Honestly I don’t know why I’m on a journalism kick lately, but here I go again: Colin Marshall, host of a podcast and radio show called The Marketplace of Ideas recently posted an excellent list of interview techniques, including things like “have a conversation” and “reveal your ignorance”. Two things are interesting: 1) journalists, like anthropologists, frequently fall prey to an ideological sense of what makes a “scientific” or objective interview (a rote list of questions asked like the advancing front of a battle), and it often makes for bad journalism, by which I mean, journalism that doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know; and 2) everything Marshall lists might be understood as ways to get outside the “framing” of discourse. This latter point is essential to me: anthropologists are doing good work when they figure out how to de-frame discourse, i.e. how to work a conversation out of the frames that restrict people from thinking. The salience of “framing” is obvious to sociologists, linguists, political scientists and others today, and there is much quality research on framing… but very little research on resisting the framing of discourse and enabling the progress of thinking. I read these tips as clear strategies for doing just that.

We’re still going through these recently released YouTube/Viacom litigation documents, and it’s becoming clear that we can’t take everything that’s being said by either party at face value (as if we didn’t know that already). We’ve come across a good example. In Viacom’s document Statement of Undisputed Facts, it presented the following seemingly damning passage that indicates that YouTube co-founder Steve Chen was advocating pirating movies (a quote that’s now appearing in quite a few news articles). But Viacom may be misrepresenting the evidence. Here’s their version:

In a July 29,2005 email about competing video websites, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen wrote to YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, “steal it!”, and Chad Hurley responded: “hmm, steal the movies?”

Steve Chen replìed: “we have to keep in mind that we need to attract traffic. how much traffic will we get from personal videos? remember, the only reason why our traffic surged was due to a video of this type. . . . viral videos will tend to be THOSE type of videos.”

The quote seems to be referring to full-length movies, though viral videos are mentioned (it’s unclear in this context whether they’re saying movies will go viral, or if they’re talking about traditionally more viral video clips). As it turns out, it’s the latter. And they were probably joking about it. Here’s the actual Email thread, in chronological order:

SUBJECT: Re:http://www.filecabi.net/

Jul 29, 2005  1:05 AM, Steve Chen wrote:

steal it!

Jul 29, 2005 1 :25 AM, Chad Hurley wrote:

hmm, steal the movies?

Jul 29, 2005 1 :33 AM, Steve Chen wrote:

haha ya.

or something.

just something to watch out for. check out their alexa ranking.
-s

Jul 29, 2005 7:45 AM, Chad Hurley wrote:

hmm, i know they are getting a lot of traffic… but it’s because they are a stupidvideos.com-type of site. they might make enough money to pay hosing bills, but sites like this and big-boys.com will never go public. I would really like to build something more valuable and more useful. actually build something that people will talk about and changes the way people use video on the internet.

Jul 29 2005 6:51 AM, Steve Chen wrote:

right, i understand those goals but, at the same time, we have to keep in mind that we need to attract traffic. how much traffic will we get from the personal videos? remember, the only reason why our traffic surged was due to a video of this type.
i’m not really disagreeing with you but i also think we shouldn’t be so high & mighty and think we’re better than these guys. viral videos will tend to be THOSE type of videos.
-s

Jul 29 2005 6:56 AM, Steve Chen Wrote:

another thing. still a fundamental difference between us and most of those other sites. we do have a community and it’s ALL user generated content.

-s

It’s worth pointing out that the subject of the Email thread was ‘http://www.filecabi.net’, and that big-boys.com is now Break.com — it’s pretty clear that Chen and Hurley are referring to the brief, dumb sort of videos that often go viral as opposed to full length movies. And, based on the ‘haha’ comment (which is ommitted from Viacom’s document), Chen and Hurley may have just been joking about stealing any content at all.

This doesn’t clear YouTube by any means (there are still plenty of other suspect quotes).  But it casts some doubt on the rest of Viacom’s ‘facts’.
CrunchBase InformationYouTubeViacomInformation provided by CrunchBase

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Trada

Quick Pitch: Trada’s online marketplace boosts Google and Yahoo search ad results by crowdsourcing search expertise for small and medium businesses.

Genius Idea: Trada takes a lot of the complexity of running SEM (search engine marketing) campaigns by letting advertisers or agencies take advantage of lots of different search experts who can execute campaigns for them quickly and efficiently.

Trada is officially launching today, after being in private beta since January, 2009. The idea is pretty simple: Have advertisers or agencies lay out the parameters for a campaign, like the landing page, a budget, maximum cost per click, etc. and then have search experts work in tandem to generate keywords and ad groups that can be submitted to various ad networks like Yahoo and Google AdWords.

Once a campaign has been submitted, advertisers can monitor the keywords to see how different things are performing and to make sure that the keywords are clear and accurate. Search experts get to keep the difference in what the advertiser is willing to pay per click/conversion and what it actually cost to generate. In other words, they have a very real incentive to get as many conversions or clicks for your campaign as possible.

Trada is essentially acting as the liaison between the two groups — which means that they also offer some stability and checks and balances for both parties. Search experts have to pass an entrance exam before being accepted into the program.

Trada is free for advertisers or agencies to use — their budget and total advertising cost will vary depending on the parameters of the campaign. Search experts get to keep 75% of their profits, with 25% going to Trada.

Trada sounds like a low-cost way to try different SEM strategies and to take advantage of people that are actively working to get you conversions because it benefits them. Likewise, it might be a low-noise opportunity for search experts who don’t want to have to be tied to certain campaigns or companies and can choose what projects they work on and so-forth.

Have you ever run any search engine marketing campaigns? How did you figure out your approach? Let us know!

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: advertising, ppc, SEM, SEO, trada

Nokia's Design by Community makes smartphone concepting a multiplayer game, with limits originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I’m at the NewsMorphosis Conference in Hawaii today locked in a day of debates about the state of news quality and how the hell we find a business model to keep paying for it. It’s a big issue locally– earlier this year three of Hawaii’s five largest TV news stations merged operations and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin is  merging with the other daily paper the Honolulu Advertiser, resulting in plenty of layoffs and general civic concern.

So it’s fitting that the conference ended with a talk by John Temple, the editor of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s new Peer News site, a test case in how the future of local news could work. And thankfully, we finally got a few more details on the site and the approach.

Temple was clear to say “there is no silver bullet” when it comes to fixing the media business, but also sees a great deal of hope in the volatility– this from the guy who was head of the now shuttered Rocky Mountain News, a paper that’s already gone through what so many dailies are dreading.

“We’re not trying to reinvent a local newspaper and put it on the Web,” he said. Indeed, the mission of Peer News doesn’t even contain the words “news” or “media” or “paper.” It’s simply “to create a new civic square.” Core to the development of Peer were three questions:

-What is the role of a free press in a democracy?

-How would you best fulfill that on a local level using all the tools available today?

-How do you do that in a sustainable way?

On content, the most interesting thing Temple talked about was doing away with “articles” as we know them. He criticized the static, episodic nature by which journalists have traditional covered news, challenging readers to hunt through archives for the information they want. Instead, Peer’s “building block” will be a page that’s always updated almost like Wikipedia, or as he put it, “something closer to a living history on a topic that changes as it develops.” There will no longer be a sense of “missing” an article, because the “articles” will be living things. That also addresses the critique that local news swarms around one issue, then moves on. “We’re not going to be hot topic driven,” Temple says. Going back to those questions, Temple says the role of a free press is to inform citizens so they can make intelligent decisions. “Let’s stop making it so difficult,” he said.

The other hallmark of Peer’s approach is what has made blogs popular– a sense of community. But it’s certainly a different approach. For one thing, Peer won’t have “reporters” in the classical sense, it will have “hosts” who help facilitate this civic square answering questions for the community.  “In this era, the fact that newspapers still rewrite press releases is an embarrassment,” Temple said. “We’re not going to be stenographers. I think that’s a downfall of journalism.”

But for a site that intends to be very community oriented, there was one big shocker: Peer will not have comments. “(Comments) descend into racism, hate, ugliness and reflect badly on news organizations that have them,” said Temple. Why? Because people do not have to show their faces when they comment so there’s no sense of responsibility, he argued. “We think anonymity is a huge problem when it comes to comments,” he said.

