Twitter is in a Catch 22 situation; it is stuck between local country laws and the freedom of speech of the Internet users and has opened its doors to censorship.

To abide with the law of the land in different countries, the microblogging site has decided it MAY ‘reactively withhold’ offensive tweets on a country-by-country basis. Well, so much for being the free-speech platform that it was all this time!  Twitter has even cited reference of ‘pro-Nazi’ contents for users in Germany and France, to substantiate its move in its blog.

In a world comprised of different people with different ideas, this move from Twitter has been welcomed by few though the large chunk of Twiterati is wary and complaining. 

About ‘country-wise’ tweet removals, the social networking service provider has not acted on anything ‘offensive’ yet, though has assured that it will intimate the user whenever it does the same and do so in a transparent manner. As for the removed contents (of country-specific users) – it will be available for ALL other users in different countries.

With Facebook and other social networking sites expanding and incorporating new applications, Twitter it seems is trying hard to spread its wings into new regions of the world. After the China debacle when it got blocked there, Twitter is cautious about its market moves.

So, is Twitter losing its reputation for free speech while wooing countries like China back into its fold? What do you think?

Google’s most popular feature with searches is ‘suggestions’. The suggestions sometimes appear much before you have finished typing. Many wonder how Google knows what you are exactly looking for.

After a court in Italy held search engines responsible for suggesting offensive terms, Google had elucidated that “search suggestion service suggests words potentially connected to the words that users type on the Google search field”.

So that might be the reason when my friend typed ‘Arindam Chaudhuri’ on Google and it suggested the word ‘Fraud’ associated to the name. The user was surprised by the suggestion because Arindam Chaudhuri is the Director of IIPM (The Indian Institute of Planning and Management), a private B-School in India. He posted the screen-shot on Twitter (http://twitpic.com/5f6t8h) on June 22, 2011 for all to see.

Next I decided to do a quick search about IIPM, unfortunately the word ‘Fraud’ showed up next to the name.

Following this, somebody who claims may be representing ‘IIPM and Arindam Chaudhuri’  committed a fatal error, she shot a mail from her personal email ID to the user asking him to remove that picture, else face legal action. The mail further claims that they have settled the issue with Google, but Google gracefully refused to comply unless this picture is taken off.

I am skeptical if IIPM did this since they claim to be one of the premier B-Schools in India, with the so-called best think-tank heading them. Secondly any third-party who sends a mail on their behalf threatening legal action is only going to put the institution in bad light. It only endorses what Google is suggesting.

How can you hold the user responsible for what Search Engines suggest? The Management Guru should know that taking legal action on every negative comment is not the solution, since there are plenty of bad mouthing that happens on the Internet. And with the kind of suggestions that comes up during searches, it’s obvious that users will click on the forbidden combination and you further lose credibility. What you ought to do is to figure out why it is so, and then sort it out amicably. Your reputation is at stake and your prime concern should be to deal with negative contents about you on the Internet if you are really that great an institution; after all everybody deserve to keep their goodwill intact. Let sense prevail!

If in the past, we’d turn to our family or friends circles for recommendations, advice, opinions or answers, it then turned towards “www.com” ever since it appeared on the virtual scene. Today, we are once again back to asking friends and family circles with the help of this World Wide Web. The 3 W’s have given birth to several new generation virtualities, especially the ‘social media’. Now, ‘social media’ is the best source of recommendations for nearly everything including the reputation of your brand.

Social media has emerged itself into a vast number of siblings such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Linkedin, Google Plus and so on and on the list goes. Social media and search are converging because search engines are incorporating social signals. Google, Bing and Yahoo have incorporated Facebook likes and Twitter’s tweets into their organic search results. Now, searchers see results in different formats based on activity within their social networks.

Social networks are now expanding their own search functionality. Facebook now lets you search your News Feed for status updates, pictures and videos shared by your connections or brands that you “like.” Twitter bought Summize and is continually improving its search capabilities.

It is seen that consumers are skipping search engines and asking their social networks friends and family for recommendations. This may be most alarming for marketers who are relying on search engine marketing. These social media can make or break one’s reputation. That’s the reason why most of the brands and businesses are after these social searches. Ensure that your brand is well-positioned in a world of social search and that is the big tip for 2012 from Reputation Management For.com for brand protection.

Facebook has finally rolled out the Timeline for all and all you have to do is go here and click ‘Get it now‘. The FB Timeline comes with a seven day grace period to delete stuff that you did (videos, photos, status updates) that you don’t want to be on your Timeline. Warning – When you first see the Facebook Timeline… you are in for a SHOCK!!

