Internet

Tweaking Your B2B or B2C Brand Online

J. Warholic

Snippets of Your Brand
By: James A. Warholic, President of Professional Web Services, Inc.

Snippets sounds like some sort of cereal.

What are snippets and how do they affect your brand?

Snippets in the search engine world are a small sampling of a web page. When someone does an online search; this produces a results page with content snippets of various pages of information from many websites. If the search algorithm determines that a page from your B2B, Business to business or B2C, Business to consumer website has relevant information related to the searched for keywords then a small sampling of the page will show up in the search engine results pages.

Serious BusinessIt is important to understand that the first contact a person may have with your website is not when they actually go to the website but when they view the search engine results page. This is why from a marketing and advertising perspective that your brand “be the best that it can be” within the realms of a realistic approach to optimizing the page for Readers and the Search Engines.

As a President or CEO of your company you must consider at least two distinct ways another business or consumer views your brand online through the search engines. One must consider that someone already knows about your company name, and uses the search engine search bar to type in your company name to go to the website. The other way is that a consumer or purchasing manager from another company types in the keywords in the search bar, and your website shows up in the results pages. Both of these examples are typical of how a customer would find various businesses online. Each has its own unique approach for management, of the brand that needs to be portrayed to the customer.

Breaking this down further, it is also helpful to understand to which market segment your business is in. For example: vertical markets also known as niche markets are a very narrow or dedicated spectrum of products or services delivered to consumers or other businesses; while horizontal markets cross over a broad spectrum of products or services provided across multiple industries. Each of these business categories and buyers and sellers markets needs to have a particular brand approach to Internet marketing and advertising online that are going to be quite different. This will also be a factor in determining what your goals are for showing up in the search results pages and how your brand needs to be displayed on the Internet.

Search algorithms continue to change and improve. As the search companies fine tune and in some cases drastically change their algorithms this will also change to some degree the way the snippets are displayed for each website. A person can fine tune a web page to provide a better branded snippet while still maintaining the structural integrity of the page for the search engines and the readers. It is important to understand that changes to a web page can affect the page for the keyword search engine results. But, with quality writing, and proper and ethical search engine optimization techniques a person can actually improve both the branded snippets that are portrayed along with the ranking of the page in the search engine results.

Branding on the Internet does take time and effort to improve the image of a company. The days of just slapping a website together and saying, “that is it, and there is nothing more to do,” are over. Efforts need to be expended on a regular basis to view and analyze the results in the search engines. As the analysis is made, small or sometimes drastic changes need to take place to the website or web page in order to provide a better Brand for your company on the Internet.

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Online Branding Matters for Your Business

Online Branding – What it Means for Your Business

J. Warholic

Branding, exactly what is it?
By: James A. Warholic, President of Professional Web Services, Inc.

It seems as though everyone has an opinion of what a brand or branding is all about. We are going to delve into this a bit and add our two cents worth of information to the topic.

Let’s first start with the premise that branding matters for a B2B, Business to business, or B2C, Business to consumer company. If you subscribe to that statement then hopefully you will find some useful information here.

Secondly, we need to at least give a generalized description of what branding really is, at least from this author’s perspective. The following has been quoted by many, “A brand is a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer.” That same phrase could be stated for not only the perceptions in the mind of the consumer, but in the case of B2B businesses; buyers, purchasing managers, owners, partners, CEOs and all the decision makers also have perceptions of their own brand as well as the brands of others.

In these branding matters series of postings, we are going to take a look at how the Internet is affecting the brands of companies along with a more thorough understanding of the various interactions between Internet marketing, Online advertising, sales and marketing, and Web branding. We will be analyzing the differences between the image you have of your company verses the image a customer has of your company. You may be surprised to find out that these are not always the same.

Learn more about Internet marketing services, online advertising strategies, and B2B and B2C Web branding solutions from Professional Web Services, Inc. Email Professional Web Services today.

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Web 2.0 Advertising Means More Sales for Your Business

J. Warholic

Internet Marketing Services

The Internet is all about interactivity

Interactivity can take many online forms in marketing a business through a website, click through emails, call to action items, enticements, free offers, games, challenges, and other various forms of algorithm learning and software items built into the web site.

Get Found OnlineNow with the new 2.0 Web that is upon us, advertising can have more interactivity built into the ads themselves. Defining Web 2.0 is rather difficult because the Web is in a constant state of change. New technologies and software are continually being developed and deployed throughout the Internet. Software applications such as Google Calendar and the online Writely company (now Google Docs) that came up with a powerful online word processing application that can save documents in Microsoft Word format are starting to change the Internet landscape.

