was shutting off all power to New York City. Con Edison corrected the tweet, saying it may shut down service in low-lying areas.

Twitter user @comfortablysmug did not reply to a request for comment. A message posted to the Twitter account late Tuesday apologized, saying, "I made a series of irresponsible and inaccurate tweets."

Without identifying himself by name, the message said he had resigned from the congressional campaign of Christopher Wight, a Republican candidate for the U.S. House in New York.. Wight's campaign website said the candidate had "accepted the resignation of campaign manager Shashank Tripathi."
Debra Jasper, a co-founder of the social media consulting company Mindset Digital, says fact-checking is as quick on Twitter as the spreading of misinformation.

Indeed, posters immediately began asking the source of the information on the flooding at the stock exchange.

Jasper's Mindset Digital partner, Betsy Hubbard, said the other phenomenon occurring more often after a big event is "newsjacking," when someone or a company try to use an event for their gain.

It happened with Hurricane Sandy, too, when American Apparel sent out an e-mail blast for a 20% off sale for people living in the affected states, with a tagline that read, "In case you're bored during the storm."

An immediate backlash followed on Twitter. "I don't care if it's 'relevant,' social media 'newsjacking' is gross and opportunistic," wrote one poster. Another wrote, "American Apparel showing how not to do it with a Hurricane Sandy sale."

"It's not a good idea to try to use these tragic events to your advantage," Hubbard says.

Rahimi, who monitored the department's Twitter account all day Monday and through the night and early morning Tuesday, said more good came out of using social media despite the bad information that circulated. At one point, she said, a rumor spread that the Fire Department headquarters was evacuated. So she set the record straight, sending messages directly to people who had posted the erroneous information.

For the record, the headquarters building wasn't evacuated.

iPhone Software Head Fired for Refusing to Apologize for Maps App

story first appeared on usatoday.com

The head of Apple's iPhone software development was asked to resign after he refused to sign a letter apologizing for the flaws in Apple's mapping application, according to a published report.

The Wall Street Journal says Scott Forstall's refusal was the latest clash between him and other executives, and it led to the company's announcement Monday that he is stepping down and leaving the company next year.

Forstall's unit was responsible for the Maps application, which was unfavorably compared to the Google Maps app it replaced.

Apple also announced the immediate departure of John Browett, a British retail executive who took over Apple's stores in April.

Forstall, the longtime head of Apple's iOS mobile software, will remain an adviser to Cook until next year.

Apple's lead designer Jony Ive and a few others will divide Forstall's responsibilities until a replacement is named, Apple said.

The departures, which come shortly before the critical holiday shopping season, might have long-term implications at Apple but are unlikely to impact its sales as Apple competitors such as Google and Amazon.com ramp up mobile offerings, says Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at tech research firm Gartner.

Apple offered no explanation for the departures, but both executives oversaw major missteps in the past year.

Browett took over the retail job about six months ago. His predecessor, Ron Johnson, a major architect of the successful Apple stores, left to become CEO at JCPenney. One of Browett's first moves was to cut staff at the stores, a cost-cutting move the company has since reversed.

Forstall, who also was part of the team that created Mac OS X, oversaw the creation of the widely criticized Apple Maps that recently replaced Google Maps as the default map app for the iPhone. The company has apologized for the inadequacies of Apple Maps.

Since stock markets were closed Monday and will be again Tuesday because of Hurricane Sandy, it will be later in the week before any potential effect on Apple's stock is known.

Yahoo Exceeds Sales & Profit Estimates

Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), the biggest U.S. Web portal, reported profit and sales that beat estimates as Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer benefited from advertising demand and cost cuts during her first three months on the job.

Third-quarter earnings, excluding some items, were 35 cents a share, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said in a statement. Sales, excluding revenue passed to partner sites, was $1.09 billion. Analysts on average had estimated profit of 26 cents on revenue of $1.08 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The fifth CEO in four years, Mayer is working to restore stability to management ranks and reverse three years of declining revenue as Web users ditched Yahoo in favor of competitors Google Inc. (GOOG) and Facebook Inc. (FB) Her turnaround effort is getting a boost from expense reductions as well as demand in the U.S., where the online advertising market is projected to grow 17 percent to $37.3 billion this year, according to researcher EMarketer Inc.

“The U.S. seems to be an area of strength, and Yahoo is bigger in the U.S.” than its competitors, said Herman Leung, an analyst at Susquehanna International Group who has a neutral rating on the shares.