What you will see is every single thing you did since joining Facebook neatly arranged under a timeline of years and months. For users who have made the cheesiest status updates and other cringe-worthy quips( in hindsight) it will require a dedicated period of time to go back and decide what should be highlighted or removed from the timeline before its published for all to see. Yes, there is a ‘Publish’ tab to click after doing the necessary changes before the timeline goes live. So what are the advantages?

For the storyteller in you the Timeline is a chance to make a picture perfect string of events in your life all with a snazzy cover picture option that comes as a banner on top after weeding out what you don’t need. Here I’m thinking of celebrity reputation and their PR machines as the first converts in making the Timeline a personal saga – a wall of fame! For the rest of us, as the Timeline can be taken as far back to the birthday, it can be built up with Life events, maps with photos of places been to and so on… to a well-documented chronology of our life.

So, yes, there is a huge opportunity for reputation management with the Facebook Timeline and this can further move on to brand pages as well. Facebook has said that for now the Timeline is focussed on individuals and not brands, but its safe to assume it’s just a matter of time before companies and brands have their own Timeline of accolades!

With Google + and  Twitter coming out with brand pages and other changes being done in interface and Apps, it’s raining brand pages in all platforms. Google is maintaining that the Google + Vs Facebook race is not a social networking attempt to upstage Facebook.

While Twitter is flying high with fly.twitter – a swanky mobile interface and a better web page in the hope to bring back the users from applications like Echofun, Tweetdeck etc.,, not all Tweeters are happy! Avid Twitter users are left wondering if Twitter’s changed from what it was known for in the beginning – a free platform for people to microblog, begin trends, tweet to sport-stars, celebs, politicians, authors and journalists to make a change like it did in the Egypt crisis and revolution.

Write in to us about your Facebook Timeline experience and we’ll feature your comments in a follow-up post.

Siri’s obvious unwillingness to help a woman to find abortion clinics has created ire. The latest controversy could not have come at a time when the company is facing tough competition from their Android-powered counterpart.  Angered by Siri’s failure to locate even one result has had people sign mass petitions to Apple. Blogs and comments are keeping the controversy alive thus putting Apple in a delicate situation. We have to see how they tackle this serious issue.

As always, the problem with Apple is they fail to understand that to develop such an effective feature, Siri has to learn about the user; it should customize itself to know every detail about an institution or an individual. Guess what? Siri transforms your speech into a search algorithm and uses the 3rd part search engine to obtain result. If the search engine fails to return the information, Apple gets the blame for not having programmed that way. 

So is Apple actually trying to keep you from having an abortion or finding contraception? Well Siri, helps you find many things associated with men but few things for women. Though it’s not like that, but it seems that way.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison said

These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone, it simply means that, as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better, and we will in the coming weeks.

As for the comment about beta version, apparently Apple has programmed the system to pick out millions of combinations of input; nevertheless they acknowledge it is under process.

Apple has not rebutted Siri so far; unlike in the past when they acted on moral ground and pulled off several apps from its iOS App because they were objectionable or offensive. A “gay cure” app, which purportedly keyed out renowned people, vanished after users raised fears.

So in one way, Apple is setting example for others, and needs to be careful, because to do something like this it needs a great deal of trust in the party that collects this data.

Have you given up on Google Plus, already? The Google+ rollercoaster has been nothing short of mercurial – The fanfare, the golden invite, the Google+ launch was on hype overdrive; then came the ‘is it dead’ questions and Facebook launching new features to stay in the game. Google is now talking about brand pages in Google+, yet another feature in Facebook; and hence the question – ‘Does Google stand a chance against the social media behemoth that Facebook is?’ 

Google+ syncing seamlessly with Android devices: Google+ of late seems to be more about bringing all your web presence onto a single platform with easy icons and circles. So from easy instant upload of photos from your Android phones to video chat hangouts, its about getting you organised the Google way. The best part about this is that, the photos that get instantly uploaded are not available to your Google+ circles by default; you have to make it available or shared on Facebook etc manually. Google scores on privacy which has always been a sticky point for Facebook always.

Facebook popularity to stay: Facebook and its numerous Apps are the rage worldwide and is not likely to make a difference to its millions of users as far as social media activity goes; and the Facebook ‘likes’ will continue to to be popular and people will continue to share and upload images from Facebook. So on a social networking level there is no way that Google+ will replace Facebook.

