13 posts tagged “seo”

The Financial Times reports today that Central Office of Information (COI), the UK Government's "center of excellence for marketing and communications," has put a moratorium on advertising on social media sites like Facebook.   COI organizes marketing campaigns to promote issues of public importance (education, health, welfare, etc.) for various UK Government departments.  The organization announced that it is reviewing how it handles advertising on social networking sites fearing that its ads could appear on innapropriate user generated sites.  Alan Bishop, chief executive of the COI, explained the decision to the FT saying:

"We always have to keep a very close eye on the context. People are still getting to grips with this. We don't want to exclude the use of any of the new social media but we do have to have a very clear idea of what the context is going to be like."

COI's decision comes one week after New Media Age reported that Vodafone, The AA, First Direct, and others were pulling their ads on Facebook because they appeared on the Facebook page of the British National Party, a highly controversial political organization.  Last week, Vodafone released a statement saying:

"We advertise our products and services across a wide range of on and offline publications... In the case of online, bundles of space are purchased across a number of sites including the social networking sites. As a result we were not aware that a Vodafone ad would appear next to a British National Party group on Facebook.

Our Public Policy Principles state that we do not make political donations or support particular party political interests and therefore to avoid misunderstandings we immediately withdrew our adverting as soon as this was brought to our attention.

We are working with our media buyer OMD to ensure that more robust controls are in place before we agree to any potential re-investment," the statement added."

The concerns raised by organizations like COI and Vodafone are understandable and highlight the need advertisers to have greater control over when and where their paid ads appear.  As far as I'm aware, thus far, website optimization solutions and content delivery platforms are only helping advertisers and marketers understand visitor behavior, segment visitors into groups, and deliver targeted messages that are relevant to specific segments. I'm not aware of any optimization solutions or content delivery platforms that helping advertisers optimize ads and website content so that they're not only relevant to various segments of website visitors but that they're also blocked from appearing on pages that promote or discuss controversial topics.  I'm interested to see who will be the first to make this happen.

Marketers can already test and optimize ads and web content so that relevant messages are delivered to different audiences i.e. (Audience segment A "High value customers" sees Ad #1, Audience segment B "First time visitor" sees Ad #2, etc.).  Similarly, search technology makes it easy to identify controversial key words on web pages (i.e. "BNP," "Political Party," etc.). I can't imagine that it would be too difficult to combine these two technologies to create an ad optimization and delivery network that allows advertisers to deliver blank ads on social media pages that have potentially dubious content, or 'sublease' that ad space on controversial social media pages to less discerning advertisers. 

Instead of simply segmenting users, the ad publishing optimization solution I'd like to see would also segment content.  The ad delivery platform would scan social media pages at regular intervals for controversial words.  If dubious words or phrases that go against a given advertiser's rules of engagement appear, the ad slot could display nothing at all or an ad from another, less discriminating advertiser, who subleases the ad space in cases where the primary advertisers chooses to bow out.  Having a solution like this would allow social media platforms like Facebook to offer a two-tiered advertising platform that offers the ultimate control to Tier 1 advertisers who are willing to pay for it and exposure to Tier 2 advertisers with a smaller budget.

Could this work?  Post a comment with your opinion, and if you don't have a Vox account, email me with your comment, and I'll post it manually.

Italy-based social networking company, Dada S.p.A., is partnering with Google AdSense to pay users for allowing ads on their space.  Dada's new Friend$ is an opt-in revenue sharing program that rewards users for adding friends and updating the content of their Dada space.  According to Dada, Friend$ is, "the only program that rewards you both for keeping your personal space updated (blog, video, profile, etc.) and for spreading the word by inviting friends to do the same."  The idea is that users keep their Dada space updated and invite friends to participate in Friend$.  In exchange, Google posts ads on their site/friends site, and pays users and their friends a percentage of the money generated by click-through on those ads.

I wonder how advertisers feel about this? It seems like an easy system for Dada users and their friends to exploit for revenue purposes.  If I were an advertiser, I'm not sure how excited I'd be by having people click on my ad with the express purpose of extorting me for their own/ friends' financial well being. 

