Google is now dealing with the backlash of its latest product. Google Buzz, a social networking service, was launched last week Tuesday, and within only four days it caused a massive outcry amongst users, with most complaints concerned about gaping flaws in the service’s privacy policy.

On Saturday 13 February Google issued a statement on the official Gmail blog, attempting to salvage the search giant’s biggest and most epic fail to date.

Buzz was automatically added onto the Gmail account of every single user. The initial configuration of the product was such that information from Gmail profiles became immediately available to a network of friends created by Google, based on contacts that users most frequently interact with. This network was then visible to a vast audience, widely revealing the personal contact lists of users, with severe repercussions.

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So, up until about five minutes ago, I had no clue that the Winter Olympics were scheduled to start today. This could be because a) I am not much of a sport follower, let alone a winter sport follower or b) that I have not checked my Twitter/Facebook/other social networking sites too much this week. Sports are not being left behind in a cloud of dust and are turning to social networking to encourage fans to watch and attend games and basically, get involved. But do they need this form of sports advertising or have they been doing just fine until now?

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With 400 million users worldwide, Facebook are clearly the leaders of social networking amongst the online community. Twitter are in a not-so-close second place with a comparatively small “following” (pun intended) of 18 million users. With this many people subscribing to online social networking, it was only a matter of time before online giant, Google, came to the party in anticipation of getting a nice fat slice of the social networking cake. The secret weapon that they’ve been teasing us about for the last couple of months was revealed yesterday and goes by the name of Google Buzz. The question that everyone is asking after day one is: “Will it stay? Or will it go?” I played around with Google buzz yesterday, chatted to friends (online of course) and did a little bit of research into the general online public’s reaction to Google Buzz. This is what I found:

Reasons it should stay:

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Imagine that you are a small business. You know that in order for you to be present on the web and take full advantage of your online advertising that you need to employ the expertise of an online marketing company that will aid you in establishing your presence and basically get you noticed. It is no secret that we are always looking for new ways to be recognised as a brand, especially when there is another 5 000 restaurants/hairdressers/frog ornament stores in our area. Many of us have added our info to local search listings and this is a great addition to our online marketing plan but we all know that with Google’s method of random generation, we should not merely rely on this addition and see it as just that.

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Whether you own an E-commerce site, an affiliate site or even a blog, it is important that you make the most of the numerous “selling seasons” that occur every year. In light of this, this blog post is aimed at optimizing your site for Valentines Day which is coming up in just a couple of weeks.

Now, I realize that you’ve only just removed the Christmas trees and snowflakes from your site as we move on from the Christmas selling season (if you haven’t taken your tree down by now, it’s bad luck), but that doesn’t mean that you can rest on your laurels for another 12 months until next Christmas. There are plenty selling seasons to focus on throughout the year – Valentine Day, Easter, Guy Fawkes, Independence day, Australia day, Thanksgiving and the list goes on depending on where in the world you are situated. It is massively important that you find a way to capitalize on these days and use them to your selling advantage.

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Why do you need to know about online personal branding? Well, because Imogen Heap wore a Twitter dress to the Grammys last night, obviously.

Heap’s outfit demonstrated once again that the internet and social media continue to penetrate popular culture and our lifestyles at a rapid rate. While most stars opted for designer couture on the red carpet, the British singer wore a neck piece with a wireless router embedded into it which enabled a live Twitter feed, and her bag was a small television set.

Throughout the Grammys the outfit displayed pictures and videos sent in by Heap’s Twitter followers, enabling them to join their favourite artist at the awards show in a unique way. Despite being deemed a fashion fail, the ‘Twitdress’ is an interesting landmark as it hints at the possible movement of internet technology from our desks and briefcases to our actual clothing.

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With the recent advances in real time search brands now need to monitor their online reputation more closely than ever before. Coming from a past where the corporate website was the sole online showcase for a brand, 2009 showed us that the search engines have a definite interest in MyFaceFlicSpinTwit, with public views now appearing in the index in real time. This presents a dramatically altered landscape for brand managers and PR agencies in the way that they manage their online presence.

2009 saw a mad dash for the social media real estate and even then uptake was tentative and haphazard, with many companies taking a stand just for the sake of it, simply because of all the buzz around social media, but without actually knowing why they needed it or what the return on the time invested was going to be.

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I recently referred a colleague to an article written about duplicate content and why it is not good practice to regurgitate old content onto your website. My colleague read the article but struggled to make sense of it all as the article was just too technical for someone who is just getting started in SEO. So I had to go through the article with him and break it down into a more a more understandable format. This blog entry is a dummy version of what we discussed.

What is Duplicate Content?

In internet terms, duplicate content refers to blocks, pages or snippets of text that is identical or extremely similar to content on another page or website. Often this is an innocent mistake made by one of the parties involved, however webmasters do sometimes deliberately copy content from other sites in the hope of either getting the other site a duplicate content “penalty”, or simply regurgitating content to save time and money on acquiring well written copy. There is no exact formula or ratio to state what is and isn’t considered duplicate content, so be sure to just keep every page of content that you write as original as possible.

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The ongoing Murdoch versus Google story continues to unfold, providing food for thought about the future of online news and user behaviour.

The stand-off between the newspaper and online industries went up a notch last week when America’s largest metropolitan newspaper The New York Times announced that it will start charging readers for online content from 2011.

Following the subscription model of the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, The New York Times will offer a limited number of articles for free viewing, after which users will have to register and pay for any additional content.

NYTIMES.com is the most popular online newspaper in America and New York Times Company executives are hoping that the new system will enable them to profit from the loyalty of regular users, without completely blocking the site from its millions of occasional readers.

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Do you know that someone tweeted about your company’s latest product and said that it was “a piece of junk that didn’t even work properly” or did you know that there has recently been a Facebook group solely dedicated to the “bad service” of your brand? I didn’t think so. As we know, there can sometimes be individuals who have one bad experience with a product or a service and feel that the only way that they will be heard is by relating their bad experience on a social networking site. And before you know it, that person’s tweet has been retweeted again and again or that Facebook discussion board has 150 posts all agreeing with the claim. Whether your company did indeed provide a less than perfect service or sell a product that did not meet the brands standards or if this particular grumpy customer is your ex girlfriend out to liquidate your company, it does not matter. Online reputation management or ORM is needed for every company that cares about the perception and social appearance of their brand. 2010 is an important year for reputation management and as the number of disgruntled customers rise, so should your ability to control what could potentially be a business disaster.

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