Brand building and search implications: For Google+ the focus is on brand building and this is where small companies or professionals should focus on as well; and the SERP privileges of having Google+ page is sure to mount as the days go by. Being the giant search engine that it is, the SEO implications could be phenomenal in the future.

The trick in appreciating what Google+ could be, is to look at it as NOT a social networking platform but as an organiser of all your web activities, contacts, chats, professional meetings (Hangout) and as a means of brand building.

I’d definitely recommend having a Google+ page for your business as Google eventually gets around to what it originally planned in terms of web content importance with more applications coming under the Google+ umbrella.

Social Media has been an excellent vehicle for businesses to promote their brands and products for years, and with a theoretical audience of over one billion users it’s a trend that’s set to continue for the foreseeable future. From that, it’s of little wonder that slowly people are starting to realise the potential for charities to make their mark on this global audience for the betterment of their respective causes. But what happens though when lines get crossed and businesses and charities start working together, and it becomes difficult to see exactly who’s getting the better deal?

Let me start out by saying that I am in no way against charities, or generally disagree with what charities are trying to do simply on matter of principle. I’m a big fan of some charities and I believe supporting a cause comes down to an individual’s ability to connect or relate to an issue, rather than being fundamentally for or against charities in general. Social Media has been instrumental in raising awareness for good causes who would otherwise not have the resources or the voice to speak out and be heard by so many people at once. In extreme circumstances Social Media has even proven invaluable to relief efforts in the face of natural disasters and has paved the way for charitable donations on a scale we’ve never seen before.

It’s nothing new for companies or businesses to be associated with specific charities. Some of the best results charities have seen have been due to working together with big brand names and there’s an argument for a charity that “any publicity is good publicity”. How far though is that argument being pushed by businesses today, and where does the line get drawn between that which is in the best interests of the charity, and the best wishes of the firm ‘promoting’ the charity?

I came across an interesting Tweet yesterday (or, more specifically, a ‘Re-Tweet’) from a celebrity whom I shall not name, which read:

DPGplc DPG plc [rt] by [name_removed]
@[name_removed] We’ll donate £5 to SANDS (Still & Neo-Natal Death Society) for every celebrity RT of this post. #CIPD11

My first impression of that Tweet was that it seemed a little lacklustre and insincere. I’m naturally a cynic and am sceptical about… well, most things really, so that reaction wasn’t exactly uncommon. But then I took a closer look and started looking at it objectively. The concept was simple enough; the company “DPG plc” (Development Processes Group) were sending Tweets to every celebrity/high profile user they could find, claiming that every time one of them Retweeted their post, they would donate £5 to charity. For the purposes of this article I shall ignore the fact that this was blatantly spam and say that on the surface, this seemed simple enough. A business is for all intents and purposes pledging money to a charitable cause.

Three things bugged me about the post right away. To begin with, it was making no effort to explain anything about the charity and, more importantly, it gave no obvious way of obtaining more information. If you want to try and raise awareness of an issue, you want people to care so ‘context’ is pretty important (despite the 140 character limit being fairly inhibitive at times). Furthermore, once you’ve got somebody’s interest/attention you want them to be able to easily access further information. Twitter has a built-in feature that automatically shortens links, so the (approx) 20 remaining characters from these posts were more than enough to contain a link to SANDS, the charity in question. Further investigating also showed that there was also no mention of the charity anywhere on DPG’s Twitter account or their own website (which doesn’t get a link).

The second thing that annoyed me was the fact that the post specified that DPG were only willing to make any contributions upon celebrity endorsement. I can see the logic behind this argument from a marketing perspective – celebrities are deemed more influential than Joe Twitter and thus upon a Tweet by a celebrity the message is theoretically reaching a larger audience. However, given that the post specifically stated that they are only going make a donation upon a ‘celebrity retweet’ implies a desire to specifically be associated with fame, rather than being concerned with raising awareness. If they wanted to do the best job they could, they’d want everyone to be Retweeting and learning about the charity and volunteering help. One way of interpreting this would be to conclude that DPG are more interested in making people aware of their gesture than they are in helping SANDS.