Similarly, I find this whole concept a little disconcerting in that it encourages social networkers to talk about specific topics for the express purpose of generating revenue.  I feel perfectly okay about the idea of hiring paid spokespeople to talk about companies, so long as the public knows that they're being paid.  However, I take issue with situations like this, where there are blurred lines of distinction between people talking about what they're genuinely interested in versus talking about things they're being paid to discuss.  It's not Dada and Google are talking about sponsoring corporate blogs...  In a way, they're steering kids (and adults) towards discussing specific topics their conversations, blogs, profiles, etc.  If a social networker wants to make money through Friend$, and they know which companies use Google AdSense, I suspect that it will be very easy for them to exploit the system.

What do you think?  If you're unable to post a comment, email me, and I'll post it for you.

Today, on Webpronews, Steven Bradley addresses some interesting questions raised in a couple of other blogs - namely:

• Is there an optimal post length?
• Will shorter posts help to retain readers and even lead to more links?
• What makes you unsubscribe from a blog’s RSS feed?

Bradley’s ultimate conclusion is that the best blogs have a mix of long, medium, and short posts.  He’d “prefer to focus on quality and let the length of the post be what it is… to find [his] blogging voice than consciously attempt to stifle it.”

I struggle with the same questions when writing my own blog.  Plenty of my readers tell me that they appreciate my more in-depth (translation: really long) posts.  But, I seem to get just as many comments (if not more) on short posts as I do on long posts.  Bradley’s blog made me realize that we still have a lot to learn about social media and web 2.0 optimization:

• What are the best ways for companies to engage customers through social media?
• How should individual bloggers and social media mavens (i.e. those who set up social networks/ groups on sites like Ning, Vox, Gather, etc.) structure their content to best engage with their peers around areas of mutual interest?

There are certainly a lot of assumptions to test.  So far, it seems that marketers and bloggers are throwing ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks. In time, there will more scientific ways to answer these questions.  Marketers are only beginning to understand the "science" behind web 2.0, social media, and targeted delivery of information to customers.  As web 2.0 and social media evolve, there is a growing buzz about:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO),
• Social Media Optimization (SMO), and
• Website Analytics/ Testing/ Website Optimization, which includes things like A/B Split Testing and Multivariate Promotion Testing, Targeted Content Delivery based on the profile of a specific visitor, Landing Page Optimization, and Predictive Delivery / Cross Selling, etc.  

These three topics are closely intertwined...  When a company spends money on SEO to ensure that their websites and/or corporate blogs/ social media properties are well placed in search results pages, their efforts won't result in customer conversion if the person who lands on their site can’t immediately find relevant information they’re looking for.  Similarly, if corporations are writing blogs that are too long or too short for their desired audience, they’ll lose that audience.  With that in mind, I think that concept testing, website optimization and analytics are the key to answering the key questions about the value of social media.  These topics will be of growing importance in the coming years as marketers strive to better understand and target customers to capture greater returns on web-based investments.

There are a some interesting players in the testing and optimization spaces (Offermatica - which, in the interests of full blogging disclosure, is a company that I recently interviewed with; Optimost; Touch Clarity, which was recently purchased by Omniture; Kefta; to some extent Google; and others).  If you are a marketer with experience working the products/services of any of these (and similar) companies, I'd love to hear your thoughts on their usefulness.  In my opinion, web marketers are only just starting to realize the value of testing and web optimization.  It will be very interesting to watch this space as web 2.0 and social media continue to grow. 

If you're interested in web optimization and testing, the following are links to blogs that you might like: Optimize & Prophesize, This Site Is Dead, Out of My Gord, Thinking Aloud. 

I read a great review of Ning in yesterday's TechCrunch.  So, today, I thought I'd give it a whirl myself.  Michael Arrington's review was right on the money... Ning is pretty cool!  It lets you create your own customized social network - complete with RSS feeds, blogs, forums, and more.  Almost everything is customiseable - colors, logos, style, etc.  Check out the Social Media Network I created on Ning to see what I mean, and give it a try yourself!