Temple also emphasized that the coverage would not pull punches: “We’re going to call things like we see them. We think there’s real value in taking a stand.”

So what about that business model? As Temple noted, there aren’t that many business models out there to chose from. Unlike most media sites, this will be a member site that people “value and will pay for.” He added “advertising would not be a key focus for us.”

Peer should be launching early next quarter, so we’ll be able to see more of these ideas in action soon. But it’s clear that the site– or “news service” as it prefers to call itself– is taking a markedly different approach from old and what we consider “new” media right now.

And with the benefit of some of these details, it seems less out of step for Omidyar to be starting this company. EBay, after all, was one of the first sites to powerfully leverage community on the Web, pioneering a lot of the systems of trust and reputation we still use today.

(More on Temple’s blog here.)

Sex.com is the most valuable domain name in the world (for obvious reasons). Right now it’s up for sale, and two of the prospective buyers might surprise you: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and a California meat company called BullWhip.

PETA published a letter requesting that Sex.com’s owners donate the domain name (valued at $18 million) so the organization can use it as a tool in its recent “vegetarians are sexy” ad campaign. PETA described a website where visitors could watch sexy ads, vote on the sexiest vegatarians (they include the above-pictured Alicia Silverstone as well as Pamela Anderson), and find out which veggies are aphrodesiacs.

In response, a BullWhip executive named Dick James sent out a press release praising meat-based diets and describing his plans for Sex.com. His lack of seriousness became clear when he got into that second point. He said, “Our plans are to have celebrities such as Angelina Jolie eating a hot dog or Eliza Dushku with two big slabs of Angus steak on her breasts. Britney Spears and Paris Hilton have also been contacted to fight in a tub of hamburger.”

Clearly he’s just mocking PETA, so comical as all this is, it’s just a PR stunt on the parts of both companies. PETA knows the owners of Sex.com are unlikely to donate the domain, and BullWhip is unlikely to make a serious offer. It’s as entertaining a PR fight as you’ll see, though.

We’ll leave you with the rejected, sexy PETA Super Bowl ad. It’s probably not quite safe-for-work.

Tags: animal rights, bullwhip, Domain Names, domains, peta, porn, pornography, sex, sex.com

T-Mobile USA eyeing iPhone launch this year or next? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Peter Greenaway makes one thing very clear to Catherine Shoard: there is nothing more to life but sex and death

'I don't know much about you," says Peter Greenaway, sipping his mint tea, "but I do know two things. You were conceived, two people did fuck, and I'm very sorry but you're going to die. Everything else about you is negotiable."

Negligible, too. For Greenaway, there's sex and there's death and "what else is there to talk about?" He believes, he continues, as relaxed as if predicting rain tomorrow, "that all religion is about death and art's about life. Religion is there to say: hey, you don't have to worry – there's an afterlife. Culture represents the opposite of that – sex. A very stupid Freudian way of looking at it, but one is positive and one is negative. Especially against people like you. All religions have always hated females."

Steam billows up from the cup into his face. He looks half David Attenborough, breath fogging the lens as he explores the Arctic (he has the same energy, the same gleaming curiosity), half Chris Tarrant, emerging from a cloud of dry ice.

We're in a cafe on a grand, damp square in Amsterdam, 'Lady in Red' on a loop, sausages on the menu. Greenaway, 67, lives nearby with a theatre director called Saskia and their two young children – he also has couple of grown-up daughters from a previous, London marriage to Carol, a potter. Looming opposite is the Rijksmuseum, of which Greenaway has just given me a first-class tour, embracing the role with relish: rolling his r's, spitting his t's, hammering great deep cleaves between each syllable. Tourists stop and goggle, not necessarily at the Vermeers.

We wound up at The Night Watch, Rembrandt's musket-heavy canvas and the subject of Greenaway's latest film, Nightwatching. It's a sort of Renaissance-era CSI (a show he admires; he's also a Midsummer Murders fan) investigating the puzzles in the painting itself and the mystery of the artist's sudden fall into virtual penury. Martin Freeman plays Rembrandt: oddly plausible and often nude.

In fact Nightwatching is rather more conventional than much of his back catalogue. It's an easily digestible examination of – yep, sex and death – and Greenaway's other key concerns: painting, snobbery, conspiracy. It's the latest in an ongoing project to unpick nine art masterpieces through movies and attendant installations. He's already knocked off The Last Supper and The Marriage at Cana ("Which I think is the wedding of Christ"). The motherlode is Michelangelo's Last Judgment. Talks, he says, are underway with the Vatican.

The Night Watch, he reckons, is the first work of real cinema, on account of Rembrandt's manipulation of artificial light. Though were Rembrandt around today, "he would have been shooting on holograms. He would be post-post-James Cameron." He shakes his head. "All really worthwhile artists, creators, use the technology of their time and anybody who doesn't becomes immediately a fossil."

In Greenaway's case, that means moving towards "feature film as essay. Like Montaigne. It's much more discursive. It doesn't hang on to a psychological narrative and it's not impressionistic. I don't want to take you anywhere. It's not a piece of escapism."

At 67, Greenaway is no longer interested in cinema per se – it's a half-dead medium wasted by taking its cues from books, "telling bedtime stories for adults. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are illustrated books. Not cinema. I want to be a prime creator. As every self-regarding artist should do."

He believes cinema needs to figure out a way to get out of the dark ("Man's not nocturnal"), get rid of the frame, and the camera, too. "We have a cinema of what we see, not what we think." Until that happens, though, he's still making films. And still, apparently, enthused by their possibilities. He talks as much about two other films he has in the pipeline as he does Nightwatching: one about Eisenstein losing his virginity in Mexico, another – "my first, real, dyed-in-the-wool pornography" – about a 17th century Dutch engraver. He fishes a postcard from his blazer pocket. It's another Rijksmuseum highlight, this time by Hendrik Goltzius. "Here you can see Lot and his two daughters; this is a few minutes before they fuck him in order to produce a continuation of the human race."

Why does he do so much?

"Maybe it's a hunger. A horror of the empty space. Without wishing even remotely to impress you, I'm involved in 26 projects at the moment all over the world. It's a glorious opportunity to practice being an artist."

Greenaway is an incurable self-promoter, forever ready with a barrage of stats about how many people he VJ'd in front of in Gdansk, or have seen The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover. There will always be, he says, "people who travel thousands of miles to see a Greenaway film. And I'm still painting – I've got a big exhibit coming up in Milan soon. And that's even more private."

Yet it is on show to the public? "Yes. Well, do you think a person who keeps a diary keeps it for himself? Anybody who writes a diary insists it must be read by someone else. So if I'm making very private films I want people to see them; of course I do."

There's a soreness beneath the swagger. In England, at least, Greenaway must be his own cheerleader. He's come under attack from his peers; even some of his defenders qualify their praise. He's also had a rough write-up in a lot of interviews. He suggests various explanations: because he's a jack of all trades, not a specialist. Because he's not Oxbridge. Because the English are "textually minded ... and so those who practise the image are regarded as not kosher." He cites an ally in undervaluation: RB Kitaj, another artist of ideas. "He had a big exhibit in Tate 10 years ago and he was absolutely excoriated by people like you because he did your job so much better than you can. He understood it so much more than you did."

He's happy in Holland. He likes the lack of snobbery, the openness, the freedom. "For a long time now they've been able to talk about homosexuality, abortion and euthanasia at the breakfast table. Elsewhere people turn away in embarrassment or run for the hills." He is, he says, planning to take advantage of the freedom afforded and kill himself when he's 80. "My youngest daughter will be 21 so I can see her to full adulthood. Why would it be sad? I've got 14 years left. They say the most valuable thing about death is that you never know when it's going to happen. But I think this a curse. I think if we knew we'd make much better use of life. I've had a fantastic life and I'm still enjoying it and am an extremely happy man, but there has to be a trade-off somewhere. I'm a Darwinian. All I can think is that we're here to fuck, to procreate. And we're incredibly focused towards it. All our literature and television is pushing us towards it. But I passed on my genes a long time ago, so I have to justify my place in the human race some other way."

