Facebook user John Graham, a 42-year-old Leawood lawyer from Kansas, is suing the leading social network in representation of the 150 million Facebook users in the United States.

According to Graham, Facebook is in violation of wiretap laws as it uses a tracking cookie to record web browsing history after users have already logged off of Facebook.

Read full article on Thenextweb.

Its that time, when a few hundred online types gather for Boston’s social media un-conference, Podcamp.  Yes, there are topics — but these are looser than at regular conferences, and they’re 100% driven by the audience.  Its fun, personal, cheap, and it really is the place to click-in with a core group of Massachusetts digital doers.

The New Schedule is Here!
 Here are a few sessions I”m looking forward to at this year’s #PCB6. Hope to see you there.

And, if you’re new to Boston’s digital scene, this is a key place to come and plug in.  Here’s just a taste of the digital awesome ahead.

Saturday, September 24th
     (We might get to hear from founders, Brogan & Penn, before the games begins.)

9am –
Join me for The 7 Deadly Sins of Digital Business Innovation
While nobody can tell you exactly how to build your next innovative digital business, the deterrents to digital success are well known. Taking lessons from my work helping firms remake themselves through digital technology, I’ll share some common patterns that create obstacles, and ways firms have successfully taken them on.

10am –
Chris Brogan (in photo above), Why Google+? Then What?
Are social media enthusiasts finding Google+ to be a useful medium. Or is this a fantastically designed bridge to nowhere. Pocamp founder and man-about-the speaking circuit, Chris Brogan has a point of view at the ready.

David Cutler (also in photo above), Selling Out
Let’s face it, nothing happens until someone sells something. And that’s what Mr. Cutler has been doing since before we were both geezers. Nobody is more interactive than Culter. And I’m hoping that he’ll play some harmonica between sessions. Please, join me in hounding him about this.

Tom Catalini – Improve your blog’s image with images!
I really want to see this. Fortunately, Podcamp is governed by the rule of two feet, which allows wandering between sessions. This way I can satisfy my desire to be three places and once, and to continue to cultivate mid-life ADD.

11am –
Tamsen McMahon, Breaking the Bell Curve: Standing out in a sea of same
Tamsen, a self-described intellectual magpie, is a ton of  fun and great ideas. She leads digital strategy for a fine agency in our fair city.

2:15 –
Doug Haslam, Cutlure Clash of Personal and Professional Brands, & Why It’s Necessary
Doug was early to the intersection of digital and public relations. And hearing what’s on his mind is a great view on the promises and challenges of digital PR.

3:15 –
Christopher Penn – Designing Social Media Influence
Chris is a Podcamp founder, and extraordinarily nice guy who will have a honed presentation.

Ja-Nae Duane has been on a Revolutionary Roadtrip spreading social media savvy, much as the Scooby gang once toured our nation uncovering ghostly hoaxes in abandoned amusement parks. She is head of social marketing for a local agency, an opera singer, and a fine ghost investigator in her own right.

Paul Lyzun, Interview Techniques – no not for a new job, silly. Paul teaches video skills, and his presentations are a great way to learn hands on skills. Fortunately he’s presenting twice, but if you need to do on camera interviews, get in here.

Sunday, September 25th

10:00 –
Sara Streeter, Fluency Through Listening
Sara ran New-B camp in Providence, and is smart, fun, and relentless up to good.

Lane Sutton, Locking Yourself Up… Online from the Unknown
Though Lane is quite young (somewhere below 18 still I believe) he’s earned a voice as a philosopher of why being online is good for us.

11:00 –
Georgiana Cohen, Get Smart About Content
She just nailed with a question in my Web3.0 session last year, and since then, I’ve seen Georgiana all over the place sharing ideas on content strategy. She manages web communications for a local university, and I hear she’ll be keynoting at Gilbane Boston this Fall. Don’t miss, she’s awesome!

Chel Wolverton, Social Inbox Zero
If anyone knows about managing chaos its Chel, who has been lead organizer of the last two Podcamps. She’s also out sharing her views about the online world, and anyone who can help get people to Zero in any inbox has “the power”.

2:15 –
Come join me for Applying Digital Strategy Across Your Business
You will leave this workshop with the tools to assemble single page maps to renovate existing businesses approaches, or show how your new approach will obsolete competitors.