If I'm being really picky, I've only got two complaints about Ning so far:

1. If you pick a username (e.g. "Social Media") you can't call your network the same thing.  I joined Ning not knowing that, and so I had to pick an alternate social network name once I'd set up my profile.
2. Once you set it up (which is exceptionally easy), it is difficult to navigate your way around the editing features if you want to change placement or content.  I'm sure this will get easier as I become more familiar with the service, but initially, editing isn't as intuitive as I expected.

Barack Obama just launched a social media/ social networking website to further his presidential campaign in 2008: my.barackobama.com. While I haven't made any decisions about who I will support in the 2008 presidential election, I signed up for a "test account" on My.Barackobama.com to test the social media functionality of Obama's website.  The features/functionality of the site are robust. Users can:

• Write a blog
• Help Barack fundraise
• Discover events nearby/ Create events
  
• Network with other supporters
• Invite friends
• Write messages to "friends" (e.g. fellow Barack Obama supporters)
• Join groups/ start groups (just like VOX or Gather)
  

If you're a Barack Obama supporter, the site looks like a great way to interact with other supporters.  If you don't support Obama, the site looks like a good way to get the inside scoop on what his supporters are saying.  I didn't find any noticeable bugs, which is a good sign.  It looks like the site uses a customiseable white label social media platform - ala Five Across or Social Platform, though I couldn't find any sign of which solution was used.  I did notice that the blogging feature disables adding  hyperlinks, which is a little frustrating, though it's not difficult to understand why disabling hyperlinking would make the site easier to administer.

I'm looking forward to seeing what role social media plays in the 2008 presidential election.  So far, Barack is the first candidate to launch his own on-line social network.  Hillary Clinton launched her campaign using an on-line video to announce her candidacy and has a blog.  Her campaign supporters are also using 3rd party social networking sites like MySpace to make waves.  However, at the time of writing this blog, Clinton has yet to launch her own social network.  Two different strategies from two different democratic candidates.  One thing is clear - the forthcoming election campains will provide interesting case studies for anyone interested in social media marketing.  I expect that by 2008, social media marketers will discover a lot more about how to properly target and ignite a winning word of mouth campaign fueled by social media.

Here's some great food for thought- especially the last minute of the video:

Web 2.0 is linking people...

...People sharing, trading, and collaborating...

We'll need to re-think a few things...

copyright

authorship

identity

ethics

aesthetics

rhetorics

governance

privacy

commerce

love

family

ourselves

As many fellow VOXers know, there is no way to tell how many hits your blog gets (or how many people read or talk about it)... Six Apart doesn't provide a counting utility to bloggers. (If they did, the bloggers generating the most traffic on VOX might be tempted to leave to start revenue generating blogs of their own.)  I often wonder how many people actually read my blog, besides those that add me to their VOX "neighborhood" or leave comments.  As far as I'm aware, no one has developed a way to accurately automate the combined measurement of blog traffic, quality of content, links from other blogs, etc.  Technorati does a good job of identifying who is talking about which bloggers, so for now, it is what I use to gage how I'm doing in the blogging universe.  But, Technorati only tells part of the story. 

This morning, I took a look at the rating of my blog on Technorati.  When I first checked the rating score several months ago, my blog was ranked somewhere around 900,000th. The next time I checked it (weeks later), it jumped to around 300,000th.  This morning when I looked (gasp) it jumped to the 125,511th top blog.  That's over 700% improvement!  Unfortunately, that's not at all impressive when you explore what it means.  Technorati's rating score indicates that socialmedia.vox.com was linked to by 52 other bloggers 30 times.  The more bloggers that link to this blog, the higher my rating score goes. 

When I dug a little deeper into who was talking about my blog, I realized that the links to my blog included:

• Legit mentions from other blogs (though there was a duplicate mention, which counted twice - both the original post and then the archived, permanent post).
  
