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Posts Tagged ‘privacy’
Friday, November 4th, 2011
Copyblogger podcast radio host Robert Bruce interviews Copyblogger CEO Sonia Simone about privacy and other content matters. So the question is, is privacy important for marketers and small business owners?
I think it is.
Here’s the best way to think about this. Your clients don’t want you to sell their private information. They’d rather you protect it at all costs. So it’s in your best interests to protect and safeguard that private information. But online privacy goes beyond your ability or willingness to share your clients’ information.
Real privacy is also about protecting that information from all sources.
In other words, NOT selling your clients’ private information doesn’t make you a good guy if your website ends up getting hacked or you don’t use encryption data to protect private information during transit. So, as a small business owner doing business online, it’s just as important for you to put time and energy into thinking about your website’s security. That’s the deepest level of privacy protection.
So how do you protect your clients’ privacy information? Have you thought about it?
There are two aspects to thinking about your website’s security: Data encryption and firewalls. Put effort into making those two things happen on your website for your clients’ sake. Otherwise, you might find yourself without clients.
Tags: data encryption, privacy, small business, website security
Posted in website development | 3 Comments »
Monday, August 22nd, 2011
Ann Smarty is somewhat of an Internet marketing pioneer. She’s been online longer than most and shares a lot of insight into the subject of Internet marketing at her blog SEO Smarty. She recently featured a guest post that suggests online marketers might want to change their profile pics soon due to the advent of facial recognition technology. Your world just got less private, the story goes.
Should you be concerned? Yes and no.
I certainly agree that privacy is a legitimate concern. If you’re really concerned about it, however, maybe you should just leave the Internet alone. I mean, nothing you do online is going to be completely private. Ever.
On the other hand, if you intend to do any business online, then you have to accept the drawbacks and one of those is a little bit of loss of privacy. That doesn’t mean you should toss all caution out the window. You should protect your identity and put a wall around your privacy even if that wall isn’t completely impenetrable.
A key factor for business owners is the necessity of building trust. How much trust can you build with an impersonal avatar or social media image? Maybe a little. But a profile pic can go a long way to building trust with your audience if you can put up with a little bit of loss of privacy.
The question for small business Internet marketers going forward isn’t, Should you protect your privacy? Rather, it is, How much privacy should you let go of in order to maintain a presence that helps you reach the right customers?
Tags: privacy, small business, Social Media, trust
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 4 Comments »
Saturday, August 6th, 2011
It wasn’t long ago that Facebook surpassed Google in being the most visited website online. That’s because there are a lot of people who just want to socialize with their friends and not use the Internet like a library. But Google+ could change that.
What would Google+ have to do to make itself the No. 1 social networking website online? Just one thing.
The big beef a lot of people have with Facebook is that it isn’t “open.” You can’t do a whole lot of interacting with your friends through other social networks. Facebook follows the “proprietary” system.
And then there’s the whole privacy issue.
If Google+ addressed both of those concerns head on and gave users what they want, then Google would overrun Facebook and become the No. 1 search engine and the No. 1 social network.
WebProNews reports a new Google+ feature coming soon:
The new feature addresses those times when you want to invite your friends, but don’t know their email addresses. When you click the “invite friends” link from your Google+ account, you’ll find a new link that you can send to friends via Instant message or post on the web…or on Facebook perhaps?
If Google+ allowed current users to invite their Facebook friends, that alone would increase its membership tremendously.
Google+ already does something that Facebook doesn’t. It allows you to organize you friends by “circles.” You can send information, links, and communicate with your circles independently, meaning if you want a certain link to be shown only to your friends and immediate family, then you can do that. Not on Facebook.
The Circles feature allows for greater privacy through Google+. Some people would argue it’s not enough – but it is something. And I think it’s a big enough deal that it could allow Google+ to overrun Facebook.
Tags: facebook, google, privacy
Posted in Social Media | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011
Are you concerned about search privacy? If so, then you might be interested in two smaller search engines. Google and Bing, the leading competitors in search, store your search data for up to 18 months. But Blekko and DuckDuckGo are banking on you wanting more privacy than that.
