Slide 2:
The article, PR firm admits it’s behind Wal-Mart blogs, discusses the supposed grass-roots blogs that surfaced recently about Wal-Mart. The blogs, “Working Families for Wal-mart,” “Paid Critics” and “Wal-marting Across America” were actually written by the PR firm, Edelman. After some questioning, three employees of the firm admitted they had authored the blogs.
The second article Corporate blogging: Wal-mart’s fumbles touches on Wal-mart’s actions by comparing their blog to a more successful alternative; that of Sun Microsystems. The CEO of Sun explains the importance of keeping up with the latest trends in technology to his company. He therefore has his own blog and has found it relatively successful. The article stipulates that in order for a corporate blog to remain prosperous, it must be simple, straight-forward, and above all else, honest. The author mentions Dell as an example of how blogs can be useful by “putting a face” on a big corporation, making the brand more personal.
‘Puppets’ Emerge as Internet’s Effective, and Deceptive, Salesmen is an article that discusses seemingly deceptive internet marketing techniques that have been emerging in recent years. The article mostly focuses on the concept of “meat-puppeting” and the specific case regarding Ruckus Networks. The company basically created a fake facebook account under the alias, Brody Ruckus to gather facebook members’ email accounts. Other techniques such as “astroturfing” and “sock-puppeting” are also being used similarly to receive information or promote the company.
Slide 3:
Sony Confesses to Creating ‘Flog,’ Shutters Comments discusses the fake blog that Zipatoni created similar to the false blogs used by Wal-mart earlier in the year. Many site visitors recognized the phony confessions of its supposed author because the jargon was so over-the-top. Sony attempted to remedy the faux pas by including an explanation at the bottom of the page that the blog was, in fact, sponsored by Sony.
The fifth article discusses how AOL felt obligated to make an official apology statement regarding the release of data that had been collected from many of its users. 10 days after the information was made public, spokespeople for AOL stipulated that the action was a mistake and hoped that the users would remember that the information still remained anonymous. Privacy advocates, however, still have a problem with the idea of the data, noting that people can easily figure out who the users are by searching their browsing activity.
The MySpace article discusses a security breach that went unnoticed for months. The breach allowed 18 and older users to view 16 and under user profiles when those profiles were supposed to be automatically private. The concept became public within hacker blogs explaining how to view the profiles. This is not the first problem MySpace has encountered. The company was just recently sued by a 14-year-old who was allegedly sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old she had met on the site.
Slide 4:
The Xanga article discusses a similar privacy issue. Xanga.com was recently fined $1 million, the largest fine amount to this day for violating COPPA. The site apparently allowed a number of children under the age of 13 to register, where many of the kids freely reported personal information.
The article, Snack companies fined $185,000 for violating kids’ online privacy discusses a violation by Mrs. Fields Cookies and Hershey Foods of COPPA, similar to the Xanga issue. Both companies, in addition to the fines, were forced to delete any information collected.
The article about the Malibu Banana Boat Contest discusses a contest constructed by the company to come up with a commercial to the Banana Boat tune. Participants became upset at the fact that a winner was chosen without announcing any finalists. Many people cried foul play. The contest was actually legitimate, but became quite the quandary for Malibu, angering its most loyal customers.
Chevrolet employed a similar strategy of audience-generated advertising for the Chevy Tahoe. The goal is one of viral marketing; to get the videos out on sites like Youtube.com promoting the Tahoe. What the company did not anticipate, however, was a plethora of anti-SUV ads, criticizing the gas intake as well as its link to global warming. Many companies are hesitant to use such methods and critics argue that Chevrolet, with proper research, should have anticipated this problem.