• People who added me to their VOX neighborhood (My hyperlinked image appears on their vox home page.)
  
• Multiple links from fraudulent blog sites... By this, I mean links from websites formatted to look like blogs but lacking in their own content.  Take, for example, "MySpaceRIP.com".  (I won't hyperlink the URL because the undesired result would be an improvement in Myspacerip.com's Technorati rating.) This appears to be a holding page for a domain name for sale + advertising space for sale.

All of the bogus "link to's" that I saw listed under my blog made me question Technorati's usefulness as a "rating" tool. Based on my experience, no real meaning can be derived from the actual ranking.  However, Technorati is an incredibly useful tool for discovering who is talking about blogs and topics.  One of the most interesting things that I discovered when trolling through my "link to's" was one blogger's opinion of the "Top Bloggers On Communities".  If you are interested in on-line communities, this list is a great resource for new reading material.

If any of you out there know of a better tool than Technorati for measuring the impact and popularity of blogs, please post a comment or, if you're a non-voxer (and can't leave a comment), email me, and I'll post your comment manually.

ComScore and Federated Media (FM), which represents social media sites including Digg, PROTRADE, BoingBoing, and Dooce recently announced that they would be working together on a "research and development initiative designed to provide comprehensive measurement of conversational media such as blogs and community-driven sites."

I'm looking forward to seeing the outcome of this research, especially as the current ways of measuring traffic on blogs and community-driven sites are lacking. Technorati, for example, while useful in showing who links to who doesn't account for traffic volumes in their ranking of blogs. Similarly, Alexa shows how many hits certain blogging sites get, but in the case of Vox, it doesn't show which blogs get the most hits (beyond the mention of a few blogs on the site).  By way of example, Alexa doesn't allow me to track the traffic my blog gets. 

As blogging as a hobby and profession increases, bloggers want to know how many hits their blog gets AND how many people are linking to it. In addition, it would also be useful to see how many times a blogger's name is mentioned in the context of a topic but a blog link is not provided.

Today, I read an interesting article on Pocket-Lint, which summarizes a recent Harris Poll, which questioned 2,309 people back in December 2006:

Of all frequent YouTube users, two-thirds (66%) claim they are sacrificing other activities when on YouTube. Although their visits to the site are most likely to have been at the expense of visiting other websites (36%), time spent watching TV is next most likely to have taken a hit (32%). YouTube also cuts into email and other online social networking (20%), work/homework (19%), playing video games (15%), watching DVD(s) (12%) and even spending time with friends and family in person (12%).

According to the article, 3/4 of respondents would be less likely to visit YouTube.com if ads were placed in front of videos.  Interestingly though, that same group of respondents, was okay about TV network websites airing commercials during on-line showing of television shows.  Almost as many adults (41%) have watched a video on a TV network website as they have on YouTube (42%).

Pocket-Lint takes a unnecessarily negative view of what these survey results mean for Google's monetization of YouTube, saying: "It seems like TV networks can get away with advertising more easily." I don't think this is necessarily true, and I take a much more positive view of the survey results than Pocket-Lint.  While additional research would be required to confirm my thoughts, I suspect that people are more willing to see ads on material that cost money for networks/studios to produce because there is a high likelihood that this content will be entertaining vs. seeing ads on material that had little production cost and may or may not actually be entertaining. 

The thing with home videos on YouTube is that users have to sift through material to find the really funny/ interesting/ good stuff.  That's part of the excitement and charm of the site, but it may also make users reluctant to accept watching ads, if they feel those ads "waste their time."  This isn't to say that users won't accept ads on YouTube, but if YouTube goes, choses to implement ads, to be successful, ads will need to be both relevant to the user and offered in formats that don't annoy users.  Another issue, which I think impacts users willingness to see commercials, is the quality of the picture.  When copyrighted content is illegally posted on YouTube, it is often not very high resolution footage, which impacts the viewing experience.  When a user watches copyrighted content on a network's website, the footage is usually very clear and higher resolution.  I think it goes without saying that if YouTube were able to legally secure content from the content owner (e.g. movie studios/networks), resolution wouldn't be an issue.  But, why would a Studio or Network want to "give" YouTube their content?  I've got a few ideas...