Advertising is also becoming much more interactive especially as online streaming audio and video are becoming more and more popular for both the advertiser and the viewer. Google has recently started experimenting with video advertising through their AdWords campaigns. The advertisers have created the ads in such a way, that the ads do not irritate a person viewing them. Actually to fully view the Ad, a play button is placed at the bottom of the ad itself. By including this type of interactivity built into the advertisement a viewer can make a choice to view it fully or not. Other forms of the interactive advertisements are simply when a button is clicked more information can be displayed.

Now, a further refinement of the selling or buying process can take place with an advertisement that draws the reader/viewer into the next step along the path of completing a sale. Remember, the better you can communicate your message, and understand your target customers’ needs, the more likely you are to fill those needs and complete a sale. With an interactive advertisement, a company can now share more information than would be typically shared with a single static ad. This really makes it a very powerful tool for communicating to prospects.

I suspect as readers and viewers become much more accustomed to these new Web 2.0 Ads they will gravitate toward more interaction with the online ads, and thus the advertiser will have higher, and more qualified click through rates. This will likely be good for both the Internet Surfer as well as the Internet Advertiser. The Surfer will certainly be more trusting of a company if they can find out more information along the pathway from prospect to customer.

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Internet Privacy Concerns and Your ID Information

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We got Your Number, and Then Some

No matter what your take is on the ACLU, I think they certainly have a point with this one. As Internet technology continues to expand, the reverse occurs with a decrease in our privacy. Click the Privacy Concerns video above for a Web look at the amount of ID information that is at the government’s fingertips.

Privacy must be protected. So, you think you have nothing to hide, think again.

Defense of Controversial Internet Law Does Not Justify “Fishing Expedition,” ACLU Says Plaintiffs’ Response to Motion to Compel Google

Privacy & Technology:
The tremendous explosion in surveillance-enabling technologies, combined with the ongoing weakening in legal restraints that protect our privacy have us drifting toward a surveillance society. The ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project fights this trend and works to preserve the American tradition that the government not track individuals or violate privacy unless it has evidence of wrongdoing.

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SEO School And Internet Marketing School

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Internet Marketing And Search Engine Optimization School

When it comes to developing your business, and building a quality online presence, there are some things to consider from an SEO and Internet marketing standpoint in order to maximize your return on investment of time, money, and resources. Let’s start off by answering the following question:

Internet Marketing Solution

What are the advantages and disadvantages to implementing business 2 business or consumer keywords and keyword phrases in the website that are seldom used?

There are two online schools of thought here. One SEO school says that the keywords selected to be used throughout the website should be the least competitive keywords and misspellings included, so it is much more likely to be found in the search results. The other SEO school says to develop the natural keywords throughout the website along with logical variations of keyword phrases including plural uses of the keyword and various tenses using proper writing syntax and grammar.

If we follow the first SEO school, a website may start showing up in the top results for very seldom searched for keyword phrases. While in the other SEO school, because of the numbers of pages with the same keywords, web pages are less likely to show up due to excessive competition.

Natural Language Writing vs Keyword Search Variations

Internet Marketing SEO Help

Actually, I believe that both SEO philosophies have ideas that are both right and wrong. First and foremost, I believe the emphasis should be on natural language writing and logical uses of the keywords. This will no doubt require extensive research, reading, and writing of quality content. It will certainly take an extended period of time to make a marketing impact in the various keyword market segments. At the same time, it is important to also develop other lesser used variations of those keywords and keyword phrases to help establish an online site theme or a type of Internet marketing trend in what a website is about. In essence, you have to write the way your customers think for the search engines to pick up on the keywords and keyword phrase syntax used throughout the website.

Are There Search Engine Optimization Shortcuts?

SEOs have used extensive Black Hat search engine shortcut tactics in the past for getting a website to the top of the search results. As search engine algorithms have improved, these black hat optimization tactics are becoming less effective. The emphasis today should be on developing good content, proper link building throughout the website, proper titles and meta tags, ethical search engine optimization strategies, unique marketing and advertising messages, and certainly strategic link building with various related topics and websites.

How Should we Measure Search Engine Software Algorithms?

