Celebs paid to tweet

Australian celebrities are being offered as much as $10,000 (NZ$13,000) for a single tweet endorsing products to their thousands of Twitter followers, say sponsorship experts.

But while US celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan and Snoop Dogg are reportedly already enjoying large one-off payments to promote brands and products on Twitter, the dash for cash is yet to catch on across the ditch.

The celebrities need only post a one-line product endorsement in exchange for the fee, and according to Britain’s Marketing Week, Range Rover approached 40 British celebrities this week to tweet in a similar way about the recently unveiled Evoque 4×4 in the UK.

Bruce Kaider, president of Sponsorship Australasia and founder of a sports management company, confirmed that high profile Australian sportspeople were already being approached to endorse products on Twitter for fees of anything between $500 to $10,000 per tweet.

“Some celebrities have 50 to 100,000 people engaged with what they’re doing every day, so it’s a great direct marketing piece,” he said.

“But I think like most trends here we are usually six to twelve month behind the US and we are probably a little more conservative in Australia than US where people are more open to celebrity endorsements.”

US websites like Ad.ly and SponsoredTweets are also helping to shake up traditional sponsorship models by matching advertisers like Sony and Microsoft directly with the celebrities on their registers for one-off transactions.

Lindsay Lohan’s profile on SponsoredTweets says she will tweet for a $US2985.80 fee, while Khloe Kardashian (sister of reality star Kim) will tweet for a slightly lesser $US2941. For an extra thousand, advertisers can procure the tweeting services of model Holly Madison.

Boasting a collective reach of 100 million people, the Ad.ly network says it has had Snoop Dogg, Kim Kardashian and Paul Pierce (Boston Celtics) on its payroll, and offers to place celebrity endorsements in any public stream such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and StatusNet.

Krista Thomas, vice president of marketing, said Ad.ly helps brands connect directly with 5000 of the top celebrities, athletes and experts in the US, giving a direct channel to their Twitter followers.

“We have done 10,000 endorsement campaigns in the US and are working with 150 big brand advertisers – including Microsoft, Sony, American Airlines, Toyota, AT&T and more,” she said.

// Payment is on a per-tweet model, and Thomas said some influencers can earn as much as five figures per tweet based on an algorithm that takes into account followers, activity and engagement.

However Zoe Warne, founder of Melbourne-based digital ad agency August, considers the one-off model a “cheap and nasty” form of sponsorship and warns that it could carry long term risks for celebrities tempted to make a quick buck.

“There will always be that temptation and there will always those that will go through with it, but they are risking their integrity and reputation and Twitter is a very public type of forum,” she said.

US rules compel celebrities to add the word “ad” or “spon” to paid-for comments, and Warne said non-disclosure by celebrities tweeting about products for cash, amounted to “the same sort of deal as cash for comments”.

Scott McClellan, executive director of the Australian Association of National Advertisers said social media campaigns would fall under the existing advertising code of ethics in Australia.

“We have quite a strong statement in the code around being honest and truthful and obviously not misleading person in any way.

”We believe that abbreviated terms like ‘spon’ will very rapidly be understood by consumers as being commercial in their nature and people will learn there is a cost associated with accessing the material.”

He said his biggest concerns were related to children, who would be particularly vulnerable to social media marketing from celebrities.

“For children there would be a much greater onus on the advertiser to be clear about the offer they are presenting,” he said.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz (inc. Image)

Internet the new face of warfare?

A new Air Force manual for cyberwarfare describes a shadowy, fast-changing world where anonymous enemies can carry out devastating attacks in seconds and where conventional ideas about time and space don’t apply.

Much of the 62-page manual is a dry compendium of definitions, acronyms and explanations of who reports to whom. But it occasionally veers into scenarios that sound more like computer games than flesh-and-blood warfare.

Enemies can cloak their identities and hide their attacks amid the cascade of data flowing across international computer networks, it warns.

Relentless attackers are trying to hack into home and office networks in the US “millions of times a day, 24/7.”

And operating in cyberspace “may require abandoning common assumptions concerning time and space” because attacks can come from anywhere and take only seconds, the manual says.

The manual – officially, “Cyberspace Operations: Air Force Doctrine Document 3-12” – is dated July 15 but wasn’t made public until this month. It is unclassified and available on the internet.

It dwells mostly on protecting US military computer networks and makes little mention of attacking others.

That could signal the Pentagon wants to keep its offensive plans secret, or that its chief goal is fending off cyberattacks to keep its networks up and running, analysts said.

“Their primary mission is in some ways defensive,” said James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Lewis said the government still hasn’t decided whether offensive cyberwarfare is the province of the military or intelligence agencies.