If YouTube users are, as the Harris Poll suggests, really sacrificing time elsewhere in order to spend time on YouTube, there should be plenty of revenue generating opportunities for Google.  First, there are the conventional options worth exploring:

• Conventional Ads -  Additional studies would likely be required to determine what type of ads could be run without causing YouTube user attrition.
  
• It might not be a good idea to put ads ahead of every user-generated video on YouTube, but video ads or splash print ads may be tolerated by users in front of or behind highly ranked home movies or videos that networks and studios post (if YouTube is successful as signing licensing agreements with content owners). 
  
• Targeted banner ads on Youtube.com, or short video or splash ads put in front of YouTube videos that are fed through to other websites (say VOX blogs, etc.) may be more tolerated.
• Subscription services - Perhaps users who aren't willing to see ads would be willing to pay a subscription fee to watch videos.  While those who are happy to watch ads, could do so, in lieu of paying a subscription fee.

• Free to stream X number of times - Pay to watch more than X times or to download the video to your PC, Phone, iPod, etc..

If, however, Google wants to make serious money with YouTube (without being "evil" in the process), there is plenty of room to innovate...  As I mentioned in an earlier post, YouTube recently announced that it would soon incorporate an audio engine that recognizes songs laid on top of home videos that appear on YouTube. At the end of videos, YouTube will give viewers a chance to legally purchase those songs.  This technology could be used to allow users to buy/download videos from studios/ networks as well.  However, I see  enormous possibilities to innovate and create revenue generating opportunities, which would allow Google to extend the advertising empire it started with AdWords into a whole new generation of interactive advertising.

Google could power a next generation advertising platform on YouTube that works like this for consumers:

• Watch a video on YouTube
• If you've liked anything you've seen/heard about in this video, buy it now or get a discount to buy it.
• YouTube could suggest products to purchase that appear in the video that users have just watched.  Advertisers already pay to get rappers to mention products (cars, booze, etc.) in songs, and they pay for subtle (or not so subtle) product placement in films and TV shows... I imagine these same advertisers would LOVE the opportunity to immediately capture customers by either enabling them to buy (or providing them coupons to buy) products featured in YouTube videos.
• If you like what you've just watched, check out these other programs X,Y,Z (this already exists on YouTube, but it could be enhanced/expanded to more closely mirror the system on NetFlix, which recognizes a users' interests and behaviors in combination with the behavior of users with similar profiles).

TV Networks and movie studios may be more likely to allow YouTube to use their content, if significant revenue sharing opportunities are involved.  A great way to generate tons of ad revenue (without bothering the consumer) is to work with advertisers who pay for product placement within movies and TV shows, allowing them the opportunity to capture new customers who are exposed to their product placement via watching movies/shows on YouTube.  YouTube could either allow users to click-to-buy (or express interest in) products within videos (a possibility if the videos are uploaded directly by the studios/networks) OR offer viewers the opportunity to purchase any of the featured products at the end of the video. 

For those of you who are wondering why networks/studios would want allow YouTube to reap the rewards of this idea, versus just implementing it themselves on their own websites, that's a great question.  In order to make this model work, Google/YouTube would have to make a multifaceted and compelling case, which could include the following points:

• YouTube has the ability to bring new viewers to network's/studio's content... When a user goes to YouTube, they often go to explore/discover new content.  Whereas, users that go directly to a network's or studio's website go with the intent of discovering content they already know about.
• YouTube could easily maintain multiple years of content, bringing back to life ad opportunities that studios and networks thought long gone (see Reese's Pieces example a few paragraphs below).
• Google is an advertising machine and has the ability to share revenue with studios and networks. (YouTube/Google would need to make this case strong enough by offering enough of a revenue share to discourage networks from thinking it is worthwhile to expand their own IT staff and infrastructure to implement the idea themselves.)
  