No search engine company is going to come out and tell you exactly what is required to get your web page or website up to the top in the search engine results. Though they will give you some best practices guidance for webmasters to follow. First off when it comes to the Internet presence, every search engine company wants to have the best results possible. If a search engine tells you exactly what to do, then everyone would try to do the exact same thing. There are a multitude of variables involved in page ranking, that are factors in attaining top standing in the search results. We can not control what Google, Yahoo!, or Microsoft Bing Search do in their search algorithms. So, what we can control is the content and layout of websites under our control.

Present Relevant Information for the Search Engines and Users (Customers)

The number one goal of any website should be to provide quality content to get found online. Algorithms and software improvements at the Search Engines have made great strides in evaluating keywords throughout the page and site, along with Natural Language Processing (NLP), Text Analysis, and Automatic Classification Systems are some of the key areas for establishing what a website is all about. The days of just pasting a whole bunch of keywords over the entire page or hiding the keywords in the underlying html code to get a website in the top search results is all but over. Sure, there still are websites in the search results list that do this type of Black Hat SEO tactic, of hiding keywords, but that is only because other parts of the software algorithms might give higher Page Rank [Google PageRank™] to these pages based on the number of pages that link to them on the Internet. Read more insights into the Google PageRank perspective.

Developing a Keyword Search Engine

It becomes exceedingly difficult for Search Engines to say how much is too much for certain types of keywords in the body text. There are an infinite number of variables for establishing the density of a keyword. Certainly, the difficulty becomes even greater when one considers the use of certain words having different meanings for different industries. Then there is the aspect of how the word is used in the context of the text itself. Natural Language Writing has different styles, such as Argumentative, Narrative, Enunciative, and Descriptive Styles; along with different uses of grammar and even the proper spelling and even misspellings can significantly alter how a search engine responds to the classification and Keyword Density of the page.

What Additional Factors are used in Keyword Analysis?

Keyword Relationships

Graph Showing the Keyword Relationships in a Document

Search Algorithms need to be able to filter through all of the other words in a website. Every single word that is placed on a web page can have some degree of influence over the whole of the page and even the website itself. Simple words like: them, your, you, it, or, AND even and, need to be filtered and evaluated. Too many uses of those words in the web page can throw off the algorithm. Relationships exist between all words. The proximity of the Online words relative to each other, will also significantly influence the software algorithms of what the page is about (See Keyword Graph.) Writing on the Web has to be tightened up and more structurally focused toward the subject matter, in order to become more successful in establishing new pages online, especially when it comes to the highly competitive Internet keywords.

Search Algorithms Analyze Capitalization, Bold Text, Font Size, and Font Placement

To grasp the degree of difficultly that Search Engines face in cataloging a website is to consider what needs to be analyzed from their perspective. By somewhat of a Reverse Engineering Marketing aspect we can gain Internet marketing insight into what is looked at for establishing the ranking in the search engine results pages. Capitalization, bold text, font size, and font placement are all factors in page analysis. For example: as Google Search algorithms have improved, and certainly expanded over time to include other on-site and off-site website factors, the weight factor given to each of these hundreds of variables has changed slightly, and in some instances drastically affected the search results.

Understanding Search Engines and the Online Marketing Learning Curve

I believe that we are all on an online marketing learning curve. Search engines are continually learning about the World Wide Web by constantly traveling the Net with their Robots that catalog the pages. Then with analysis software, the companies can determine the so-called Mean, Mode, and Median of any particular criteria within the page or group of search results they wish to analyze. With such detailed analysis, they then can tighten or loosen a set of parameters to slightly change or drastically change the search results. Every update to a search engine algorithm in-turn creates a new round of learning by all the SEO Webmasters of the world. Through this type of online school teaching, the SEO is constantly being trained toward better content writing and layout quality. The whole of search is also trained, because as creativity and new technology are implemented into websites, along with the popularity of other types of online content sites, the search companies can continue to upgrade and improve their algorithms to reflect these new changes. Sure, there may be the law of unintended consequences that occur along the way, but in the long run, everyone will benefit with better content, websites, and search engine results pages.

Professional Web Services, Inc., is a SEO strategies, Internet marketing services, online advertising strategies, and a Web branding solutions company. Contact us today for Internet Marketing Services for your B2B or B2C business to be found in the search engines. Turn your business into a great online sales tool with a Pro. eBusiness Online marketing solutions with Professional Web Services. If you are serious about gaining more customers now, getting more online sales leads, and learn how we can help your business get discovered on the Web, then send us an email today for your online marketing solution.

