Lijit Search
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
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TWO-THIRDS OF SPAMS ARE LIES
On the eve of a three-day anti-spam forum in Washington, the Federal Trade Commission reported two-thirds of e-mail contains phony information. One out of three e-mails the FTC collected and studied had misleading information in the "from" line to the message, hiding the true identity of the sender. The FTC reviewed 1,000 e-mails and found 20 percent of them involved offers of business opportunities, 18 percent were for pornography or dating services and 17 percent touted credit cards.
America Online said Wednesday spam has become so voluminous the online service blocked more than 2 billion unsolicited messages in one day this week. Just eight weeks ago, AOL said it had blocked 1 billion such messages in one day.
Posted by Reid
1:13 PM
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Tuesday, April 29, 2003
From AdWeek:
VIRGINIA'S ANTI-SPAM LAW COULD RESULT IN CRIMINAL PENALTIES
Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner Tuesday signed two bills to raise the penalty to a felony for high-volume, unsolicited bulk e-mail, or spam.
The new anti-spam provisions of the Virginia Computer Crimes Act make it the toughest such law in the United States. Under the new statute (SB 1139/HB2290), hard-core hackers and spammers--those who produce the most offensive and persistent e-mail solicitations, actually aimed at crippling servers--will now face a class 6 state felony, which carries a prison term of five years and a fine.
Other actions that can trigger penalties include: forging e-mail header and routing information; sending huge volumes of bulk e-mails; generating substantial monetary proceeds from spamming; and employing a minor to be an affiliate in the spamming process. In addition to a class 6 felony, violators could face monetary fines and the seizure of profits, computer equipment and all property connected with the crime. Also, since the law regards e-mail passing through the Virginia-based Internet Service Providers, it allows prosecutors and the Attorney General to reach out to spammers in other states and jurisdictions.
Twenty-six states have enacted laws prohibiting spam. With the exception of Virginia, each of these laws involve a civil statute designed to empower citizens, businesses and a few Attorneys General to sue spammers and collect statutory and actual damages, and in some cases, civil fines.
Congress is currently considering spam legislation. Earlier this month, U.S. Senators Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced a bill that is designed to protect consumers from unsolicited commercial e-mails. Under the bipartisan legislation, called the CAN-SPAM Act ("Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act), all unsolicited marketing e-mail would be required to have a valid return e-mail address so recipients could easily ask to be removed from mass e-mail lists. Once notified, marketers would be prohibited from sending any further messages to a consumer who has asked them to stop.
The federal legislation contains strong enforcement provisions that give the Federal Trade Commission power to impose civil fines on those who violate the law, and State Attorneys General the ability to bring suit on behalf of citizens who have been victimized by unscrupulous marketers.
Posted by Reid
4:28 PM
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Tuesday, April 22, 2003
OVERTURE COMPLETES WEB SEARCH UNIT PURCHASE
Overture, a provider of pay-for-performance search to Web sites, said it has completed its acquisition of the Internet business unit of Fast Search & Transfer.
Posted by Reid
1:54 PM
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It's a bold statement, but someone's got to make it.
This article is about one company's trials with both CPC/PPC engines vs. search engine optimization. A search engine case study.
SEO Outperforms Overture
BY KRIS OSER at DIRECT magazine
Posted by Reid
9:28 AM
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Monday, April 21, 2003
From Adweek.com
NETRATINGS DEBUTS CENSUS-BASED SITE MEASUREMENT SERVICE
NetRatings has launched a census-based site measurement service that arms marketers and sales teams with third-party Web venue circulation figures.
Called SiteCensus, the service provides media companies, online publishers and other Internet companies with key metrics for sites with smaller audience sizes, including visitors, page views, time spent and demographics. It also delivers regional and local market tracking, along with gender, age and client-specified custom demographics.
"Since SiteCensus is a server-side approach to measurement, it will be able to report on Web sites with very small audience levels," said NetRatings svp of business development Jed Meyer. "There will be minimum reporting levels for demographic data, but the page view and visitor counts will be drawn directly from a census count of actual visitors."
NetRatings, a New York-based Internet audience measurement and analysis firm, is targeting smaller sites with this service, as well as domestic Web sites that derive a lot of traffic from outside of the home and workplace and international audiences. For instance, online newspapers may use this service to gauge their entire network of sites, or specific local content areas that may not meet the reporting cutoff for traditional panel-based measurement, said Meyer.
SiteCensus tracks the origin of a Web site's visitors, including traffic from wireless and hand-held devices, Internet appliances, shared home and office computers, university PCs and other public terminals.
NetRatings is positioning the service as a complement to Nielsen/NetRatings' NetView Random Digit Dial measurement service, saying that it will supplement larger size Web venues with different levels of site-centric analysis.