3:15 –
Mari Anne Snow – Teaching social media to the next generation of social media professionals.
Besides being the best professor on social media that I know, she’s also an accomplished business advisor. I’ve attended several of her courses, and highly recommend hearing how she structures a fantastic learning experience that is far from ordinary.

You can see the full Podcamp Boston schedule here, and $30 registration tickets (good for the whole weekend) are available, this way.

Google +1  is the critical priority of the year for our friends at Google. Accordingly, they’ve invested their most prized asset in this effort: space on every single paid and organic search result.

(To get a quick explanation of +1, see the video below.)

Why So Much Urgency?
I see two large drivers for the urgency behind this launch, which makes this akin to Apple launching a new iPad.

Google is Desperate to Be a Social Platform
Google has tried a series of social initiatives: starring results, blocking results, side-wiki and Google Buzz, but none have achieved mass success. Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare and others have cracked the code on the social Web 2.0 networked world. Google is still the hub of Web 1.0 webpages. But the social graph lives on platforms that others control, and that’s a threat to Google.

Google Seeks to Restore Integrity to its Search Results via Social Markers
As I noted a few weeks ago, crappy organic search results are a threat to the value position of Google’s paid results. That’s the lion’s share of their revenue.

Google has been off inventing cars that drive themselves and devices that could replace television networks, but along the way they let SEO gamers lower the integrity of their organic search results. Adding social signals to the search formula is a step away from factors that SEO gamers control, such as link farms and exact match domains.

This Beta Is Still Half-baked, But It Deserves Your Attention Now
The rush to release the beta is evident, as all the elements in +1 which take place off the search engine results pages (SERPs) aren’t yet ready.  That’s too bad, because without them, +1 fails; that’s why its a beta.  After all, the purpose of a search page is to get people to content, not to survey them to see if they like what’s described in the search result.

The place where +1 will fly or fail is on the websites of potentially millions of users who will install the +1 button. Yet, just like the iPad2, if you’d like to add a +1 button to your website, “there’s a line for that.”

The other missing element is the special tab in your Google profile that shows people what you’ve +1’ed.  This may be soon to come, but until it does, this beta isn’t very social. Once people can Tweet and link to their list of +1s, and promote the program on their own sites, it will be legitimately social. For the time being, this is just a design shift on SERP pages, and a glimpse of what’s ahead.

In the Long Term, Google +1 Is Promising to Marketers
This promises social proof to validate firms’ search results. Further, there’s the potential of future influence on natural search engine rankings or the quality score of ads (SEO agencies, start your engines).  And if profile pages become social hubs, marketers can gain additional awareness and traffic through social sharing on these.

+1 Is Also Promising to Google’s Future
1. It gives searchers a reason to use Google when they’re signed in, rather than anonymously. This means Google can build richer records of individuals’ use of search and better target ads.
2. It expands the public use for the Google profile page, which can be built into a future social networking play.
3. It is an answer to Facebook’s Like button, which is already on about 2 million websites.
4. It is an innovation that moves the public spotlight off Google’s struggle with link farms and SEO gamesmanship.

Unanswered Questions and Unintended Consequences

Will This Initially Decrease Conversion Rates?
If you follow the UsefulArts Twitter feed,  SEO pro Andy Komack @akomack raised the question of the unintended conversion distraction that Google+1 introduces.  Currently the +1 box is a distraction from the core purpose of search pages: channeling traffic to content.  If a social opportunity interrupts the search experience, click-throughs could in fact decline. This might change over time, but I agree with his concern.

How Will Participation Change Search Engine Results?
Will sites with the +1 box on their pages gain an advantage in SERP rankings? Will sites with more +1s move up in rankings, or end up paying less for PPC placement?

Bold Prediction: This is the start of Google the Social Network
I see this as a move in a more expansive social play, in which Google will combine its Profile Pages, the +1 Button, Google Buzz, Google Chat, Google Phone, Gmail and its RSS Reader into an integrated social network. I suspect we will see these point services substantially repackaged into an aggregated offering. What do you think?

That’s my take on this now day-old initiative.
I’d love to hear your view, so please comment away here or email me your take.

Post update: April 1, 2011, 9pm: after an instance of the +1 button was found “in the wild” running on a non-google website, Google announced it would withdraw the public test of the button. All information in this post continues to be accurate – and this illustrates again Google’s urgency to accelerate this launch while attempting to manage marketers interest in this initiative. (details)

2011 has been the year when social media has become a central story in international politics.