You may have to cook up a purpose in life for yourself "since we've thrown away God and Satan and Freud"), but he's evangelical about the necessity of doing so. "I'm not here to play tiddlywinks and I don't think you are either."

He's off soon after, striding across the square in his thick pinstripes, booming into his mobile, bursting to crack on with those 26 projects while he's still got the time.

Nightwatching is released on 26 March

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Papers reveal Tory campaign to keep peer's tax privileges

William Hague was said to be aware 10 years ago of a deal struck by senior Tories that eventually resulted in Lord Ashcroft secretly remaining a non-dom after obtaining his peerage, according to official documents released today.

Hague, the former leader of the Conservative party who had been lobbying for the billionaire to secure a seat in the House of Lords, has repeatedly insisted that he was only told earlier this year that Ashcroft was a non-dom, and therefore not paying full UK tax on all his earnings.

But previously confidential parliamentary correspondence published today showed that Hague's chief whip, James Arbuthnot, was instrumental in lobbying for Ashcroft not to have to give up tax privileges on his massive overseas earnings – despite assurances given by Hague that he would pay "tens of millions" to the Treasury.

The papers also include a letter from Arbuthnot which suggests that Hague was fully aware of the deal between the Cabinet Office and Ashcroft.

This raises fresh questions for Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, who was forced to speak about the issue today for the first time after some of the documents were leaked to the BBC. He has denied being aware of the full details of the deal.

After a decade of refusing to clarify his tax status, Ashcroft revealed three weeks ago that he was a non-dom, appearing to contradict assurances made on his behalf by Hague, who fought hard to secure his seat in the Lords 10 years ago.

The political honours scrutiny committee repeatedly made it clear that Ashcroft's elevation was dependent on him giving a promise that he would return to the UK and become a UK taxpayer. The peerage was agreed after Ashcroft gave a "solemn and binding undertaking" in writing that he would become permanently resident in the UK. Instead of becoming a permanent resident, however, he became a "long term resident" – a distinction that allowed him to avoid paying UK income tax on all his worldwide earnings.

The correspondence released today by the public administration committee revealed for the first time that Arbuthnot was deeply involved in the negotiations that led to the downgrading of Ashcroft's undertaking.

Arbuthnot, who was said to be acting as an intermediary for Ashcroft, insisted that the billionaire – under the terms of the assurances he had given – could take up his seat in the Lords despite not being domiciled in the UK for tax purposes.

Sir Hayden Phillips, a senior civil servant, eventually agreed with Arbuthnot in July 2000 that Ashcroft needed only to become a long-term resident in order to comply with the undertakings he had given. In turn, Arbuthnot replied within hours, saying: "I confirm that I agree with your understanding of the position." He added: "The leader of the opposition is satisfied that the action adequately meets the terms of Michael Ashcroft's undertaking to take up permanent residence in the UK."

The terms of that deal shocked members of the political honours scrutiny committee. Lady Dean, one of the two surviving members of the committee, said today: "We were continually of the view that Lord Ashcroft would maintain his undertaking to take up permanent residence ... It looks like the commitments and undertakings given were not carried through."

The papers released today also show the scrutiny committee was determined that Ashcroft should honour the assurances he had given. The secretary of the committee had even suggested the businessman might be asked to show copies of Inland Revenue forms as proof that he was a full UK taxpayer; the IR Form P86, denoting arrival in the UK, and IR DOM1, proving he had become domiciled and would pay full tax. It repeatedly asked for evidence that this had been done before the undertaking was revised. The documents also show that all parties emphasised Ashcroft should live in the UK to become a full working peer and attend parliament regularly. But his Lords records show he has not spoken in a debate in the last year and has attended only 15% of votes.

A spokesman for Hague insisted tonight that he had delegated the issue to his chief whip. "He didn't know any of the details [in 2000]. He asked James Arbuthnot to deal with the issue and make sure Downing Street was satisfied. He did. That was it," he said. However, Hague did concede today that he should not have promised that Ashcroft would pay tens of millions of tax.

The foreign secretary David Miliband said that the letters proved that Hague was "intimately" involved in the process. He said: "It is now clear there has been a decade of deception at the top of the Conservative party and I repeat my call ... that David Cameron sacks Lord Ashcroft."

• Michael Ashcroft
• Conservatives
• William Hague
• Party funding
• House of Lords

This week, Donna Simpson announced her plan to be the fattest woman in the world. But are 'gainers' who purposefully overeat risking their health or liberating themselves?

There isn't much that Emma Allen doesn't know about dieting. She once gave up solid food for four months. It didn't work out. She tried the weight-loss programme NutriSystem, but needless to say, they didn't help either. She was even one of the first generation of Atkins devotees who were required, among other things, to test their own urine.

Yet while she was publicly attempting to shed the pounds, secretly, Emma liked being overweight. As a child she had fantasies of taking a pill that would make her fatter and fatter until she eventually just floated away.

She never told anyone, but when she got pregnant 18 years ago, everything changed. "It was like a religious epiphany," Emma says. "I remember having this incredible feeling that I could think about what was good for me, instead of calories. The possibility of thinking about food differently was a big turning point."

Over the next 10 years, Emma immersed herself in the world of size politics. She paid closer attention to the size liberation movement: a political movement that started in the 1970s and made size an axis of oppression. Groups such as Fat Underground and Fat Activists Together (FAT) fought for anti-discrimination legislation on the grounds of weight. Then three years ago she finally took the decision to do something she had always wanted to do. "I'd had these fantasies all my life and had been restraining them all my life. There came a time when I wanted to explore," she says. "I wanted to know more about what they were about. How would I feel about actually gaining weight, would I enjoy it?" In spring 2007, she took the plunge and gained 33lb, to reach a total weight of 17.5st.

Emma is a 49-year-old professor at a university in the north-west of England. She is also a "gainer" – sometimes known as a "feedee" – who overeats in an active attempt to put on weight. Although there are no statistics on the number of people doing this, gaining is more common than one might think. "They are everybody: every age, every country, every size; I mean, tiny, skinny people wanting to gain . . . it really is a case of, look around you, somebody is having these fantasy scenarios," says Emma.

This week Donna Simpson, a 42-year-old mother from New Jersey who weighs 43st, made headlines by revealing that her ongoing weight gain was part of her plan to become the fattest woman on earth. Pictured with an enigmatic smile and a burger in her hand, the press coverage showed varying degrees of restraint in highlighting the £400-a-week food shops, fast-food binges and unrepentant bid to hit 73st.

Gaining is often linked to feederism; a topic that occasionally pops up as freakshow fodder in magazines, chat shows or documentaries such as Fat Girls and Feeders: a 2003 Channel 4 documentary. This focused on the relationships between men and the overweight, vulnerable women they chose to fatten to immobility and beyond. Yet many women actively seek to gain weight of their own volition.

There are many websites and groups dedicated to gaining but Fantasy Feeder (FF to its members) is perhaps the most comprehensive. There are forums, stories and photographs that show unbuttoned blouses revealing pot bellies, wobbly tummies and impressive mounds of flesh cascading over waistbands. Large bosoms escape the confines of their bras, and rolls ripple beneath over-stretched T-shirts. Before and after pictures show the usual weight transformation journey, but in reverse. The poses are proud, matter-of-fact and often sexual.

There are lots of men on the site, but it is the images of female gainers that catch the eye. In our present landscape of body blandness, they stand out as controversial, bold and visually political. Fat is still, most definitely, a feminist issue for some female gainers."I think being a feminist has affected my relationship to my body and gaining in several ways," says Emma. "I started, very young, bucking the trends of beauty norms, like bra-wearing and shaving and makeup. I always thought that these practices were ridiculous; so that made it easier to go against the norm. Gaining is very liberating."

Others say they like making a statement with their weight because it challenges our stereotypical notions of beauty. Some, like Helen Gibson, a 40-year-old nurse from the Midlands, gain weight simply to please themselves. "It is my right to be fat; nothing about making a point." Yet even she concedes putting on weight after her marriage made her feel free: "Those three months were the most liberating of my life; I could feel the fat going back on. My tummy returned to its former glory – fat, soft and flabby, just how it should be."