Blekko – Blekko stores your search data for 48 hours, and that’s it. But the problem with Blekko is that your searches are confined only to sites that you or your friends tell it to search. The search engine makes use of “slashtags,” which are akin to Twitter’s hashtags. The intent is to cut out spam and undesired results from your searches. This type of search engine can be useful to your business if you can train your customers to use it and add important search terms related to your website as slashtags for their searches. Good luck in that.
DuckDuckGo – DuckDuckGo is more traditional in that they do crawl the Web and return search results based on keyword-related queries. And they do not collect your private information at all. Nada. You can also turn the privacy features off, if you prefer.
DuckDuckGo even refers you to two other search engines (on its privacy page) that do not collect your private information: Ixquick and Scroogle. The latter seems to base its results on Google search results, but it appears to be the only one of the four sites mentioned in this post to do so.
Are these smaller search engines good? Can they be good for your business? You’ll have to test them. I ran a test at both Blekko and DuckDuckGo. I was impressed that SBM was No. 1 at DuckDuckGo for the search phrase “small business marketing minnesota.” Of course, I’m No. 1 in both Google and Bing for the same phrase.
If you train your customers to conduct private searches at these search engines when searching for your business or services that you offer, then you might get some traffic from these sources.
Tags: privacy, search, search engines
Posted in search engines | 3 Comments »
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010
An op-ed at The New York Times Online encourages content providers – like Small Business Mavericks – to stop allowing anonymous comments. At the heart of the argument is the belief that anonymity increases unjust, immoral, or crass behavior. But does it?
I can’t help but agree with the underlying belief. If people were forced to make their comments public, then they would go to greater lengths to ensure they don’t say anything that embarrasses themselves or others. There would be fewer inflammatory remarks in forums and on blogs.
But, what about privacy advocates’ argument that everyone deserves anonymity under freedom of speech laws? Does that argument hold water?
I think what the world is struggling with right now is the cross-section between an individual’s right to speak freely and have their privacy protected and a publisher’s right to make decisions about what it will allow on its own domains. We’ve dealt with issues of this nature before in the real world. It’s akin to a book store chain such as Barnes & Noble discriminating between types of free speech that occur on its premises. After all, the business has its own reputation to protect.
The NYT article discusses several examples of online publishers who have opted to moderate posts in hopes of curtailing flame wars and other comment undesirables. As for Small Business Mavericks, we rarely allow anonymous comments. When we do, it’s because the commenter has provided a positive, helpful comment – not spam or something inflammatory. We hope other publishers will follow suit.
Tags: anonymity, online publishing, privacy
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
You’d had to have been hiding under a rock for the past year not to have heard the noise about Facebook’s privacy policies. Well, today some really big news broke. Facebook is revamping its policies.
Among the new changes to Facebook’s privacy policy include:
- One click blocking of third party websites
- One click application blocking
- Simpler options on who can view your personal data
These should be welcome changes for most users, but from a business perspective, it could make marketing somewhat more challenging. However, it shouldn’t impede your marketing efforts completely. If you communicate with your customers while they are in your store then you can get them to trust you better and then they should allow your applications to interact with their Facebook profiles. Just be careful how you use their personal data.
Tags: facebook, privacy
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »
Friday, May 16th, 2008
A couple of days ago I discussed two social networking applications that local business owners might consider for turning their local website into a social community for their users. Facebook Connect and Google FriendConnect both look to be promising tools. But there has been a change in one of them.
Facebook has decided not to let Google FriendConnect use its API unless the search engine decides to protect Facebook users’ privacy. Good move on Facebook’s part.
What this means for local business owners is you now have two equally considerable options. Facebook Connect will allow you to give your local website access to Facebook profiles and allow your site users the ability to network with others through Facebook – privacy and all. Google FriendConnect will still be a bit more flexible, but there will be less privacy and no Facebook.
Why are these choices equal? Because Facebook has a lot of useful applications and options for you, but it currently is limited in its interface capability with other networking applications. The Google FriendConnect will allow you to interface with a broad array of social applications even if Facebook isn’t involved. It will essentially mean that Facebook Connect and Google FriendConnect will be direct competitors with Facebook offering privacy as a selling point and Google FriendConnect offering flexibility as a selling point. The question for local businesses to answer for themselves and their users will be which benefit is more valuable to them.
Learn more about website design and development for social connectivity.
Tags: facebook connect, google friendconnect, privacy, social networking
Posted in Social Media, Tools for Small Business | No Comments »
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