Article by: Jim Warholic

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Google For The People, Government Against The People

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In a follow-up story from E-Commerce News: Portals and Search: Google Playing for High Stakes in Fight With Feds are some additional insights involving privacy, security, and business privacy.

First off, we should all be backing Google in this fight. I don’t care what the reasons for Google standing up to the government. I honestly believe that there are numerous reasons why Google is taking this stance.

First, for the government to say that no personal information would be reveled is ridiculous. For example, the government could look up how many times someone has searched on the name “James Smith”. What if by some strange situation that your name were to fall into another website that was not even related to what it is that I do. This happens more often than people would imagine. People steal information online simply by copying whole texts in order to try and get their websites to the top of the search results. This in turn gets copied, and copied again to hundreds and in some cases thousands of websites all over the world. What if one of these websites were on the government’s list of potential problem areas for anything at all. Would you want your name showing up on some government list? What if in the process of Googling yourself or your friends, and your name, or their name is in one of those questionable web pages through no fault of their own, and you click on that website page, are you now a marked target by the US Government?

The government is saying that it is not asking for individual names or searches. But, with the right algorithm built to extract certain key data, the government could match up certain patterns for just about everything. Details of your lives, details of your business, what patterns are searched for and when, along with a myriad of various possibilities. They could extract what Christian sites are visited and when. The government could even group searches by conservative and liberal. They could determine how many times the word gun or other keywords are used online along with what websites have that keyword in it. Think about your friends and relatives that have written blogs about all types of personal data with a keyword here or there, that might trigger the “Red Flag”. Even accidentally clicking a spam email could hyperlink to an off-limits site. Additionally, individual IP addresses do show up in searched for results. Many times bloggers and other websites are displaying their search results online and these would certainly get cataloged by all the search engines. These could be traced back if the government chose to demand the IP records from the ISPs, Internet Service Providers.

From E-Commerce News article

“Companies are at risk too. Think about what employees search for in the course of the day. That information can reveal a lot about what is going on at a particular company — whether it is preparing for a product launch, or researching a new demographic, or preparing for a lawsuit,” said Andrew Krcik, vice president of marketing for PGP.

Global Passwords And Online Security At Risk

This type of action could even reveal security passwords and other private information such as your personal and business email addresses, or banking, and securities, and investments. The Google Search bar has been used more and more by people doing all types of actions. Actions such as typing in phone numbers, addresses, and sometimes even typing a password in by accident to the search bar as opposed to another area of the web browser.

I for one am backing Google 100% on this one. The other search engines have already given in to this without even a fight. I think it is in the best interest of everyone in the country, no matter if you are a conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, to seriously think about the implications of this latest government action. Talk about it with family and friends, write about it online, send an email or FAX to your congressman. Do what ever it takes to support Google with your privacy.

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A Threat to Privacy on The Internet

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RED FLAG: The Government Wants Your Searches

A story came out today from the San Jose Mercury News via Techdirt about the government having subpoenaed Google and other Search Engines to turn over a week’s worth of records to see what is being searched for online. This all in the name of a Web fishing trip from US government lawyers trying to make a point about the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) being necessary. The law was struck down in 2004 because of it being too broad, but the courts gave the government another shot at trying to prove their case.

To date, Google has initially refused to comply with the government subpoena; vigorously defending its position. Techdirt has reported that, “Google is defending its decision by saying that it’s both a violation of the privacy of its users and that turning over the data would reveal trade secrets.”

Additionally, the Techdirt report also stated, “It’s now been confirmed that Yahoo, MSN and AOL were all asked and complied, though it appears that some (such as Yahoo) simply gave search terms with no identification information.”

These reports are very troubling for a number of issues. Certainly the first of which is Internet privacy concerns. The other major issue which quite frankly is a potential for more problems is the ease at which the other search engines have complied with the subpoena. It appears as though there was very little opposition given by Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. If this is true, then this is extremely troubling because they are not defending the privacy issues at all. Yahoo, MSN, and AOL should all be making the same bold moves for defending the privacy of their users.

Google has done the right thing in fighting against this government move. While the information that the government wants at the moment is not each individual’s search results, they are attempting to get the details of the totality of the searched for keywords. This all in their Web eFishing trip to try and give the courts the information to pass a law. The government has in essence made a supposition and is trying to use Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL to try and prove it.