Helen's husband knows she is a gainer, as do friends, who are well aware of how much she "adores being fat"; understandably, though, being an NHS employee, she cannot come out of the gaining closet completely. At the latest estimate, 57% of women were classified as being overweight, including 25% who were obese. Overall, obesity and related health issues now account for 9% of the NHS budget. As a nurse, says Helen, she cannot be seen to publicly advocate being overweight. For others, anonymity is the result of not wanting anyone to know, which might explain the profusion of headless pictures on the FF website.

As any gainer will tell you, life outside the community can be harsh. There is still a huge amount of derision and discrimination towards the obese, so the decision to keep their gaining a secret isn't really a surprise. Lauren, a 20-year-old American gainer, says she does not want to offer more ammunition to people by explaining the predilection. "As a fat woman, I have experienced fat discrimination almost on a daily basis," she says. "It's usually not so glaring as an intolerant jerk screaming, 'Diet, fatty!' but smaller, more painful ways: going to parties and no one talks to me, being glared at while I'm eating in restaurants, the snickering in changing rooms in department stores."

For many non-gainers, the practice seems strange because of the health implications – both physical and psychological. Even organisations such as the US-based National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (Naafa) dismiss gaining on health grounds. Obesity experts say that being overweight can cause everything from heart problems and diabetes to high blood pressure and gall stones. The message is that fat and health don't mix. But Emma disagrees. She says that it would be more useful for people to consider the multimillion-pound diet industry and its "95% failure rate", and feels overweight people are instead blamed for all the world's ills. "I think people worry about health because it's the easiest place to hang fat hatred. The data actually suggests that it has to do with activity, and not size. People respond badly to anything that asks them to reconfigure their presumptions and preconceptions."

Psychologically, gaining is still a grey area. While one would assume purposefully overeating to gain weight is as much of a disorder as not eating, Susan Ringwood, chief executive of Beating Eating Disorders (Beat), says that isn't the case. "It isn't an eating disorder as such, because there is no morbid fear of fatness, or weight gain. In its extreme forms it is more likely to be a personality disorder that is organised around submission/domination and sexual fantasies."

Another theory, says psychotherapist Phillip Hodson, is that intentional weight gain for women could well be an avoidance tactic: they don't want to attract the unwanted attention of men, so they transform themselves into something deemed conventionally unattractive. Most women don't feel this way, but it could be true for a small minority. "I have come across cases where it's quite obvious that women deliberately become large, or remain large, for psychological reasons," he says. "These include trying to avoid attention and becoming sexually invisible. Some women use food to become so different from the stereotype and to avoid all that is involved in fitting that stereotype: from wolf whistles to being propositioned."

It's a thought, but it doesn't appear to mean anything to Emma or Helen who define weight gain in very sexual terms. Although Donna Simpson's press coverage glossed over the sexual aspect of gaining, for them, more fat means more sex appeal; the extra flesh that everyone else is attempting to shed fuels their desires.

Emma goes one step further to say that gaining is an intrinsic part of her sexual identity. She cannot gain at the moment because of MS and diabetes, but still calls herself a gainer.

For most of us, weight gain seems simple: a bit too much butter on your toast and one chocolate biscuit too many can mean the difference between zipping up your jeans or not. But the question of how to gain weight is quite a hot topic on Fantasy Feeder. There are "Eat Yourself Fat" tailormade diet plans to increase your weight, and the advice ranges from eating ice cream before bed to homemade milkshakes and lots more pasta.

While some favour junk food overload, others, like Emma, say that it is the very antithesis of what gaining is about. "For me, it's all about a kind of hedonism; it's about opening the doors and allowing in fleshy pleasures, whether it's food itself, or what happens to my body, or what happens to somebody else's body. I need a big variety, because what's appealing to me are contrasts of textures and tastes and aromas and colours . . . if I have to eat a big bowl of pasta, I'm not interested. I mean, I love pasta, but I'm not going to eat four servings of it."

Instead Emma maintains a healthy eating regime. "I know no one will believe this, but I eat lots of wholegrains, fruit and veg; probably a bit too much cheese, and chocolate – although I now only eat sugarfree candies. Fish, if it's fresh . . . of course. My diet isn't primarily McDonald's and KFC; in fact, it almost never is." Likewise, Helen's love of gaining is as much about the act of eating as the result. "It's the pleasure of food that is the biggest pleasure for me; followed by each extra roll of fat that comes with the amount that I eat," she says. "I adore how I look naked – and I have been known to spend far too much time admiring myself in the mirror."

The presence of online gaining communities has provided people with a support system. Many say it is like coming home. "This is our small part of the world where we are surrounded by people who say, 'You're not weird; it's perfectly fine to feel as you do, in fact, we think you're great because of it,'" says Lauren. "To virtually everyone, it is a liberating, wonderful feeling." Emma says that she is in the privileged position of "coming out" because she has little to lose: her partner will not leave her because of it, and she is unlikely to lose her job. Colleagues don't know, but she doesn't think they will be too surprised, given her outspoken views on fat issues.

As a moderator on the FF site, she comes across a lot of people who on the one hand are desperate to be fat, on the other, desperate to be thin. "Real desires need attention, not curing," she says. "Lots of people in the community want to understand why they have these fantasies and desires, and there's sometimes an undertone of; 'so that I can cure them'. Not always, but there are definitely people who feel that way."

Some, she says, are just as unhappy with their bodies as those trying to lose weight. "Most people who tell you that they're happy with their bodies are lying. There are people who are like, 'Yeah, I'm cool: fat is beautiful – I'm having weight loss surgery . . . certainly, there are women on FF who are dieting."

Being a gainer isn't as straightforward or easy as it might seem, she says. "One comes into contact with messages about weight loss, health and beauty, about, I don't know, 20 times a day. Every time you open your email, a magazine, every time you turn the television on . . . so any attempt to do anything different, takes incredible strength and courage – and we all fall down," including Emma. "Of course it gets me down! I often feel like all men – and women – believe that stereotype is beautiful, even though I know better," she says. "I hammer myself over not being that stereotype, but only when I'm having a bad time and am already vulnerable because of other things going on around me."

If we look around us, says Phillip Hodson, it is clear that regardless of increased pressures to be thin, we are getting fatter as a nation. "The natural figure of the hunter-gatherer has returned: good childbearing hips and a good abdomen," he says. "But I would be worried about people who are saying they want to get fat."

But Helen is not worried. At 16st she still only considers herself to be pleasantly plump. She has a picture in her head, she says, of what she will look like when she is fat. "I am a long way off that, although I am on my way," she says. "With each mouthful, calorie and year, I am on my way to achieving it."

Some names have been changed

• Women
• Obesity
• Health & wellbeing

Jim Carrey is a fraudster who falls for Ewan McGregor in a Texas jail. Peter Bradshaw enjoys an intriguing, offbeat comedy

Jim Carrey's rubbery, hyperreal face achieves a sheen of panic and desperate neediness in this stranger-than-fiction comedy drawn from real life. Steven Russell (Carrey) is a fraudster, a hypnotically plausible fantasist, and a formerly married ex-cop who comes out as a gay man, before finally getting sent to jail in Texas for insurance scams, and there finding the love of his life. This is the shy, young innocent Phillip Morris, nicely played by Ewan McGregor, who, like the rest of the world, trusts the exuberant and charming Steven implicitly. Morris himself tells his own story in a seductive, honeyed voiceover, rather like Reese Witherspoon's narration in Alexander Payne's Election.

Electrified by his new romance, Steven redoubles his fanatical determination to trick and manipulate the world around him to get what he believes he wants: Phillip. When his own prison term ends, Steven poses as a lawyer to get Phillip released on licence – forging documents, faking voices on the phone, and maintaining a series of inspired bluffs – and then constructs a massive, fraudulent career in both law and finance so that they can live together in luxury as a super-rich gay couple. But it isn't long before the police close in, and Steven has to demonstrate his almost superhuman talents for evading the law: shabby deceptions theoretically consecrated to his love for his beloved Phillip, who hasn't grasped how he has been made complicit and co-dependent in Steven's delusional career of lies.