This grew through a global series of online protests in 2008, the “Twitter revolution” in Moldova in 2009, and Wikileaks in 2010.  Suddenly Mark Zuckerberg is the hero of the Arab people (see the 60 Minutes‘ Bob Simon interview with Tunisians), and Egyptians are naming children after Facebook. This is real transformative power, and that’s not lost on political leaders in China.

The Web as Political Magic or Western Manipulation?

Both western and Arab observers see Tunisia and Egypt as examples of the political magic that comes when people are connected and enabled by networks and mobile devices.  But party hardliners in China see this as an unambiguous threat. They’ve used the “great firewall of China” to block content about Arab countries in revolution. To them, the story is not about the empowerment of people by information technology; it’s about the national interests that social media serves – specifically, the United States.

China Bolsters Public Sentiment Against Western Digital Media
The Chinese press, and yes I am speaking of it as a consolidated entity, is building a familiar “online threat from the West” story arc, intended to galvanize national sentiment against the West, which is set on world conquest through a monopoly trade in dangerous products.  Not opium; information. On Friday, “web user” Zheng Yan wrote an article which appeared on the CCP’s official People’s Daily, and since has been cross-posted to 300 websites in China including including Xinhua Online, QQ.com, China Youth Daily Online and Sina.com.

The articles thesis is that “Google is not just a search engine tool — it is a tool to extend American hegemony.” Zheng calls the California-based search goliath “America’s British East India Company.”  Just as the American press featured thematic coverage on the dangers of crime and internet sex abuse on the emerging Internet, the Chinese press is starting a story arc of digital nationalism. As this theme of digital nationalism is expanded, you might enjoy the useful grid (okay, infographic) developed by Ogilvy that compares US social media to their Chinese competitors.

The story has both Google and the US as the bad guys, and a brave defender as a national hero: Chinese search engine Baidu.

Enjoy the read…

“From the East India Company to Google”
People’s Daily
March 4, 2011
By Zheng Yan (??)

As an American company, Google’s enthusiasm for the politics of other nations goes beyond what is right.

Recently, Google, Facebook, Twitter and other American Internet giants have participated directly in the social storm that has engulfed the Middle East. They have played a key role in manufacturing social disorder, serving a role entirely inappropriate to their status. Wael Ghonim, Google’s chief representative in the Middle Eastern and North African markets even rendered assistance to Mohamed ElBaradei in driving forward the anti-government movement [in Egypt], becoming the chief agent behind Egyptian demonstrations. The facts have shown that Google is not purely a company, that it seeks not only to make the money of other nations, but also meddles in the political affairs of other countries. It is not just a search engine tool — it is a tool to extend American hegemony.

In the Internet age, whoever dominates the Internet dominates the world. As the world’s leading hegemonic power, America has always prioritized the Internet and sought to use the Internet as a means of promoting America’s national interests around the world. Google has been very cooperative with this strategic motive of the United States government, and [its cooperation] has been active.

The enterprise with the world’s highest online traffic, Google monopolizes the online search engine markets for the vast majority of nations and regions in the world, and it has the capacity to dominate online information, widely propagate lies and influence [the information] climate. When a number of countries in the Middle East experienced signs of instability due to inflation and other problems, Google immediately went on the offensive, even allowing a senior company manager to directly establish the online general headquarters of the anti-government movement, fostering successive protest movements and nakedly interfering with the internal politics of other nations. These actions of Google’s are astonishing, and they lead people naturally to recall the British East India Company.

In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the British East India Company, through the monopolization of trade, the sale of opium and open plunder, accomplished great works for England in its development of an “empire on which the sun never sets.” Marx once said concerning the British East India Company that there was a 200-year history of the British government carrying out wars in the name of this company, until this reached the natural boundaries of India.

In the colonial era, the British East India Company used the monopolization of trade in the colonies to traffic opium and assist Britain in building its hegemony. In the Internet era, Google uses its monopoly of Internet information search to traffic American values and assist American in building its hegemony.

While there are differences in the ways the two [companies] served hegemony, they are uncannily alike in the way they rely upon hegemonic governments to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations and attain monopoly positions globally. It can be said that today’s Google is America’s British East India Company.