These steps taken by the government are also very troubling. It seems as thought the government is using its powers to subpoena other companies for information that is not directly related to a problem. After all, none of the search engine companies are directly involved in the legal action.

Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government’s effort “vigorously.”

“Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and the demand for the information is overreaching,” Wong said.

This will certainly be an interesting story to watch.

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Internet Marketing and Advertising Matrix | Web 2.0

J. Warholic

Web 2.0 Marketing 2.0 Advertising 2.0?

Getting a handle on these terms is like pulling teeth. Web 2.0 seems to be some futuristic idea which seems to be evolving from the Web 1.0 structure. On the other hand, Web 2.0 seems to be occurring now on the Internet as it now is.

I have been reading for awhile now about this future of the Net. The following is from the Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia.

The term “Web 2.0″ refers to what some people see as a second phase of development of the World Wide Web, including its architecture and its applications. As used by its proponents, the phrase refers to one or more of the following:

  • the transition of websites from isolated information silos to sources of content and functionality, thus becoming a computing platform serving web applications to end users
  • a social phenomenon referring to an approach to creating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and “the market as a conversation”
  • a more organized and categorized content, with a far more developed deeplinking web architecture.
  • a shift in economic value of the web, up past a trillion dollars surpassing that of the dot com boom of the late 1990s.

However, a consensus on its exact meaning has not yet been reached.

Many recently developed concepts and technologies are seen as contributing to Web 2.0, including weblogs, linklogs, podcasts, RSS feeds and other forms of many to many publishing; social software, web APIs, web standards, online web services, Ajax, and others.

In fact it seems to be some sort of matrix idea in the minds of the proponents in which the Internet becomes much more interactive in it’s nature than the current online structure.

Others have written complete articles of what they envision Web 2.0 to represent.

What Is Web 2.0
Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software by Tim O’Reilly
09/30/2005

…

The concept of “Web 2.0″ began with a conference brainstorming session between O’Reilly and MediaLive International. Dale Dougherty, web pioneer and O’Reilly VP, noted that far from having “crashed”, the web was more important than ever, with exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity. What’s more, the companies that had survived the collapse seemed to have some things in common. Could it be that the dot-com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the web, such that a call to action such as “Web 2.0″ might make sense? We agreed that it did, and so the Web 2.0 Conference was born.

…

My gut reaction to all of this is that having a name stamped on a period of time like this will be like trying to place a classification on an entity where someone will ask, was that Web 1.0 or 2.0 architecture? And what about the evolution to the next level that is still to come? Will we have Web 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, etc etc?

Ok, If that is Web 2.0, What is Marketing and Advertising 2.0?

It seems to me that both of these terms reflect the interactivity and feedback mechanisms built into various types of analytics and forms of social networking through email, forums, comments, reviews, subject blogging, webcasts, podcasts, RSS feeds, news reports, affiliate referrals, and the entirety of the Internet as we know it.

See the following posts to have a better understanding of both of these terms.

As the Internet Matrix continues toward the next level we will see business take more notice of what it can do for them. Businesses that have not grasped hold of how a brand can be developed online or how their business brand image can be tarnished through the social networking (marketing and advertising 2.0) by the interactive online world will be shocked. The companies that strive toward excellence in customer service and operate with ethical responsibilities will continue to see gains in their brand acceptance and improve their market reach. In many ways, these companies that grab hold of the New Internet Matrix, will become like fine wines, that get better and better with age.

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Analytics And Google Base – Sales & Marketing Home Runs

J. Warholic

Internet Marketing And Online Advertising Just Got Better

Google has just empowered the Mom and Pop Small Businesses to be able to compete with their Big Business Brothers with a back-to-back 2 Home Run Sales And Marketing Impact

First, Google Analytics was released for Free to anyone that would like to be able to track what is going on with their website. This is a Professional high end program originally developed for Enterprise internet sales, marketing, and advertising use. The program is able to provide the advertising tracking feedback mechanism for new Ad conversions and website use tracking.

Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. You’ll be able to focus your marketing resources on campaigns and initiatives that deliver ROI, and improve your site to convert more visitors.

Second, Google Base was also released for Free to everyone that would like to market their products or services, OR information on the Internet. Base is an online version of quite a number of different types of concepts from: Classified Ads, Want Ads, Recipe Sharing, Newsletter Listings, Services For Hire, Items For Sale, Cars And Houses For Sale, and even the Ebay concept of allowing companies to upload their database of inventory for sale.