Onto my final and biggest gripe: the ‘hashtag’. That bit at the end of the Tweet which reads “#CIPD11″. For those who aren’t particularly familiar with Twitter, a hashtag is a way of linking Tweets to create discussions between users who aren’t necessarily following each other. A ‘topic indicator’, if you like. You can click on a hashtag and see every recent post which has it included, and wanting to know what #CIPD11 is and how it related to the charity; I clicked it. Turns out that the hashtag is actually nothing to do with SANDS or any other charity, it’s The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s Annual Conference and Exhibition. In other words, a big networking event to discuss ‘Human Resources’. And no, before you ask, there is no connection between CIPD11 and the Still & Neo-Natal Death Society. None on the website dedicated to this conference, nor on any other websites discussing this conference. Nor does CIPD11 appear anywhere on the website of the charity, either.

I also want to make it clear that this is not a DPG scam, as one of the trustees from the charity was keen to defend these Tweets when I questioned DPG’s methods:

TravisCerys Peter Brady
@kenhalfpenny @dpgplc I am a trustee of said charity it is a marketing concept that @DPGplc are prepared to pay £5K to us for these RTs

Peter Brady, founder of the Jude Brady Foundation raises a good point when it comes to discussing the ‘ethics’ dilemma as mentioned in the title of this article, and we’ll get to that in a bit. I’d like to note at this stage that nobody that I spoke to from SANDS or DPG knew anything about the arrangement, but then it’s not entirely uncommon for financial matters not to be common knowledge amongst all members of a company so they couldn’t really be scrutinized for that. But, it was a little disappointing that nobody was available to talk to, whether it be SANDS, DPG or even Peter Brady himself to clarify the details of the agreement.

The details strike me as particularly peculiar as well. For instance, how are they monitoring exactly how many celebrities are retweeting their posts? What are they using as the basis to define a ‘celebrity’? People in the industry will know of ‘Listening Tools’ which are used to monitor various aspects of user conduct on Social Media, and to turn around and say “We’re using listening tools” and hope that there’ll be enough people without the knowledge of how this works to save having to justify it any further. Because, to be clear, they wouldn’t have to monitor how many times a single post is retweeted, as their is no “one Tweet” to count. DPG have issued numerous different Tweets, each targeting a different ‘celebrity’. In order for their “£5 per celebrity retweet” to come true, they’d actually have to differentiate between a retweet from a celebrity, and a retweet from somebody who doesn’t enjoy quite the same social status (by whatever standards DPG are using as definition). Could it be that  £5,000 (total) is a figure that DPG has already agreed to donate and the celebrity retweets are all about publicity? Is the £5,000 Peter mentioned in his response just an “upper limit”, and if only 10 celebrities retweet their comments, does this mean the charity will only get £50? Who knows. The only 3 people who have heard of this deal apparently are all unavailable, the entire day. “Okay”. Like I said, I’m a sceptic.

TravisCerys Peter Brady
@kenhalfpenny @dpgplc and just for the record think of how much the profile of our charity is being raised too it's nothing but good for us

So regardless of how genuine DPG might be in their offer, or how they’re going about conducting themselves, Peter Brady does have a point. If, through whatever means, a charity is receiving just a little bit more attention on the back of somebody else’s marketing, is that a bad thing? Is there a a definitive rule which states that companies should be allowed to conduct themselves in whatever manner they choose so long as a) they’re not hurting anyone and b) charities benefit from it in the long run. But then, how does one measure exactly just how much benefit to a charity there can be by simply name dropping them as part of what is, in all reality, a marketing campaign designed to raise awareness of DPG plc and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s conference event.

How tolerant are you willing to be of marketing practices which are clearly using not just the concept of charity, but specific charities, in order to promote their own reputation? Do ridiculously misleading marketing campaigns actually help a company’s reputation, and is DPG likely to gain anything from this? Where should the line be drawn – if at all – between a company and charity forming a mutually beneficial partnership, if the company is gaining more from the relationship. If a company is gaining proportionately more from the relationship – is it even still charity? Ultimately it’s not for me to say one way or another.

When Peter Brady isn’t raising money for a worthy cause (and yes, SANDS is a worthy cause) he works for a company called Mutual Media whose industry is set in marketing, design and print. One of Mutual Media’s clients? DPG plc. I’m not suggesting foul play, far from it. I think what’s happened here is Peter Brady has approached one or more of his clients to ask them if they’d be willing to support a charity for which he is a trustee. I think DPG plc has seized an opportunity to promote themselves, their brand and their trade on the back of this. A lot of companies have found ways to make ‘x’ amount of their financial margin tax-deductible by writing off figures as charitable donations. I think DPG plc HAS the money spare to give to charity, but rather than just do what’s right and GIVE THEM THE MONEY OUTRIGHT, they’ve chosen to make a scene and say “look at us, look at what we’re doing, aren’t we simply the coolest?”. I don’t think any credit should be given to a gesture that’s clearly not been made with the charity’s best interests in mind, and advertising an HR conference under the pretence of charity awareness is utterly morally bankrupt.