At its heart, Google is quite similar to the British East India Company. But in managing its outward appearance it is far more skillful than the British East India Company ever was. Google does not burn, kill and pillage, but rather is a master of disguises. Against the modus operandi of the British East India Company, which was to “carry out trade when necessary and plunder when possible,” Google’s slogan is far more bewitching: “Do no evil.” The problem is that no company on earth “does evil” as a matter of creed, and it is a bit hypocritical for Google to say it “does no evil.” The facts show that this “Do no evil” is actually an admission of guilt through a protestation of innocence.

This company that claims to “do no evil” has cooperated with America’s National Security Agency to monitor the private information of American citizens. It has been taken to court by publishing companies in France, Germany, Belgium and many countries for violations of copyright. It has been compelled by China and other countries to clean up its act because it disseminates pornographic content. And most recently it has also openly released subversive information, fomenting unrest in other countries. Before the facts, Google’s creed of “Do no evil” is like a joke. Is it any wonder that Apple CEO Steve Jobs once said that Google’s “Do no evil” creed was complete nonsense?

A company that hold a monopoly position in its industry is of course formidable, but Google is not without its enemies under heaven. In China, it was strongly blocked by Baidu. According to statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center, Baidu held 75.5 percent of China’s domestic search engine market in the fourth quarter of 2010, and Google’s share of the market, which had fallen for four consecutive quarters, stood at just 19.6 percent . . . Losing its competitive advantage, this Google which had swept across the entire world market, was furious with shame and started playing the political card.

[This portion includes a summary of Google's pullout from China, and how China remained determined to "govern the Internet in accordance with the law" despite Google's arrogant exceptionalism.] But this momentary setback could not deter a company like this from its ways. Seizing on social unrest in the Middle East, it once again raised its ugly head and again it sought to play the political card against China. China has no illusions about such a company. It disregards basic truth and international law to wantonly interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. China has the right to monitor and control it in accordance with Chinese laws and regulations.

During the Opium Wars more than a century ago, the British East India Company forced open the doors of China with its own gunships, sending China into a century of chaos and leaving Chinese with a bitter history of humiliation. Today, China will not stand by and let a new British East India Company repeat the events of history.

J. Scott Evans is hands down the person to turn to on emerging domain and online IP law issues. He’s moderating a panel discussion with David Taylor of Hogan Lovells International, and Scot Minden of  Symantec.

Is a gTLD expensive compared to dot.com?
Taylor offered that generic terms as regular doamins have recently sold for high prices:

• Flowers.com: $1.5 million
• Vodka.com: $3 million
• Diamond.com: $5.5million

That’s a lot, considering the underlying registration costs $10 per year.

gTLDs for domains such as “.coke” require a $185,000 registration fee, and likely a .5M outlay for hosting. That’s still a long way from being cheap, and it potentially is a material burden on even large brand holders.

Taylor also commented on China’s shift in domain law which prohibits individual domain ownership, and its strict verification of companies registering for .cn domains. This has resulted in a sharp decrease of registered .cn domains from 13 million names to under 9 million names.  .CN now has fewer domains that Germany.

Regulation across the EU is uneven, and is playing out through its 27 jurisdictions.

J. Scott Evans highlighted case law.

Themes  included the importance getting your registration details cleaned-up. Make sure your contact information is correct, and that there’s a clean chain of title for the domain.  In Germany, several courts have held administrative contacts on domains to be liable for the domains infringement. Take away, get your records cleaned up.

Scott Minden sees Symantec’s participantion in social media as increasing. They’ve hired several social media staff, and gone about reserving their marks and networks, while removing accounts registered by impostors. This would be similar to LaRussa v. Twitter (June 2009) which was won on Right of Publicity and Oneok v. Twitter (Sept. 2009). A customer registered the name and posted information about the company.

Like many others, he’s been successful in getting Twitter accounts taken down but not transferred. He’s used the networks policies as his point of concern, and found good responsiveness by the networks.  The group agreed having a reputation as a good actor, who is polite and judicious, will result in favorable treatment.

Advice for Social Media Use

• Register your trademarks as usernames.
• Moniotor venues for abuse
• Send abuse compaliants when appropriate
• Establish guidelines about
  • Who is authorized to post on behalf of the brand.
  • How must the identify themselves?
  • What should not be disclosed, or undertaken.
    (ie. endorsements, reviews, astroturfing.)

Set Domain Strategy for the  gTLD Shake-up in 2011
The burden of registering marks defensively on many different new gTLDS has resulted in the proposal of a trademark clearning house.