In addition to enticing networks and studios, YouTube could easily entice individual contributors (home video producers) to upload quality video content.  One way to do this is by maintaining a list of products and songs that have the potential to generate extra revenue sharing opportunities for uploaders.  For example, I mentioned earlier that advertisers are willing to pay rappers to mention products in their songs.  Why wouldn't those same advertisers be willing to pay YouTubers for playing those songs on top of their home movies IF they could prove that doing so increased customers?  If viewers had the immediate opportunity to purchase the product they just heard about on YouTube after watching a video, YouTube would have the case to get ad (and commissions) revenue off of the advertiser.   To prevent gross over commercialization and "pimping" of products, YouTube could require videos to get a certain number of page views and high rankings from viewrs before agreeing to share the revenue.

Taking this a step further, if, someone were to upload a video with a rap song overlaid on the top that mentioned say "Sprite" and PepsiCo didn't want to pay to have viewers "click-to-buy" (or print off a coupon) at the end of the video, Google could offer that opportunity up to a Sprite competitor, like "7-Up".

A few use cases to illustrate my point...

• Watch the movie, ET, and at the end of the movie, have the option to buy Reese's Pieces or get a manufacturer's coupon for 10% off. 
  

  E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (Full Screen Collector's Edition)
• Watch Grey's Anatomy, and at the end of the show, download songs from the soundtrack from the record labels or a Gray's Anatomy t-shirt from ABC.
  
  

  Grey's Anatomy - Season One
• Watch someone's home movie with Snoop Dogg's "Gin & Juice" laid over the top, and at the end of the movie, buy the song and/or download a coupon that allows you to get a 10% discount on your next Segram's Gin purchase at BevMo. (When viewers use these coupons, there is even an opportunity for revenue sharing with YouTube, The Record label, and the person who posted the video and chose the song.

In summary, ad revenue and user enthusiasm potential is far from lost for Google and YouTube.  In fact, the world is very much Google's oyster.  There are infinite revenue generating possibilities for Google, content owners, and advertisers, which, if executed properly, benefit the consumer.  The trick is thinking creatively and getting buy-in from both advertisers and content owners. If anyone can do it (without being "evil"), Google can.

A new survey conducted by Zogby International on behalf of the United States Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee was just published, in advance of the annual State of the Net policy conference, which is due to take place on January 31st in Washington, DC. 1,200 adults were surveyed between 1/24/07 and 1/26/07, and the results are both interesting and incredibly relevant to social media.

The survey highlights changing attitudes among 18-24 year olds in comparison to their older counterparts.  For starters, the survey shows that 18-24 year olds have very different perceptions of privacy than their older counterparts.  While 91% of the survey participants felt that expectations of privacy have changed with the introduction and usage of new technologies and the Internet, 18-24 year olds do not seem as concerned with traditional “privacy” concerns:

• Only 35.6% of 18-24 year-olds feel that it is a violation of privacy for someone else to post a picture of them in a swimsuit on-line.  This is in sharp contrast to the views of the 25+ year-old crowd, 65.5% of whom felt this was a violation of privacy.
• Similarly, 19.6% of 18-24 year-olds consider their dating profile to be an invasion of their privacy versus to 54.6% of all other respondents.

The majority of 18-24 year olds felt that children should wait “much longer to use all aspects of the Internet, including email and social networking.  More than 75% of respondents felt that children should be at least 13 years old until they are allowed to have an email address.  And, of this 75%, 40.7% of them believe that children should be at least 16 or wait until adulthood to get an email address.  65.6% of survey respondents felt that access to social networking sites should be restricted until children reach the age of 16.  More interesting still, 18-24 year olds felt more strongly about this than their older counterparts.

Commenting on the survey, Tim Lordan, executive director of the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee said:

Whether health care, e-commerce or social networking, privacy is at the forefront of every major policy debate…  This survey raises questions that could significantly impact our policymaking on privacy in years to come, assuming the MySpace generation maintains their privacy views as they age."