This movie, from writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa – who wrote the Billy Bob Thornton comedy Bad Santa – is intriguing, at least partly because it is not immediately clear what it is centrally about. Steven's own lifelong identity crisis, which may stem from the traumatic discovery of having been adopted, has a parallel in the film. Is it about gay romance? Is it about a con man's criminal career? Are we, the audience, supposed to trust Steven Russell, to take him at his own estimation of himself?

Not exactly, no. Even calling him a fraudster doesn't describe the character Carrey plays. His compulsive lying is an addictive habit like kleptomania; it forces him to live in a growing web of relationships based on bad faith, from which more scams will be needed to escape. Like many liars, Steven has developed a lovably roguish personality as a cover for when he gets caught and has to admit guilt, and as a face-saving device to allow his dupes to grimace and pretend they sort of suspected as much. Steven is not a con man in the sense of a cool, rational grifter who knows exactly what he is doing and why. He is in the grip of a compulsion, which distracts him from a batsqueak of terror that he doesn't know what or who he is. Steven seizes messianically on his gay identity and his gay love for Phillip Morris. The title of the film is a kind of personal mission statement. But to the very end, this grand passion may not entirely explain his behaviour.

Steven's soon-to-be-ex-wife Debbie, played by Leslie Mann, asks a doctor if Steven's "gay thing and the stealing" are part of the same disorder. Steven's then-boyfriend Jimmy, played by Rodrigo Santoro, is disgusted by this homophobic remark. And yet Debbie, in her blundering way, has come close to something. It is not Steven's gayness that is of a piece with his stealing, but his pretending to be straight, and then pretending that his embrace of a gay identity is the solution to all his personal problems. What counts is the deception, and the way it melts into self-deception.

With its chequered and meandering story-path, I Love You Phillip Morris reminded me surreally of serial killer films like David Fincher's Zodiac, Cédric Kahn's Roberto Succo and Shohei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine – about criminals whose modus operandi and repetitive patterns of behaviour look like a rationally pursued criminal "career" – but it is a career that could digress or disappear at any moment.

Carrey and McGregor certainly succeed in making it all funny. Carrey's anti-hero is, after all, a very clever man, who gets away with a lot of stuff because of a genuine mental ability, which he unfortunately supplements with lies. (There's a nice montage sequence in which Steven tells a "lawyer" joke at the office, and then overhears dozens of people retelling that same joke badly, revealing their various crass prejudices.)

And there is something funny and touching about this anarchic, abortive love affair, a chaotically doomed relationship that neither of the principals understand, and it is the very muddled and messy quality of this relationship that announces that it is drawn from real life. Steven's bluffs and blags are arguably just a crazily magnified version of the fake-it-till-you-make-it routine that many entirely honest people find themselves needing to use. Poor Steven does see himself as basically one of these decent, honest types. "Sometimes you've got to shave a little off the puzzle-piece to make it fit," he muses. The puzzle fits together very entertainingly here.

Rating: 4/5

• Comedy
• Jim Carrey
• Ewan McGregor

More often than not, an entrepreneur with a great idea looking for funding will pitch his or her startup dozens, if not hundreds of times to potential investors. There is an endless amount of resources out there for entrepreneurs looking to learn the best practices for their pitch, including what to include in their decks, how long to speak, and what pitfalls to avoid. By the time an entrepreneur actually gets funding, they've probably mastered their pitch to a point where they could recite it in their sleep and provide advice of their own to newcomers. The problem with this is they can get stuck in their pitch mentality and it can creep into areas of their business that need the ole straight talk express.

Sponsor

Michael Hirshland of Polaris Venture Partners, who blogs under the name VCMike, wrote today about a problem he often sees when in board meetings with startups. The issue is that entrepreneurs are so used to speaking a certain way to VCs that they sometimes have a pitch-like tone that gets in the way of board room progress. As Hirshland points out, don't try to beat around the bush when it comes to bad news.

"VCs hear bad news all the time -- it is part of the startup process and part of the VC job description," says Hirshland. "Any VC worth his or her salt should respond to bad news, provided it is shared in a timely fashion, by helping the entrepreneur figure out the best way to respond rather than dwelling on what went wrong."

He advises CEOs to stear clear of attempts to placate their board members by spouting off excuses for whatever their bad news is, or by claiming that they are already fixing the problem in hopes of avoiding any impending wrath. From what Hirshland says, board members are not schoolmasters there to punish you and whip you into shape; they are there to help, so don't isolate yourself, he says. If you speak openly and honestly about your issues with your board, chances are you will preserve your most valued asset as an entrepreneur and as a startup: credibility.

"Early stage ventures are filled with ambiguity. Entrepreneurs and their investors need to make quick decisions based on information that is far from complete," says Hirshland. "This necessitates relying to a very substantial degree on the entrepreneurs' interpretation of the situation and prospects."

In other words, you are the eyes and ears for your board, and if you aren't being open and honest with them, bad things will happen. Worst of all, speaking with fluff and rounding out the rough edges of your company will destroy your credibility, which Hirshland calls "toxic" to your partnership and "not a happy place for either the entrepreneur or the investor."

As we mentioned earlier this week, credibility is your best friend when trying to get funded, so make sure you carry it with you and preserve it in your board meetings and into your company's future. Save the pitching for future rounds of fundraising, and when it comes to your board members, don't try to win them over, simply treat them like equal members of your team.

The third rendition of this horror tale -- known as the "Curse Killing Arc" -- takes an unexpected left turn, departing from the supernatural emphasis of the first two arcs in order to explore the very human face of evil.  This move is more than just effective storytelling -- it also offers an entirely new experience of a story the reader only thinks they already know.

Once again, it is important to know that each arc of Higurashi: When They Cry is a variation on a theme using the same basic characters and settings.  In each arc, a teenage boy named Keiichi moves to a small town which has long suffered under a supernatural curse that ensures at least one person dies each year during a special cultural festival.  Also, each arc generally ends up with the same result, which usually happens to be lots of people dying, disappearing, or going crazy.  Sometimes they do all three.  In varying order.  It is only the differing paths and arrangements of characters and relationships by which the end result is reached that distinguishes each arc from the others.  The remarkable thing about this particular horror story is how it lulls you into a sense of complacency after you've read a few arcs.   You think you know the rules the game, but with the third arc a number of rules from the first two are violated so thoroughly that I found myself rediscovering not only some of the original horror of the story, but new and unexpected horrors as well.

While the first two arcs seem to purposefully twist the shonen harem genre in delightfully warped ways, the third instead offers a tender portrait of genuine friendship.  Keiichi is no longer a mere "average boy" construct to be fawned over by a bunch of girls, who seem to exist only to make him lunch and may or may not turn out to be murderously evil.  Instead, as a recent transfer student to a very small town, he and new his neighbors are busy getting to know each other in realistically high-spirited ways for their age.   The most important of these friends -- Satoko -- is an elementary school student who delights in embarrassing the older Keiichi by pulling a series rather inspired pranks on him.  Importantly, Satoko and Keichi develop a strong and emotionally rich bond as Satoko sees her missing older brother in everything Keichi does.  In response to the clear absence in her heart, Keiichi is so moved he strives to become her replacement family.  While the other girls aren't given as much depth as Satoko in these volumes, Keiichi's circle of friends is still remarkable in that it actually includes other boys.  In other words, this arc replaces the harem with something completely different and in doing so creates a fertile ground for new ways to completely upend everyone's existence.

In previous arcs, when saw yourself from the main character's point-of-view, you were usually encouraged to wonder, "What if the cute girl next door wanted to kill me?"   Here a much darker and more disturbing question forms -- what kind of evil could possibly destroy such happy days and youthful and innocent friendships?  It is only because the bonds portrayed seem so genuine that it becomes necessary for the writer to create a force as equally powerful in order to break those bonds down.  What ends up intruding upon these happy days is the real world terror of domestic abuse in volume 6.  Keiichi is faced with the hellish reality that as a child he can't save his good friend, Satoko, from suffering at the hands of her horrible relative.  Driven to despair at his own powerless, Keiichi's attempts to "save" her only implicates him in the violence and terror Satoko wants to escape.