E Business Base Features That Stand Out For Me

  • Complete control of what is displayed
  • Pictures can be uploaded
  • Labels can be applied to the information page for it to show up in various categories of the Google Base Search results
  • Privacy can be maintained through an automatic private type of email process
  • A link to a more information page can be applied
  • Free hosting of information for those without a website

Click on this Internet marketing , advertising, and sales tools example of how the information can be hosted for free. Additionally, it is cool how the pictures will change automatically when the cursor is placed over the small thumbnail versions. There is even a slideshow option. This can be a great way of displaying a product or service to anyone searching online. To see how the results come up when doing a search see: Internet Marketing Services San Ramon Newsletter

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Privacy on The Internet

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Guarding Your Online Electronic Privacy

Internet Bits of PrivacyFor those of you that do not know me, one of the things that I value more than anything else is online privacy.

I have written many business articles about online E privacy issues and content provider concerns. I would be the first to say if a service is, or has a policy of sharing of information on the Internet with others.

Many E privacy policies are extremely vague and in fact should be labeled something else other than a privacy policy.

Good E Privacy Policy

There is one service that I have come to trust with my emails and information online. That service is the Google Gmail Service. One of the things that really has stood out from them is their down-to-earth privacy policy, written in an easy to understand style with very little of the legalize that only an attorney would understand.

When I first heard about the Google Gmail Service I was very impressed with their up-front statements of how this email service works. After hearing much of the criticism from the news media I took it upon myself to do some research online comparing the privacy policies of other large content providers that offer email and other types of services. What I found was quite shocking in the way of lack of privacy with other online service providers. Many of the documents that are written are designed in my estimation to be intentionally misleading and actually are a policy for sharing information as opposed to holding it confidential.

While these other services have been around for a longer period of time I find it fascinating that no one in the mainstream media seems to question these other online policies. Could it be that there is such a double standard that exists between various news organizations and web search companies that they would actually ignore certain web search service providers that intentionally allow information to be shared with others while at the same time trying to crucify a service that is up-front with the public? Are there other egregious factors at work here?

What Does The Future Hold

Why does this double standard exist? Do people just turn a blind eye to facts? Are we just a society of non-thinkers? I would hope that we are not, but the path seems to be set for the world to sit back and just be fed whatever they want to hear and never question anything.

First off, we all write with a certain degree of prejudice. The mainstream media has a responsibility to be as fair as possible with all stories written. If the story is not a commentary but a reporting of facts then it is the responsibility of the news organization to cover both sides and report fairly. We have seen problems in the lack of responsible television and newspaper media reporting in the political arena and in fact these stories have been exposed by Blogger journalists. Blogger journalists have broken stories that others in the mainstream press have ignored or have been grossly negligent in their reporting of the facts.

The future is changing quickly. The landscape for electronic news reporting is becoming increasing explosive as we become more virtual in our gathering of information and press reporting of news stories online.

People seem to feel threatened by the unknown. Maybe traditional news media organizations feel threatened by the new way of doing business. Broadband Internet continues to impact our lives in new and profound ways. Information sources are at our fingertips that we can quickly compare the stories from different perspectives. Traditional television and print media sees a shrinking customer base along with a decline in advertisers, because of the influx of the Internet. The media giants are becoming more concerned with the direction the World Wide Web is having on their OLD business plans. They seem to see it as a threat as opposed to an opportunity to establish a NEW type of relationship with an online readership.

Secret Mitigating Factors – Follow The Money

Here are a few thoughts and questions that come to mind that could certainly be mitigating factors.

Everything really is about money. What type of business relationships do some of the traditional media outlets have with other content providers? Is it in the interest of some content providers to share information with their business affiliates? Maybe that is exactly the business agreements that are in effect. Are owners and editors at top line newspapers and television networks in bed with some of the online content providers? If so, imagine how easy it would be to encourge an overeager news reporter to write stories that are not fully accurate. These same editors and owners could just as easily squelch truthful news reporting on other issues. How much money is given by some to support certain causes and seemingly altruistic associations that are related to the big news associations? How much does politics play into the mix? Where is the online ethics in business today? What other mitigating secrets are hidden?

Yes, these are but a few of the reasons for all the news reporting today. Though some of these may be business excuses, it does not make it right. It will be interesting to see what the future holds.

James A. Warholic – President, Professional Web Services, Inc.

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