I find the viewpoints of the 18-24 year olds surveyed particularly interesting- especially their conservative thoughts about when children should be allowed to access the Internet.  I suspect (though can’t prove) that the conservative attitudes on this topic are the result of intense exposure to the Internet, email, and social networking sites from a young age.  18-24 year-olds are probably more aware of the dangers of the Internet than most older adults.  

The Internet became accessible to the masses and deeply incorporated into formal education about 15 or 16 years ago, making the adults who are now in the 18-24 age bracket the first group of adults who may not be able to remember a time without computers or the Internet.  In the last 5 years that on-line social networking has become popular, adults that are now 18-24 years old were in the prime of their “internet education”.  By this, I mean that most of them were either in high school or college when the Internet became a ubiquitous social networking tool.  As a result, most of them had more free time than the average older adult to experiment on-line, doing things that their parents/ teachers/ guardians had no idea about.  The Internet and social networking were made an integral part of the fabric of youth culture for the first time, and like all other aspects of youth culture, adults weren’t nearly as familiar about what was going on as the kids who were experiencing it first hand.   Like most adults looking back on their childhood, I’m guessing that the now 18-24 year olds have begun to identify the youthful indiscretions/ mistakes they made on-line and can equally appreciate the opportunities and dangers of the internet more than average older adults, who haven’t experienced the Internet in the same way as those in the younger age groups.

The 18-24 year old viewpoints about age-limits for the Internet exposed in the Zogby survey combined with Tim Lordan’s comment make me wonder what will happen with the regulation of the Internet over time.  Will the US Government eventually impose an “age limit” on obtaining certain privileges on the Internet?  Will they introduce on-line identification program, in an attempt to “protect” children?  Neither of these options seems viable, given the “open” and multi-national nature of the Internet.  

In my post on January 18, I talked about the need for parents to protect their children from the dangers of the internet, while at the same time promoting personal accountability and responsibility.  I continue to believe that it is important for parents to make decisions about how their kids use the Internet. I also believe that worldwide governments or an international agency comprised of industry experts and child welfare advocates should provide guidelines to parents (not unlike is done for television or movie ratings).  However, I believe that if the government tries to regulate the Internet too closely, it will turn into a bureaucratic nightmare.  In my opinion, it is impossible for anyone, besides parents to “police” the Internet for children.  Others can only help the cause. To do this, security education and features should be made freely and easily available to parents from the moment they buy a new computer or download a new browser.

I was trying to come up with ideas for how security features could be made more easily available to parents.  The US government could help with this, mandating that all OEMs offer a specific level of security features with the sale of each computer.  They could also ensure that anytime a new browser is downloaded that owners have the option of installing the same level of security features.  So, when parents buy a computer or download a new browser, they are prompted to assign a password to each of their children and set up certain privileges/ levels of privacy - i.e.:

• Kevin – Age 8 – Password= DogCat22. Only able to access X,Y, Z website, and parental notification and activity logging is on. No email access allowed.
• Jenny- Age 13- Password= Hocus24Pocus. Able to access any website that is considered “safe” by the installed kid-safe screening software, but parental notification and activity logging is on.  Email access allowed to/from the following addresses: X, Y, Z (or to/from anyone at A,B,C domain – e.g. a child’s school) or between X-Y time on Z date when parent will be with child helping research.
  
• Peter – Age 16 - Password= 276BasketballFootball. Able to access any website, but parental notification is on.  Open email access to all addresses but parental notification will notify parents of who child is emailing. Not allowed to download a new browser.
• Amy – Age 18 – Password= Seven8Six.  Open access. No parental screening. Not allowed to download a new browser.
  

I'm sure the ACLU would disagree, but with a system like this, kids would actually have to talk to their parents about what they’re up to on-line and vice versa.  Similarly, parents would have the ultimate control on what their kids are allowed to do on-line and the ability to change these settings as/when appropriate (and preferably via their mobile phone from the road or their PC from work).  I'd much prefer to see a system like this than an overly legislated set of laws, that like the driving/drinking/smoking ages seem arbitrary and discourage personal responsibility.