While child abuse is a surprisingly melodramatic turn for this narrative exercise in horror, it works particularly well here because of the emotional foundation laid so carefully in volume 5.  For the most part, the conclusion to the story succeeds thanks to its psychological portrait of children who are tragically cornered -- almost mentally tortured -- by basic human injustice.   The story, as always, relentlessly moves toward the terrible destruction of the characters, but in this case the cascading acts of violence -- culminating in one truly shocking event -- seem almost self-inflicted.  These two volumes have a much darker tone than the two previous arcs, as the psychology of violence replaces the strange logic of the supernatural, making this version all that much more compelling in its fresh take on the expected formula.

Review copies provided by Yen Press.

Reuters reports:

President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday announced that Russia would build a high-tech hub near Moscow to spur modernization of the economy and reduce its dependence on oil and gas.

The center, designed to develop five priority sectors -- energy, IT, telecommunications, bio-medical and atomic technologies -- will be built near Skolkovo, a new private-sector business school in the Moscow region.

(It would be tempting to call it "Silicon Steppes" if it were in Asiatic Russia...)

I had a very small part to play in this story. In late 2007 I met with a large Russian delegation that had come over to Silicon Valley to learn some of its lessons. Their goal was to use Russian oil money to establish several Silicon Valley-like regions.

They asked me lots of good questions. They made it clear that they did not want to replicate Silicon Valley, they wanted just the best bits.

I told them I would tell them the secret of Silicon Valley's success. They went silent, and leaned in closer to hear what I had to say. "Failure."

(This was before the EPIC Fail craze of recent times...)

Silicon Valley tolerates, and funds, massive amounts of failure. Only about one out of twenty startups succeed.

Probably no other culture allows people to fail as many times as Silicon Valley. Inside every successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur is a failed entrepreneur.

No other culture in the world, (except for maybe Las Vegas), tolerates and celebrates as much failure as Silicon Valley. This is the "best bit" of Silicon Valley, and its also the part that can't be exported.

They nodded. And they made some notes.

I asked them about how they would structure their VC funds, and about the Russian entrepreneurs that they hoped to attract.

One of them, the head of a quasi public/private VC fund, said that they had a problem finding and funding startups. It was an exasperating problem. The Russian entrepreneurs won't tell them about their business ideas.

They don't trust them. "I'm running a VC fund, I'm not going to run off with their business idea!"

- - -

By the way, did you know that Tim Draper, one of our most successful VCs, penned a song called "RiskMaster" to welcome the Russian delegation?

I have no idea what the tune is, obviously something stirring, I can imagine something between Red Army choir and Welsh choir:

Hey! You want to start a business?
Russia seems to show some promise
While weighing all your choices
"Go to Moscow!" you hear voices
Google founder came from Russia
Parametric? - Not from Prussia!
Genesis and PayPal too

SVOD and what is new?
With luck you'll become a
Master!

From Soviet biology
Comes really cool technology
Software immunology
From Nukes we get ecology
Ukraine's Orange Revolution
Good for all-freedom solution
And then political pollution
Now it's all in execution


Chorus:
With luck you'll become a
RiskMaster!

All you need is a faster chip
A million rubles
A couple of engineers
RiskMaster!

- - -

Please see: Turning Oil Into Innovation: Russian Delegation Seeks Silicon Valley's Lessons - SVW

Having gone toe-to-toe with Macmillan Publishing over e-book prices last month, only to retreat in the face of a consumer backlash, Amazon is once again talking tough with publishers. This time, however, the stakes are even higher for the Kindle-maker.

According to a New York Times report, Amazon is threatening to remove the “buy” button from major publishers’ e-books if they don’t accede to a detailed list of its demands, including that it not be undersold by other e-book retailers. Although Amazon agreed in principle following the Macmillan dust-up to let publishers set retail prices for their Kindle books while it collects a 30 percent commission, the retailer is apparently keen to maintain its most-favored nation status vs. other e-book sellers, including Apple.

The immediate bone of contention, according to the Times, is Amazon’s demand that publishers sign three-year contracts guaranteeing that no other competitor get lower prices or better terms than it does. Publishers are said to be reluctant to commit to three-year deals when prices and consumer behavior are still in flux.

Amazon’s demand also puts publishers in a tight spot with Apple, which is insisting on most-favored nation status for its iBookstore.

While Amazon may have picked the wrong fight with Macmillan, and then overplayed its hand, the outcome of the  latest battle really could be critical to the Kindle-maker’s long-term strategy, not because of what it could mean for retail e-book prices but for what it could mean for the Kindle platform.

Both Amazon and Apple share the same long-term e-book strategy. Each wants its device, the Kindle and iPad, respectively, to emerge as the dominant e-reading platform. As Apple itself demonstrated with the iPod and iTunes — a strategy deliberately aped by Amazon — controlling the distribution platform gives you control of the value chain. By locking both iPod users and the record companies into the iTunes platform, Apple was able to capture the lion’s share of the value from online music (mostly by selling expensive iPods).

The key to Apple’s success in music wasn’t just the relatively low 99-cent price of individual tracks but that the value in using an iPod for music was competitive against other consumer options, including illegal downloads and other MP3 players.

For both Amazon and Apple, then, it’s critical that the value of using a Kindle or an iPad for reading remains competitive against all other options, especially at this early stage of the market’s development when consumer habits are still up for grabs.

That means not just keeping a lid on e-book prices but making sure you’re the lowest-cost provider of e-books in the market. In this case, most-favored nation means most likely to succeed.

As for how publishers should respond to Amazon and Apple’s mutually exclusive demands for favor, the situation presents a paradox. Normally, supplying both sides in a war is an enviable position for a vendor. In this case, however, the battle is over driving down prices, which is not a fight most vendors want to find themselves in.

Their best strategy is to hold the line with both and hope that no clear winner emerges quickly.

Paul Sweeting is analyst with GigaOM Pro and the author of The Evolution of the e-Book Market (sub. required).

In anticipation of the upcoming immigration marches, Media Matters for America has compiled a review of the hateful and outrageous right-wing rhetoric surrounding the immigration debate in 2006.

Right-wing rhetoric: Immigrant-rights marchers, immigrants are seeking to reclaim the Southwest for Mexico

Right-wing rhetoric: Immigrant rights marchers are "racis[t]"

Right-wing rhetoric: Pro-immigration marchers should be arrested or deported

Right-wing rhetoric: Stoking fears over displays of the Mexican flag

Right-wing rhetoric: Immigration is an "invasion"

Right-wing rhetoric: U.S., Mexico are in a state of "war"

Right-wing rhetoric: Immigrants are fundamentally altering American culture or way of life

Right-wing rhetoric: Immigration reform is part of plot to institute "North American Union"

Other hate speech and outrageous rhetoric

"Reconquista" is a discredited smear used by the right to generate fear of Latino immigrants. During the 2006 immigration debate, right-wing media repeatedly advanced the discredited smear that Mexican-Americans and Mexican citizens -- particularly "illegal aliens" -- are plotting to take over the U.S. Southwest for Mexico.

Dobbs referred to potential "army" of "illegal alien" "invaders" taking over Southwest. During an April 2006 broadcast of his now-defunct CNN show, Lou Dobbs introduced a report by stating: "There are some Mexican citizens and some Mexican-Americans who want to see California, New Mexico and other parts of the Southwestern United States given over to Mexico. These groups call it the reconquista, Spanish for reconquest. And they view the millions of Mexican illegal aliens in particular entering the United States as potentially an army of invaders to achieve that takeover." Correspondent Christine Romans reported, "Long downplayed as a theory of the radical ethnic fringe, the la reconquista, the reconquest, the reclamation, the return, it's resonating with some on the streets," and went on to say: "A lot of open borders groups disavow it completely. But the growing street protests in favor of illegal immigration, Lou, are increasingly taking on the tone of that very radicalism." [CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, 4/31/06]

CNN reporter referenced "the Vicente Fox Aztlan tour," used "Aztlan" graphic sourced to hate group. Lou Dobbs Tonight correspondent Casey Wian characterized then-Mexican President Vicente Fox's trip to Salt Lake City, Utah, as a "Mexican military incursion" and claimed that "[y]ou could call" Fox's trip to the United States "the Vicente Fox Aztlan tour." During Wian's report, CNN featured a graphic of "Aztlan" that was sourced to the Council of Conservative Citizens -- an organization whose "Statement of Principles" reads: "We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called 'affirmative action' and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races." [Lou Dobbs Tonight, 5/23/06]

