This is astounding: ClickZ in the UK reports: U.K. to Regulate Social Network Marketing - ClickZ Marketers and brands using social networks will soon find their activities in those spaces regulated by the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority, following recommendations submitted by the Advertising Association this week. The proposed amendment to the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) Code - expected to be in force by September - will extend the regulatory framework currently in place for paid online ads to all other online marketing communications. As a result, claims from marketers on their own Web sites and third-party sites like social networks will now be subject to ASA scrutiny, as they are in TV, print, and other forms

Once upon a time, when I was a student of economics and foreign policy, we had to learn about government five-year plans to accomplish this or that. "The central government is marshaling the productive forces to build X, Y or Z for the people" and so forth. Fill in the blanks depending on the day or year. In those days, the subject geography was the Soviet Union. Fast forward a few decades, and we now have adopted the government five-year planning syndrome right here at home in the United States. From the auto industry to the banking industry, student loans, energy policy -- you name it. The Federal Communications Commission is on the case with broadband. So what is the pretext for this new Soviet-style FCC plan to do something

I really dislike non-disclosure agreements, but NDAs are a fact of life in the IT industry. Even folks like me that actively avoid NDAs sometimes have to sign the paperwork to gain access to people or information, and employers regularly require such an agreement as a condition of employment. I suspect most folks try to respect and uphold the agreements they do sign, but this doesn't stop slip-ups. So let me take a few minutes of your time to pass along my top five tips to avoid violating NDAs! 1 - Avoid signing NDAs The best way to avoid breaking an NDA is simply not to agree to one in the first place. Asking for a non-disclosure agreement is part of standard practice in business, but it's not always necessary. Politely ask if the NDA i

The big news of the morning is that Facebook was granted a patent (7,669,123) on their News Feed. Few people, though, have really analyzed what is covered by this patent.  To highlight the ridiculousness that I believe this patent to be (because we all know that Facebook was not the first to do this, nor should this patent have ever been approved), I’d like to go down the list and talk a bit about what it is they’re trying to say they came up with. As the patent, what is claimed to be original Facebook IP, and therefore not obviously implemented anywhere else is: “A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment…” Yes. No one has a news feed like this. Except they do.  Rather than list every feed o

Update: Just after I hit publish Betanews put out yet another flawed post on a Google monopoly, this time on search.  I understand it’s about grabbing pageviews or whatnot, but a quick looksee at a dictionary would really help out when you start bandying about terms you don’t understand. It seems about once a year, I have to take some pundit behind the woodshed and school them on the definition of “monopoly” as it relates to Google’s business in advertising or search.  The first time I virtually met my buddy Steven Hodson was in response to a post he had done on Google’s “monopoly” on search. In it, he contended that Google was dangerously close to monopoly, if not already there, in the search market: For years; right

Google today said that it had received a notice from the European Commission that it had received complaints from three European companies about its business practices. Julia Holtz, Senior Competition Counsel at Google, wrote: Google Public Policy Blog: Committed to competing fairly Foundem - a member of an organisation called ICOMPwhich is funded partly by Microsoft - arguesthat our algorithms demote their site in our results because they are a vertical search engine and so a direct competitor to Google. ejustice.fr's complaint seems to echo these concerns. ...Regarding Ciao!, they were a long-time AdSense partner of Google's, with whom we always had a good relationship. However, after Microsoft acquired Ciao! in 2008 (renaming

Google is the world's single largest user of Internet bandwidth. But it doesn't have to pay for most of the bandwidth it consumes, in the form of its spiderbots copying web pages, and YouTube video streams. A study in December 2008 estimated Google's 'free' bandwidth use to be about $6.9 billion, today it could be double that amount. [Precursor study- December 2008] Scott Cleland, head of Precursor, is a leading Google critic especially of its position supporting net neutrality. Google has been lobbying the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to maintain net neutrality regulations, which prevent Telcos from charging companies for bandwidth based on usage. He claims that Google is pushing net neutrality because it is the biggest benef

The announcement by Google that it would delve into the Broadband ISP arena in select markets is quite interesting in the fact that it looks to be marrying a public advocacy with a public initiative, and where it counts the most, in broadband infrastructure. To me it seems more of a logical move, putting your money into a venture which supports your core competency, Internet openness, proliferation, adoption, and access. In addition, Google seems to be promoting its core legislative agenda of having a free and open internet along with proposed high speeds that would be 100 times faster than most other ISPs. Does it matter that the initiative will not access every home in the United States, not particularly? The point remains tha

Each year at CES, queues for taxis, coffee, and lunch always seem to take a month, particularly during the first two days of the show. Pretend it’s still CES…it’s been a long month.  As Editor Rizzn says, you don’t read us for quick snippets, you read us for analysis.  Maybe even insight, at least occasionally. When we left off four weeks ago, I’d just broken the news that magicJack was stirring up the telecom market once again, with the announcement of their forthcoming femtocell, which I (and now most others) call the “femtojack”.  After Dan’s team published their release on the femtojack, I was inundated with a ton of technical and regulatory questions.  I’m not going to attempt to answer them here

The recent growth of the iPhone, Android (smartphones in general), and now the iPad has put enormous pressure on carriers and bandwidth - the networks.  As the world has come to experience, the mobile web is amazing.  Whether checking Facebook, email, or contacting business and family members, it's a great utility. Here's the problem: the networks are melting under extreme pressure.  Let me explain - the networks that are running this "New Robust Mobile Network" were engineered for cellular phone calls only.  All of these smartphones are running both voice and data now.  5-8 years ago they only were built for voice.  Data requires more frequency.  Some say that a data connection (using iPhone,