NetRatings, a part of Adweek parent VNU, created SiteCenus in partnership with SelectMetrics, a privately held Portland, Ore.-based company that creates online audience measurement technologies.
The service's census-based measurements are provided through a page-tagging system. When encoded in any Web site page, the tag counts every page view and visitor, and also selects and surveys a representative sample of the audience.
Posted by Reid
3:12 PM
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Friday, April 18, 2003
Get more information on the "anti" position of the Super DMCA (S-DMCA) laws here.
Posted by Reid
9:37 AM
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Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Friday, April 11, 2003
SENATORS PUSH SPAM BILL
Oregon Sen. Democrat Ron Wyden and Montana Republican Sen Conrad Burns introduced legislation requiring Internet marketers to use legitimate return addresses in their messages. The bill would also charge state attorneys general with suing spammers, and authorize the Federal Trade Commission to levy fines. A similar bill from Wyden and Burns made it out of Commerce committee last year but did not come to a vote in the Senate.
Posted by Reid
11:05 AM
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Thursday, April 10, 2003
ICE T TO SELL NEW ALBUM ON KAZAA
WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. (CBS.MW) -- Ice T's new album will be available online -- legally.
The artist has signed a distribution deal with peer-to-peer network company Altnet to sell "Repossession" over the Internet. Altnet distributes the Kazaa Media Desktop, one of the world's largest networks for trading files. "Repossession" will be digitally delivered at a price of $4.99.
Posted by Reid
8:16 AM
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Monday, April 07, 2003
YAHOO INTRODUCES NEW SEARCH PLATFORM
Yahoo has unveiled a new search product, which is meant to provide users with a cleaner, easier-to-use interface and faster ways to find relevant information. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company said the new offering will reduce the Web portal's dependence on graphic-heavy ads and improve the relevance of ads and sponsored results.
Posted by Reid
1:52 PM
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Yahoo kicked in the Googles A story from The Inquirer (UK-based)
THE NEVER ENDING scrabble for advertising revenue is starting to make web companies get seriously innovative. Taking a leaf from Google's book, Yahoo has decided that it will be using computer automation to make its site more user-friendly.
Posted by Reid
1:47 PM
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Thursday, April 03, 2003
AMAZON.COM TAPS PAID SEARCH
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- If 2002 was the year in which portals embraced paid-listing advertisers, 2003 is shaping up as the year that other leading niche sites are jumping in.
Amazon.com became the latest nonportal site to try out paid-search listings for extra bucks.
Amazon signed on with Google to put sponsored listings on its site, so if an Amazon.com customer shops using the search tool, the search results page may include some sponsored listings from Google's ad network.
Posted by Reid
1:22 PM
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Tuesday, April 01, 2003
UPS Launches a new brand with a focus on Synchronized Commerce. They modernized the logo and kept the colors. Why they felt the need to nix the Paul Rand version that's lasted 40 years now is, perhaps, a sign that the company is experiencing a sea change. The logo change is the story here. But not one without reason. Aside from bad timing for any non-war news event and an implied deemphasis of "brown" there is another story between the logo-launch lines here: Is this over-emphasis a result of a badly needed exuberance in an otherwise overly-cautious year?
Neverless, there is much in this re-branding scheme that should not be left to speculation. What I love most about the UPS re-branding effort is the UPS re-brainding web presence. The least impressive elements overall are the splash page--having failed to inspire or inform on those guttural levels a simple headline or static image might have--and the title, "Expanding Horizons" which, let's face it, has summitted the cliché mountain and is well past the point of altitude sickness, frostbite and starvation.
Nevertheless, the good outweighs the bad here. Take note, designists, web-masters, typists and PR-ites. Here's what I'm gleaning at first glance.
1. Clearly ordering the preferred "reading" of the new brand:
- Synchronized Commerce (And explanation of benefits and motivations)
- Expanded Capabilities (i.e. this is the new stuff at UPS)
- Brand Evolution (i.e. how this new UPS fits in the greater arc of UPS time)
- Story Resources (a press center replete with Media Kit, Case Studies, Story Ideas, 3rd party White Papers, Speeches, Photos, Videos, Audio and Releases)
- News Coverage (for the fans, dilettantes and sycophants, and newly converted evangelists among us)
2. The real miracle, though, is that in the end they make a very difficult concept easy to picture. As in 'visualize'. After spending some time on this site, you get it.
3. Primary navigation is succinctly different from ancillary links. Thus your eye is drawn to the salesy bits whilst rewarding those who wish to dig deeper with cold, hard information.
4. There is good economy of space complimented by good writing, relevant call-outs, and--with the exception of your standard stock art--no-bull imagery.
Posted by Kelly Abbott
10:14 AM
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