Malkin: "[T]he vast majority of mainstream Hispanic politicians" embrace "the intellectual underpinnings of reconquista." On Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin declared that protesters in Los Angeles were "people who believe that the American southwest belongs to Mexico, that we don't have a right to enforce our borders, and who do nothing more than try to sabotage our sovereignty." Malkin later added that "the kind of quote-unquote 'pride' that a lot of these illegal alien activists are touting now goes much further than just being proud about one's heritage and one's roots. The idea, the intellectual underpinnings of reconquista, are embraced by the vast majority of mainstream Hispanic politicians." [Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, 3/30/06]

Wash. Times editorial: Protesters approve of "reconquista" agenda. A Washington Times editorial accused Latinos who protested against a proposal to restrict immigration of either supporting or having given "tacit approval" to the "reconquista" agenda of "Hispanic radicals," which the editorial said was the "reconquering of Mexican land lost during the Mexican-American war." [The Washington Times, 3/30/06]

Fox's Gibson suspicious that Latino advocacy groups are set on "retaking old Mexico territories ... by pure birth rate." While saying that he was citing an internal email from the National Council of La Raza, John Gibson claimed on his Fox News show that he was suspicious that advocacy groups like the NCLR favor "the so-called reconquista," which Gibson described as the "retaking of old Mexico territories, which are now part of the United States, by pure birth rate." Gibson also asserted that the NCLR "is a group dedicated to the betterment of the race," adding, "good, but try being American while you are at it, guys." [Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson, 4/3/06]

O'Reilly: Purported immigrant protest "organizers" have hidden "hardcore militant agenda" to take back American Southwest. On his radio show, O'Reilly said that the "organizers" of immigrant rallies have a "hardcore militant agenda of 'You stole our land, you bad gringos.' " O'Reilly said that the "slogan" of the demonstrations' organizers was "[W]e didn't cross the border, the border crossed us," and that this meant that the organizers believed that Americans "stole [their] land." The organizers' hidden "agenda underneath," said O'Reilly, was that "now, we're going to take it back by massive, massive migration into the Southwest." [Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, 5/1/06]

Buchanan: "Chicano chauvinists and Mexican agents" want to "take back through demography and culture what their ancestors lost through war." In his book, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, published in August 2006, MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan wrote: "Chicano chauvinists and Mexican agents have made clear their intent to take back through demography and culture what their ancestors lost through war." He also wrote that the United States must keep "Americans of European descent" from becoming the "minority" in order to "survive[]." [State of Emergency (Thomas Dunne Books)]

Malkin: "[W]e saw ... that supposed fringe" that favors reconquista "come out into the mainstream." O'Reilly said to Malkin, "So I know that there's an undercurrent of militancy that says, 'Hey, this is our territory. You stole it from us in the Mexican-American War. We're going to take it back now by illegal immigration.' But I think that's a fringe, nutty group, not the mass of millions that we have." Malkin replied: "Well, I guess I disagree with you there, Bill, because I mean, we saw in April and May of this year [2006] that supposed fringe come out into the mainstream. And it wasn't just a dozen folks who are ensconced in the ivory tower who believe that the Southwest is Aztlan and it belongs to them." O'Reilly later asked her: "You think that this massive immigration to the United States, 15 million strong, is a part of a plan to bring back territory to Mexico?" Malkin responded: "Well, I take the Mexican government at its word when it says that is exactly its plan." [The O'Reilly Factor, 8/23/06]

Malkin: "[M]ilitant racism from another protected minority group was on full display" from "Latino supremacists." In her syndicated column, Malkin wrote of immigration rallies, "Well, this weekend, militant racism from another protected minority group was on full display. But you wouldn't know it from press accounts that whitewashed or buried the protesters' virulent anti-American hatred." Malkin also wrote: "Apologists are quick to argue that Latino supremacists are just a small fringe faction of the pro-illegal immigration movement (never mind that their ranks include former and current Hispanic politicians from L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to former California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cruz Bustamante)." [Creators Syndicate column, 3/29/06]

Savage: "[B]rown supremacists" are "behind these protests." On his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage said: "So, it seems to me that there's a certain group of immigrants that's not very happy and they're all Hispanic. I don't see any other racial group out there in the streets, do you? Now, that's very interesting. I'm not allowed to raise the issue or the specter of brown supremacists behind these protests. Don't tell me this is all about compassion for immigrants, because it is not at all only about compassion for immigrants. They are trying to provoke the takeover of the United States of America." [Talk Radio Network's The Savage Nation, 4/11/06]

Fox's Asman wondered whether marches are a perfect chance to "round up these lawbreakers and ship them out." Guest-hosting Fox News' Your World, David Asman discussed nationwide protests of immigration reform and wondered: "With so many illegals hitting the streets, is this the perfect time to round up these lawbreakers and ship them out?" As Asman spoke, the on-screen text read: "Round 'Em Up?" Later, the text read: "Perfect Chance to Arrest Illegal Immigrants?" [Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, 4/10/06]

Smerconish: "[L]aw enforcement ought to step in" at immigration demonstrations and consider "gathering ... up" undocumented immigrants. Guest-hosting MSNBC's Scarborough Country, Philadelphia-based radio host Michael Smerconish suggested that "maybe law enforcement ought to step in" at pro-immigration demonstrations and consider "gathering ... up" undocumented immigrants. Smerconish wondered why there was "zero discussion" of "gathering them up" at the demonstrations, when "[a]ll I keep hearing is how would we ever find them?" [MSNBC's Scarborough Country, 4/10/06]

Doocy suggested "round[ing] them up right then, when they're saying, 'Hey, I'm right here.' " On Fox & Friends, syndicated radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller announced that he was "having a big rally here in Chicago" for a "group" that he said was "pro-illegal murder and illegal car thieves." Muller added: "We're just getting together, and we're going to be out on the street. We're for illegal murder and illegal car thievery. So, we just like illegal stuff." Muller added: "I just like illegal murder and illegal car thieves. So, you know, it's illegal, but -- and, in fact, all the people who have done it are going to be out there on the street, and hopefully, none of the cops will come arrest us." Co-host Steve Doocy then said: "Yeah, you wouldn't want to round them up right then, when they're saying, 'Hey, I'm right here.' " [Fox News' Fox & Friends, 4/3/06]

Media figures attacked Mexican-flag wavers, but not those waving Irish, Italian, or Israeli flags. Following immigration rallies, media figures criticized demonstrators for carrying Mexican flags, but the same media figures had not complained about people waving other nations' flags, such as Irish flags at St. Patrick's Day events, Italian flags at Columbus Day events, or Israeli flags at Israel Day events. Some commentators even dismissed the comparison. For instance, National Review editor Rich Lowry called the Mexican-flag waving "more ominous" than the St. Patrick's Day or Columbus Day displays.

Savage: "[B]urn the Mexican flag!" On his radio show, Savage urged his listeners to "burn the Mexican flag" in opposition to undocumented immigrants, telling them to "[b]urn a Mexican flag for America, burn a Mexican flag for those who died that you should have a nationality and a sovereignty, go out in the street and show you're a man, burn 10 Mexican flags, if I could recommend it. Put one in the window upside down and tell them to go back where they came from! And if that's a little to xenophobic for you, ask yourself why the xenophobes from Mexico wave their flag in your country." [The Savage Nation, 3/27/06]

Fox News: Waving Mexican flag shows "antagonistic edge," waving U.S. flag "just a cover" and "a ploy to win America's support." Asman cited demonstrators' use of Mexican flags as evidence of "an antagonistic edge" and suggested that the use of U.S. flags and signs written in English at pro-immigration demonstrations was "just a cover" by the demonstrators to conceal their "real intention, which is to keep things as normal among illegal immigrants in the country." Similarly, Neil Cavuto suggested that the pro-immigration demonstrators' U.S. flags were "just a prop" and "just a ploy to win America's support." [Your World with Neil Cavuto, 4/10/06; 4/11/06]

