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Public Relations firm, Edelman, has revealed that they are behind two blogs that formerly appeared to be created by private supporters of Wal-Mart. This was revealed through online clicks on the Working Families for Wal-Mart blog, which turned out to be an Edelman employee, Miranda Gill. Furthermore, recent entries written on the Paid Critics blog, a site that draws links between Wal-Mart critics and groups, proved to be written by Edelman employees; Brian McNeil and Kate Marshall. These blogs have helped shares of Wal-Mart rise 1.5 percent on the New York Stock Exchange this past Friday.

PR Firm Admits It’s Behind Wal-Mart Blogs

Big companies are starting to blog more frequently because it gives off a more personal, social, and lively message to readers. Although this article states that blogging may not sound like something big corporations should be involved with, more than three-dozen Fortune 500 companies are now producing blogs. This article mentions how these blogs can be good due to the fact they offer “straight talk.” These blogs give readers personal facts and knowledge about the company and their employees. There is also a downside to corporate blogging due to the fact that companies themselves are underwriting blogs. Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Public Relation’s firm Edelman, apologized for a blog written by two of his own employees about Wal-Mart. He claims this blog was their error and not the clients. The idea of blogs is this: they are open, honest, and authentic. Filtered and controlled conversations are out and open, honest and authentic conversations are in. People want to read about things that are un-biased because it will give them the best insight about a product or company. This article claims, “If you don’t talk with your employees and your customers in a way that lets them in on things, you’re missing out on the gam.” I agree 100%.

Corporate Blogging: Wal-Mart’s Fumbles

The Internet is now being used to market products in subtle ways. One popular marketing tool that is now being used more frequently is the meat puppet. A meat puppet is a fictional person that passes as an actual human being online. For example, “Brody Ruckus” was invented on Facebook, a social networking site for college students, as a way to interact with college students. Brody Ruckus was a student in Atlanta, who had a girlfriend, named Holly, and tried to get as many friends as possible. A few days after Brody created his membership, Facebook discovered he was a fake and destroyed his profile page. Although his page was shut down, Ruckus Networks (who was the company behind the scenes) got access to more than 300,000 email addresses. This crosses a fine-line and potentially invades a consumer’s personal space. Meat-puppeting and sock-puppeting are only some of the most recent versions of disguising oneself to get insider information. Undercover marketing now exists in which companies will send an employee into a store or restaurant with a brand new product to try and attract customers. Furthermore, “trolls” also exist, who are product users who go into chat rooms to bash a certain user, product, or brand. A website also popped up to bash Apple’s iPod for being sheep and conformist music players. This website was called iDont.com and attempted to build up a forum of anti-iPod/ anti-Apple users. In conclusion, this article demonstrates the recent popularity of the internet and how businesses are creating advocacy groups, virtual fronts, and chat rooms to gain more insight about consumers and to persuade them without them knowing they are affiliated with any business whatsoever. People think they are talking to another user but in reality they are talking to a businessman or businesswoman.

‘Puppets’ Emerge as Internet’s Effective, and Deceptive, Salesman

AOL apologized for releasing search log data on subscribers that had been intended for use with the company’s newly launched research site. AOL does not defend these actions and launched an internal investigation to make sure something like that never happens again. According to privacy advocates, there were records of 658,000 users who could easily be identified based on their individual searches. AOL handled this situation very well and was recognized for doing so. Companies are becoming more and more concerned with research data of online users but are having trouble getting this information. This article states, “There are ways of conducting research into search technology, without making individuals’ search terms public.” Every search engine that exists is currently collecting user search data and uses it to try and reach consumers on a more personal basis. This information is valuable to marketers, insurance companies, and advertising agencies.

AOL Apologizes For Release of User Search Data

Recently, there was a one million dollar penalty against social networking site Xanga. This site violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act for allowing children under 13 to sign up on their site without a parent’s consent. This is the largest penalty that has ever been issued in the world of social networking sites. Xanga has been in fierce competition with MySpace.com for several years. This could have lead them to continue allowing 13 year olds sign up for an account due to their vast amount of users. Apparently, protecting kids privacy online is a huge deal for America’s parents. That it why social networking sites have to get a parent’s consent in order to let their children go on these sites because personal information is collected from these sites. Xanga has taken these issues into consideration and has since addressed these problems by making their site safer and instituted a more comprehensive and secure program. I feel that parental consent is a very important thing to collect in the social networking world due to the fact that younger children are sharing way too much information about themselves to complete strangers because they do not know any better. I think that sites need to enable something more than a box users check or a drop down box to confirm they are over 13 years of age. If sites go above and beyond this I think they are going to be one step ahead of its competitors due to the increasing problem of sex offenders and other encounters.

FTC Fines Xanga for Violating Kids’ Privacy

According to news reports, a security system on MySpace that enabled users to view other users’ private pictures, videos, postings, and messages went unattended for several months. Furthermore, this also allowed users over 18 to view users profiles that were under 16. This is supposed to be disabled due to the increase of sex offenders in the past two years. The glitch caught word fast and the site Digg.com even reported links to Web pages describing the hack in detail and other codes that could help users view other users’ private information. A North Carolina high school student even started to post examples of these hack codes on his web blogs. MySpace claimed they had taken precaution to fix this situation but many said that this was more than just a technological error. This is a serious problem for MySpace and served as an invasion of privacy for most users because they thought their profiles were “private.” The author of this article stated, “This could even be a legal problem for MySpace if this got out because anyone can view someone’s private content. The victim could say that MySpace was not protecting them, thus opening MySpace to a lawsuit.” Many social networking sites are having trouble due to the war between them and authorities who have criticized these sites for enabling “easy” communication between underage teens and sex offenders. The quote at the end of the article states a solution to this problem, “This is exactly why I do not have a MySpace account. Just goes to show that if there are parts of your life that you do not want to share with the world, keep it to yourself.” This couldn’t be stated a better way. Children need to use common sense and parents need to teach their children this.

MySpace Glitch Gives Hackers Teen Data