“Who gets to do it? Is it a military operation?… An intel operation?” Lewis said. “They’ve made a lot of progress in the last year but they’re still sorting out the doctrine.”

Noah Shachtman, a contributing editor to Wired magazine and a fellow at the Brookings Institute think tank, said even the limited mention of offensive operations in the manual surprised him.

The manual cites one example of a cyberwar objective as “shutting down electrical power to key power grids of enemy leadership.”

“That’s usually not the kind of thing we talk about doing to others,” Shachtman said. “The offensive stuff is supersecret.”

Much of the manual is entry-level material, Shachtman said, citing an appendix listing 10 things Air Force personnel should know, including a warning not to open attachments in e-mails from unknown senders.

“The equivalent appendix would be like, ‘This is a gun. Guns are unsafe. Please do not point them at your face,”‘ Shachtman said.

The manual explains how dependent the military and civil society have become on computer networks for communication, banking, manufacturing controls and the distribution of utilities.

It also outlines the vulnerabilities of the internet, including the relatively low cost of computers that could give an adversary a way to block, manipulate, damage or destroy a network.

It describes a 2005 incident when a hacker or hackers got access to personal information of more than 37,000 Air Force personnel.

The manual points out that much of the internet’s hardware and software are produced and distributed by private vendors in other countries who “can be influenced by adversaries to provide altered products that have built-in vulnerabilities, such as modified chips.”

Defending the entire US military network is unnecessary and probably impossible, the manual says. Just as the Air Force doesn’t try to defend every square mile of airspace around the globe, it won’t try to defend the whole of cyberspace.

“Whether used offensively or defensively … conducting particular cyberspace operations may require access to only a very small ‘slice’ of the domain,” the manual says.

Overall US military cyberwarfare operations will be the job of the US Cyber Command, which began limited operations in May. It will have components from the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines.

The Air Force component – the 24th Air Force at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas – is part of the Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo.

Lewis said the Cyber Command had a hand in the content of the Air Force manual.

“I see it as the first step in assigning special missions to the services. It’s a division of labor among the services,” he said.

The Marine Corps’ cyberspace operation document is still in development, a spokeswoman said. Army and Navy officials didn’t immediately respond to Associated Press questions about their planning.

Responsibility for civilian and government cybersecurity is less clear. Congress is debating between giving more power to the Homeland Security Department or the White House and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Homeland Security and the National Security Agency announced this month they would co-operate to strengthen the nation’s cybersecurity.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz

Kiwis first to get Windows phone

New Zealand has become the first country in the world to take delivery of Microsoft’s answer to the iPhone, the Windows Phone 7.

Vodafone New Zealand made the HTC 7 Trophy phone, one of nine Windows Phone 7 models to be sold worldwide, available online at 12.01am today and was selling the phones from its retail stores from noon today.

The Microsoft release is in stark contrast to Apple’s release of the iPad, earlier this year, which saw New Zealand tech heads wait months for the model while other countries lapped it up.

The Windows Phone 7 includes special versions of Microsoft’s Office productivity suite including the Outlook email program, as well as the Internet Explorer web browser, and Windows Media Player for playing digital music and video.

Meanwhile Microsoft New Zealand’s competition for software developers to design a Windows Phone 7 application with a New Zealand theme is due to close on November 1. There is a Trade Me category in the competition.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz

Twitter, Facebook used in stock fraud

Facebook and Twitter social networking sites were used to tout stocks in a classic “pump and dump” fraud of about US$7 million ($9.3 million) that was uncovered during a cocaine-trafficking probe, US prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Investigators discovered the fraud in a two-year probe of suspected trafficking by longshoremen and others of 1.3 tons of cocaine worth US$34 million through the Port of New York and New Jersey officials said.

A statement by the Manhattan US Attorney’s office said 11 out of 22 people charged used more than 15 web sites, Facebook pages, and Twitter “feeds” to “defraud the investing public into purchasing stocks that were being manipulated by participants in the conspiracy.”

A spokeswoman for Twitter declined to comment on the announcement. A spokesman for Facebook declined to comment.

Eight longshoremen and three others face narcotics trafficking charges. Eleven people, including one longshoreman, face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the purported stocks scheme.

Documents filed in Manhattan federal court said the 11 were from New York, Florida and Pennsylvania. They are accused of orchestrating web site links that touted picks in four penny stocks said to be based on the authors’ expertise and independent research.