The most concerning thing though, I think, of all of this is; if companies are allowed to abuse charities for the sake of self promotion, will this lead to people becoming indifferent to genuine charitable efforts and campaigns? If people are left with the impression that Social Media is being abused by businesses looking to exploit charities, will that in fact lower the number of people willing to contribute to a good cause?

You tell me.

Respond here, or reply to us on Twitter (I’m not pretending to be doing this for charity) at @reputationmgmnt to continue the discussion.

Thanks for reading.

Here you have another product of Google to hit the trash. Well, I wouldn’t say Google Sidewiki is a complete failure, but relatively a Google product that failed to keep up with the expectations”.  Google has finally decided to close it down, and is offering its users to export all of their data. December 5, 2011 is the day Google will discontinue Sidewiki and erase all the content. Users’ can visit http://www.google.com/sidewiki/  and follow the manual to retrieve the data.

I believe Google Sidewiki didn’t catch on with everyone simply because of the fact that it was a complex tool. Not only that you have to install Google Toolbar, you had to ensure it was turned on.  It looked pretty promising in the initial phase along with other Web Annotation tool and this would have clicked had this been user friendly.

If  Sidewiki had implemented “reviews” for businesses, to be frank it would have been a reputation nightmare. Sidewiki could prove to be a potential tool to damage your business reputation. As the algorithm works, pages that attract maximum visitors would experience incessant flow of spammers. Webmaster trying to get rid of negative comments on their website might take longer days to erase all the negative comment.

Well! As of now Google Sidewiki will go off the air on 5th December 2011.  I doubt Google’s reputation as the king on the Internet, this latest development only reiterate that they have failed products, and the latest is Google Sidewiki.

I got a friend request from a total stranger on Facebook last week. The only thing we had in common was mutual friends. As always I declined that request. But then why would anybody send friend request to people they don’t know, strange but that’s what Social networking is all about. To my surprise I saw my colleague accepting this request from the same person. I then wondered if I had gone overboard by declining a request from somebody with potential caliber? I enquired with my friend and he had not clue; he accepted the request only because there were few friends in mutual circle.

I later learned that Facebook is sending friend requests automatically without users’ consent. I thought Facebook is a great place to be in touch with friends and it contributes to web searches. But if it is going to ask me to add people I never want to, I might then have second thoughts. This latest glitch has already earned the wrath of users from across the world.

Facebook on the other hand has stated that this latest development has nothing to do with their official feature. They suggest that some rogue Facebook applications could be responsible for this, The Herald Sun reports.

Isn’t it that Facebook is one such online brand that everyone trusts and the reason why users enter their personal details.  It’s so vague to believe that anyone can develop a Facebook application and Facebook never bothers to check the authenticity. Maybe the level of trust Facebook enjoys, that users end up giving access to their account to such third party applications.

ReputationManagementFor.com – Every brand to survive needs that driving force called trust and you cannot qualify by overlooking any factor that leads to trust deficit. Today the pressure is on the companies to maintain that faith with every association they make- business or social; it should be imperative for any organization. So, what’s taking Facebook so long to set things right before such Applications eat up their reputation?

Canada’s technology champion, Research In Motion Ltd is scrambling to remedy back its reputation, as an extensive series of lingering service blackouts around the world left millions of BlackBerry owners in the dark without access to emails or instant messages. The international confidence in RIM plummeted.

Last week, blackouts that began Monday in Europe, Africa and the Middle East spread to North America, knocking BlackBerry users in the United States and Canada off-line. Service disruptions were also reported in South America, Hong Kong and Japan. The annoyed BlackBerry users around the world took to Twitter and Facebook to vent out their anger. This is an example oh how the reputation of one company can be spoiled within minutes with one mistake.

RIM is now working “night and day” to correct the problem, which was caused by a core switch failure within its own infrastructure. Making matters worse for the company, this week, RIM’s chief rival Apple Inc. is making the latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 5, available to iPhone users. The new software includes iMessage, an instant messaging technology that is exclusive to Apple devices and that duplicates many of the same features offered by RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger platform, a key differentiator for the company.

As the disruption hit North America, shares of the BlackBerry maker dropped more than 4% at one point in Toronto Stock Exchange trading.