Yahoo advanced in extended trading. The stock decreased less than 1 percent to $15.77 at the close in New York. The shares have dropped 2.2 percent this year.

Net income attributable to Yahoo rose to $3.16 billion, or $2.64 a share, from $293.3 million, or 23 cents, a year earlier. Income in the 2012 period included a net gain of $2.8 billion related to the sale of a stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Ad Revenue

Revenue for display advertising, minus sales passed to partner sites, was little changed at $451.6 million in the quarter, while search revenue increased 11 percent to $414.1 million.

In a departure from past practice, Yahoo didn’t provide an outlook for sales and operating income. Google, Mayer’s former employer, doesn’t issue earnings forecasts.

Mayer has kicked off her Yahoo comeback strategy by hiring several senior deputies. Earlier this month she named Henrique de Castro, previously Google’s vice president of global partner business solutions, as operating chief. Last month, she hired Ken Goldman away from network-security provider Fortinet Inc. to replace Tim Morse as chief financial officer. In August, Mayer added former American Eagle Outfitters Inc. executive Kathy Savitt to lead marketing efforts.

Yahoo’s share of display ads, including banners, will be 9.3 percent this year in the U.S., down from 11 percent last year, EMarketer estimates. Facebook’s portion of the market will be little changed at 14 percent, while Google’s stake will rise about 2 percentage points to 15 percent.

Mayer has taken steps to curtail operations outside the U.S. She completed Yahoo’s sale of half its stake in Chinese partner Alibaba in September, and last week said Yahoo will shut its South Korea business.

Yahoo said it will return $3 billion in proceeds from the Alibaba transaction to investors, after using $646 million for buybacks in recent months.

New Ebay Website Design Launches

Story first appeared on usatoday.com

EBay is hurtling into the digital age with a new logo, major redesign and aggressive plans to wade deeper into daily deals, search and shipping.

The most striking change is the visual, Pinterest-like home page "Feed," which lists brands that users follow and makes suggestions based on their browsing history and past purchases.

Feed rolls out to U.S. customers over the next 100 days, with international launches beginning in early 2013.

EBay's decision to mothball its stodgy, stale old site in favor of larger photos and more white space is a reflection of the changing tastes of younger, mobile-savvy users. Some 105 million people actively use the site.

The moves underscore fundamental changes in eBay's business model. Today, more than 70% of 350 million items listed are new. "It's the evolution of our service and how customers use it," eBay President Devin Wenig said in a phone interview.

Industry watchers say the changes are necessary, as more consumers opt for smartphones and tablets instead of PCs. "We believe every online experience will become organized around individual users and their preferences," says Jon Ehrlich, co-founder of social-commerce company Copious.

The Feed announcement comes after eBay in August launched Lifestyle Deals, a Groupon-esque daily deals service in San Francisco, Chicago, New York and elsewhere.

On Wednesday, the company unveiled eBay Now, an app that offers "on-demand delivery service" of goods from local stores. The service is available only in San Francisco, but more cities are expected to be added soon.

Amazon offers "local express delivery" for some items in major cities.

EBay's search also underwent a makeover, with an autocomplete feature similar to Google's. Users can personalize their search results for particular items. Learn more about Google SEO.

The news sent eBay shares up 1.2%, to $46.76, in trading Wednesday.

Wenig hinted that more is to come. "We will continue to make shopping more intuitive, more convenient and more relevant," he said. "This is just the beginning."

Google Closer to Being Sued Over Internet Search Dominance

Story first appeared on usatoday.com.

Federal regulators are moving closer to suing Google web giant over allegations the company abuses its dominance of Internet search to stifle competition and drive up online advertising prices, news reports said late Friday.

Several news outlets reported that staff members at the Federal Trade Commission are preparing to recommend that the agency file an antitrust lawsuit against Google (GOOG).

A majority of the five FTC commissioners would have to approve a suit before legal action could proceed.

Reports from The New York Times, Bloomberg News and Reuters news service cited unnamed people briefed on the FTC's probe. FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan declined to comment.

The agency has been investigating the business practices of Google, which is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. The company's shares closed down $6.73, or 0.9%, to $744.75 Friday. The shares fell another $2.48 in after-hours trading. In a mostly down market, Google shares have fallen 3% the past week and are 9% below the stock's record high.

The probe was triggered by complaints that Google has been featuring its peripheral services closer to the top in search result displays and relegating offerings from rivals lower on result display pages.

The FTC also has been looking into whether Google rigs search results in a way that makes companies with websites pay higher fees to promote their services through Google's advertising network.