They face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

None of the stocks were identified in court documents, which said more than US$3 million was accrued in illegal gains by the accused and that shareholder losses amounted to more than US$7 million.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz

Millions hit by Facebook glitch

Millions of office workers, students and other procrastinators found themselves at a loss this morning when they awoke to find Facebook was down.

The site was “currently experiencing site issues” meaning many users were shut out of the service – some for the second day in a row.

Some are still reporting they cannot log in to the site. 

The company is yet to say what caused the problem, reporting only that there were ‘latency issues’ with its ‘API’ on its developer site.

The problem is clearly broader than that, however, with thousands of users tweeting about the outage.

Some were distraught: “I feel like a fish out of water,” tweeted one user.

Others were confused: “Does Facebook being down mean I have to actually talk to people face to face?” another said.

Some even tried to get the credit for the problem, such as this tweet from @alqaeda: “#facebook is down. Not sure if we did that, but we should claim credit anyway. Hitting the infidels where it hurts, etc.”

In a statement, Facebook said it was trying to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

Yesterday, trouble with a third-party networking provider was blamed for the stoppage.

Facebook boasts more than 500 million members worldwide.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz

Nokia delays N8 again

Nokia said it would delay again its flagship smartphone N8 model, hitting its shares on the day new chief executive Stephen Elop started at the helm of the world’s top cellphone maker.

The N8 is seen by analysts as Nokia’s first top-range model to challenge Apple’s iPhone more than three years after its launch. Its success is seen as being crucial for Nokia’s profit margins.

“A single device does not normally have a significant impact on Nokia’s … development. But with the N8 the firm has much more at stake,” analysts at FIM Bank says in a note.

“The new delay is once again a blow to Nokia’s already tarnished image and it could also endanger the firm’s Q3 earnings target,” it said.

A company spokesman said the first phones were still scheduled to leave factories by the end of September, but deliveries to consumers who had preordered the phone would be delayed by a few weeks.

“In some markets, we had planned to start delivering the N8s to our pre-order customers by the end of September. To ensure a great user experience, we have decided to hold the shipments for a few weeks to do some final amends,” the company said in a statement, adding that the N8s would reach consumers in October.

Nokia announced the delay only a few days after the September 15 closure of its showcase event of the year, Nokia World.

“This is embarrassing,” said John Strand, chief executive of Danish telecoms consultancy Strand Consult.

The N8 smartphone, first to use Nokia’s new Symbian software, was originally scheduled to reach consumers in June.

In April, Nokia warned that the software renewal would take longer than it had expected due to quality problems and said that the N8 would reach consumers by the end of September.

The weak smartphone offering and problems with software were see as the main reasons for Nokia to replace its chief executive.

Stephen Elop, from Microsoft, started at his job as Nokia’s chief executive on Tuesday.

The N8 stands out among its rivals for its 12 megapixel camera but has a slower processor than Samsung’s top model Galaxy S and the latest iPhone.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz (incl image)

//

Uni bans Facebook & Twitter

A central Pennsylvania technological college with fewer students than many Facebook users have friends is blacking out social media for a week.

The bold experiment at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology – which has drawn praise, criticism and even a jab on late-night TV – means students and staff can’t access Facebook, Twitter or a host of other ubiquitous social networks while on campus.

Provost Eric Darr said the exercise that began Monday is not a punishment for the school’s 800 students, nor a precursor to a ban, but a way for people to think critically about the prevalence of social media.

The blackout comes on the heels of a report that web users in the US spend more time socializing on Facebook than searching with Google, according to data released last week from researchers at comScore

Still, Darr said he can’t believe the controversy generated in the Twitterverse, blogosphere and academia, with some accusing the school of inflicting “a terrible thing and an infringement upon people’s rights.”

“By and large, the students are supportive of the whole exercise and don’t get so worked up over it,” Darr said.

On campus, attempts to log in to MySpace or LinkedIn return the message: “This domain is blocked.” E-mail, texting and other web surfing is still allowed, but not instant-messaging.

Student Ashley Harris, 22, said the blackout has freed her to concentrate on her classwork instead of toggling on her laptop between social networks and the lesson at hand.

“I feel obligated to check my Facebook. I feel obligated to check my Twitter. Now I don’t,” Harris said. “I can just solely focus.”

Part of Harris’ willingness to disconnect stemmed from her feeling that the experiment demonstrates the young university’s focus on innovation. The private nonprofit institution was founded in 2003 and operates out of a 16-story building in downtown Harrisburg, the state capital about 95 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

Adam Ostrow, editor-in-chief of the social media news site Mashable.com, said he’d be interested to see if the university collects any hard metrics from the ban, such as better class attendance or more assignments turned in on time.