There have been 21 requests to create domains in non-roman characters. There are billions of people who don’t use roman characeters, so this change will happen.  That means brands need to set strategy at a high level. Will your firm go to the right of the dot for .5M?  Dot.com may not always be the only gold standard.  And what about defensive buys across country domains?

Emerging Issue:
Facebook Communty Pages: When people enter their interests, Facebook creates community pages sort of like Wikipedia about subjects, some of which are brands. This may be a new frontier for brand protection.

A few weeks ago, I observed that part of a lawyers work involves dealing with misery: explosions, poisonings, fraud, catastrophic medical errors, and — toughest of all — kids whose lives will be framed by the careless act of another.

Those are the issues clients bring to us, and any lawyer who has done it for long enough gets to know the failings of systems that should protect us.

So I’m proud that my firm, Sokolove Law, is helping prevent some of those injuries before they ruin lives. We’re the first firm I know of to sponsor a viral video contest. It gets people to make video about the need to ban asbestos, which is still legal and causing cancer deaths that strike close to home. That’s right: the effort will prevent people from needing to become litigants. And I’m glad about that.

Just last week I was at a friend’s house for a party, and one of the guests recounted an asbestos threat from construction work in his office building in Boston. Everyone was told that if they found dust on their desks they should call special contractors on site who would show up with safety gear to take it away.

“Everyone knew it was asbestos,” he told me. You can imagine his family’s relief when he moved to a new office.

Obviously, the right time to fix this problem is before cancer-causing agents are built into homes and workplaces. And certainly before victims or their families have to resort to lawyers. Law firms that focus on representing victims see this. So working to prevent injuries just seems like the ethically right direction to take, given the knowledge that unfortunately comes our way as we help litigants.

I hope you’ll visit the Ban Asbestos website — both to advocate against this poison, and also to give a hat tip to Sokolove Law, which is trying to do a good thing in an innovative way. And while you’re there, clicking on “send a letter to Congress” would add your voice to this effort.

Let’s face it: too many companies know they want all the buzzword benefits of social media, but they initiate without the strategy playbook that would help them win.

Arena vs. Playbook
Think of  social networks as the arenas for performance, with strategy as the playbook. In order to build an “at-scale revenue contributor for business,” digital marketers must step away from over-hyped new mediums and tools.  It’s time to stop asking “what” (as in “What’s our Foursquare strategy?” or “What’s our Klout score?”) and instead focus on “who” your audience is and “how” best to connect with them. That’s the playbook.

Everywhere and Nowhere at Once
The range of social media opportunities is an illusion.  I use services like Knowem to register brand names across hundreds of social sites. But there are thirty more networks to register on every month. The risk of overextension has never been greater for marketers.

Make Something Awesome for Your Audience
A creative idea, backed by brand and content strategy, is what we bring to our audience.  With the right human spark, social media can drive personal engagement.

But too many firms start with the message they want to deliver and a fixation on where they might say it. Without a positioning strategy, the result is  a succession of random efforts that go off track.  Social networks can work, but without strategy they can be totally ineffective.

The Social Media ROAD map
There are four phases for planning social media strategy that, together, create a method for social media initiation.

• Research your audience, competition, and the marketing conversation for entry points.
• Objectives drive your efforts, metrics gauge progress.
• Actions are framed by strategies that connect team roles to conversations and methods.
• Devices are the platforms that both the team and the audience use.
  (Keep reading to see why it is so easy let this one slip forward.)

Marketing Has Every Reason to Act Impetuously

1. No one wants to seem out of touch with the social revolution, so they bet on all squares.
2. Connecting with an audience seems like a productive activity — but only if the audience and message are right.
3. It’s easy to take social actions  independently of the organization. Brand strategy requires broader consensus and buy-in.
4. And it’s easy to start by planning to republish stuff from other channels in order to be present, get links, or check the “we’ve-tried-that” box. Then organizations find they’ve committed to being part of a medium that requires real engagement and the manpower which goes along with it.

Sure, social teams need to try a few low-risk projects to build experience.  But the sign of a mature social practice is the discipline to listen to the conversation, define the brand and its goals, and to engage accordingly.

Just like any sport, that requires the discipline of planning, preparation, and a playbook that sets out where brands are headed in social networks.

That’s the mark of a team that has “been to the rodeo before,” rather than awkward novices who are participating but have yet to make a disciplined commitment to being champions.