But he doesn’t think a blackout is feasible over the long-term. Though Facebook has been blocked in some workplaces as a time-waster, it is a crucial tool for college students to co-ordinate social schedules, organise events, plan study sessions and collaborate on assignments.

“You really can’t disconnect people from it in the long run without creating some real inefficiencies and backlash,” said Ostrow.

Ironically, the university hosted a social media summit on Wednesday – mid-blackout. That caused some angst for guest speaker Sherrie Madia, communications director for the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, who, like many, is used to tweeting during conferences.

She said the buzz around the ban has started a much-needed conversation about effective use of social media and how to balance online life with the world offline.

“Do we really want to be enslaved to Facebook or Twitter?” Madia said. “Once you create anything in social media, you have to feed the beast. When you stop adding content, you disappear.”

The university has created course work around the ban, and some students will write essays about their experience. Comedian Jimmy Fallon joked in Monday’s late-night monologue that he knows the title of those essays: “We All Have Smart Phones, Dumbass.”

Darr acknowledged students can use smart phones to bypass the university’s computer network or go to a nearby hotel for unblocked WiFi. And at a tech-centric school, he said, some students will try to get around the firewall just to prove they can.

Yet if people feel that compelled to check status updates or Twitter replies, that’s important to know.

“I want an honest reaction to the experiment,” Darr said.

The provost also confessed to some trepidation: College officials can’t use social networks this week either for student recruiting, business networking or curriculum planning.

“Next week, I will be as thankful as the next person we’re back on social media,” Darr said.

So will junior Giovanni Acosta, 21, who said he’s been texting up a storm trying to co-ordinate social events without Facebook and Twitter.

But student Dan Warseck, 36, said it doesn’t bother him – he prefers face-to-face communication and doesn’t even have texting on his phone.

“I’m not one of these people who puts their life online,” Warseck said. “My friends have my phone number if they really need to get in touch with me.”

Harris thought for sure she’d cheat on the blackout, but to her surprise she’s embraced it – although she does draw a line in the sand.

“I don’t know if I could turn off my phone,” Harris said. “I don’t know if I could be that liberated.”

Source: www.stuff.co.nz

Sacked for private Facebook comments

The editor of an Australian newspaper has been stood down after allegedly posting insensitive comments about the killing of a young policeman on his personal Facebook page.

The publishers of the Glen Innes Examiner, a Fairfax-owned regional newspaper, released a statement on Friday saying editor Matt Nicholls had been stood down.

Mr Nicholls is alleged to have written on his personal page that the killing of Constable Will Crews, who was born and bred in Glen Innes, would boost circulation of the paper.

The 26-year-old officer was shot dead during a drug raid in south-western Sydney on Wednesday evening.

One post read “there’s nothing better than a death to lift circulation”.

He is also alleged to have suggested the Glen Innes Examiner would “make the most” of the tragedy.

The ninemsn website has reported that Mr Nicholls denied making the posts, but on Friday the publisher of the Examiner announced he would be stood down as editor.

“The actions of Matt Nicholls, editor of Glen Innes Examiner newspaper, were totally unacceptable and we deeply regret any hurt caused to the family and friends of Constable Bill Crews and the Glen Innes community,” Allan Browne, the chief executive officer and publisher of Australian Regional Publishing, Fairfax Media, said in a statement today.

“Mr Nicholls has been stood down from his position as editor, effective immediately.”

Source: www.stuff.co.nz

Facebook’s new security feature: remote logouts

Facebook is rolling out a new security feature that lets users log out of their accounts remotely from another computer.

To do this, go to “account settings” on your Facebook page and click on “change” next to “account security.”

There, you’ll see where else your Facebook account is logged in, including the type of device and the city it’s in or near. To log out of any of them, click “end activity.”

Facebook is making this available over the next couple of weeks. It will be accessible on computers, but not mobile devices.

The feature is similar to what Google’s Gmail offers to its users, and Facebook says it’s designed to help users keep their logins secure.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz

Samsung unveils Galaxy tablet

Samsung Electronics is unveiling a new tablet PC named Galaxy Tab as the latest device meant to rival Apple’s popular iPad.

Samsung Europe executive Thomas Richter said Thursday the device will offer users “a new galaxy of possibilities” with features such as mobile video conferencing and a video chat function.

The thin tablet device weighs 380 grams and has a 7-inch (18-centimeter) touch screen.

Richter said it comes with Google’s Android 2.2 operating system and Adobe’s Flash Player.

Samsung said at a Berlin consumer electronics fair the price of the device will depend on telecommunications operators through which it will be available starting next month.

Source (inc Image): www.stuff.co.nz