Buchanan: Illegal immigration is "an invasion of the United States of America" and "[t]he whole world is coming." On MSNBC's Hardball, Buchanan claimed that the influx of undocumented immigrants into the United States is "not immigration" but "an invasion of the United States of America" that is "coming not only from Mexico," but "from the whole world." He reiterated: "The whole world is coming." [MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, 5/15/06]

Savage: "This is an invasion by any other name." Savage said, "We, the people, are being displaced by the people of Mexico. This is an invasion by any other name. Everybody with a brain understands that. Everybody who understands reality understands we are being pushed out of our own country." [The Savage Nation, 3/27/06]

Buchanan: "This is an invasion, the greatest invasion in history." In State of Emergency, Buchanan wrote of immigration: "This is an invasion, the greatest invasion in history." He also wrote: "We are witnessing how nations perish. We are entered upon the final act of our civilization. The last scene is the deconstruction of the nations. The penultimate scene, now well underway, is the invasion unresisted." [State of Emergency]

Tancredo: [W]e are at war with Mexico, in a way." On Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, WorldNetDaily.com columnist Tom Tancredo -- then a Republican congressman from Colorado -- said, "[I]n a way, we are at war with Mexico, in a way. I'll say it in this way: Mexico is aiding and abetting an invasion of this country. They are part of the problem. They are doing what they are -- in fact, they are creating situations along that border using their own military to protect drug trafficking into the United States, pushing their own people into the United States for a variety of reasons. It is an invasion. It is an act of aggression." [Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, 6/26/06, transcript from the Nexis database]

Beck sidekick Gray: "[W]e are in a war with Mexico right now." Pat Gray, who is now a co-host of Glenn Beck's radio show, appeared on Beck's then-CNN Headline News show and claimed that "we are in a war with Mexico right now." After Beck agreed that "we better wake up soon," Gray responded: "[O]r we're going to wake up dead." [CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, 9/25/06]

O'Reilly claimed to have exposed the "hidden agenda" behind the immigrant rights movement: "the browning of America." O'Reilly claimed that during his Fox News show, guest Charles Barron, a New York City councilman, had revealed the "hidden agenda" behind the current immigration debate. O'Reilly told his radio listeners: "[T]he bottom line is Charles Barron said last night is there is a movement in this country to wipe out 'white privilege' and to have the browning of America." But in the interview, Barron at no point claimed that he and other advocates for immigrant rights are motivated by a desire to force white Americans into the minority -- despite O'Reilly's repeated efforts to provoke such an acknowledgment. [The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, 4/12/06]

Beck: "[I]llegal immigrants are attacking our culture, and our way of life." On his then-CNN Headline News show, Beck said, "[A]t the very least, illegal immigrants are attacking our culture, and our way of life. They are not melting into our melting pot -- they're here for the cash." He later said, "I mean, we've got all these threats coming in from overseas, but the simplest way is for us to lose the culture of the West is just to do nothing and let illegal immigrants not melt in and take the culture away from us." [Glenn Beck, 8/24/06]

Buchanan: "They're not welcome to come here and insult the symbols of our country, and that's what these outsiders have done." On Scarborough Country, Buchanan said that a Spanish-language version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" is "a provocation and an insult" and that immigrants are "not welcome to come here and insult the symbols of our country, and that's what these outsiders have done." Buchanan then said that the Spanish recording is "a good thing in this sense: The American people are awakening to the character of these people." [Scarborough Country, 5/1/06]

Matthews: Republicans "have a right to fear" a "cultural change" that would result in their hometowns "becom[ing] overwhelmingly Mexican." On Hardball, Matthews claimed that House Republicans who had passed a bill that would apparently have criminalized undocumented immigrants, their employers, and those who provide aid to them "have a right to fear" a "cultural change" that would result in their home states and towns "becom[ing] overwhelmingly Mexican." Matthews was responding to a suggestion by guest Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, that "the Republicans who passed the House bill" are "afraid" that the United States will soon have "a majority Latino population." Matthews later said, "It's not my point view necessarily," before suggesting that "90 percent of this country" agrees with the "viewpoint" that "I didn't move to Mexico; Mexico moved to me, and I'm complaining about it." [Hardball with Chris Matthews, 3/30/06]

O'Reilly: "[Y]ou're on a nice block ... and then the house next to you is turned into an illegal alien Club Med." On his radio show, O'Reilly said:

You've got the folks who don't have emotion invested in it, other than the farmers down and the ranchers down on the border are going -- as the lady just called up, [caller] -- say, look, I got garbage in my -- on my ranch every day. I mean, I'm under siege. They have emotion invested in it. But those of us up here don't.

Unless you live in a town, like Farmingville, Long Island -- we went over this before -- where you bought a house, you spent a couple of hundred thousand dollars, you're on a nice block, your kids are happy, and then the house next to you is turned into an illegal alien Club Med. And this happens all over the country. [The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, 3/27/06]

Buchanan: "I think what's coming is the complete balkanization of America." On Hardball, Buchanan said, "I think what's coming is the complete balkanization of America, and I'm afraid it's going to be by ethnicity and culture, and language, and every other way. ... And so, then, it's not like the country you and I grew up in, Chris, whereby we were monocultural. We were monocultural." [Hardball, 6/5/06]

O'Reilly wondered whether children of Mexican immigrants in U.S. "have any kind of traditional value system" or are "setting up Acapulco North." On his radio show, O'Reilly wondered whether children of legal and undocumented immigrants from Mexico who are attending school in the United States "have any kind of traditional value system at all, vis-à-vis what America used to be," or whether they are "taking their Mexican values, because most of them are Mexicans, and, you know, basically setting up Acapulco North." [The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, 8/15/06]

Buchanan: "You're going to have a giant Kosovo in the Southwest, which de facto is going to secede." On Scarborough Country, Buchanan said: "[Y]ou cannot absorb 40 to 60 million more people. You're going to have a giant Kosovo in the Southwest, which de facto is going to secede from this country." [Scarborough Country, 6/5/06]

Buchanan: Immigration will turn U.S. into "a polyglot boarding house for the world, a tangle of squabbling minorities." On CNN's The Situation Room, Buchanan warned that "[w]e'll become a polyglot boarding house for the world, a tangle of squabbling minorities." He continued: "The problem with the immigration, basically -- let's take Mexico -- is these folks are breaking the law, first. Secondly, they're coming in huge numbers, like no other group before. Third, they're from a contiguous nation. Fourth, 58 percent of Mexicans believe the Southwest belongs to them. Fifth, the Mexican government is pushing them in here, and it's got a political and ideological agenda." [CNN's The Situation Room, 8/28/06]

"North American Union" is an absurd conspiracy theory. Right-wing media, including Dobbs, have obsessively warned that elements in the U.S. government are secretly plotting to merge the United States with Mexico and Canada in a "North American Union" similar to the European Union. During the June 21, 2006, edition of his CNN show, Dobbs stated that "the Bush administration is pushing ahead with a plan to create a North American union with Canada and Mexico" and later asked: "Do you think, our question is, maybe somebody should take a vote if we're going to merge Canada, Mexico and the United States as the leaders of the three countries are attempting to do with the security and prosperity partnership? Yes or no. Cast your vote at LouDobbs.com." Dobbs' CNN colleague Suzanne Malveaux later described the North American Union rhetoric as "conspiracy theor[y]." [Lou Dobbs Tonight, 6/21/06]

Corsi: "North American Union ... was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration's true open borders policy." Jerome Corsi, co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, wrote in a column that "President Bush is pursuing a globalist agenda to create a North American Union, effectively erasing our borders with both Mexico and Canada. This was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration's true open borders policy. Secretly, the Bush administration is pursuing a policy to expand NAFTA politically, setting the stage for a North American Union designed to encompass the U.S., Canada, and Mexico." [HumanEvents.com, 5/19/06]

WND's Farah linked Bush guest-worker proposal to plan by "one-worlders" to merge U.S., Mexico, Canada. Appearing on a radio show, WorldNetDaily founder and editor Joseph Farah claimed that the "one-worlders" of the Council on Foreign Relations have a plan to merge the United States, Mexico, and Canada by 2010 and suggested that Bush's proposed guest-worker program is part of this plan. Farah said, "Sometimes, the conspiracies are right." [American Family Radio's Today's Issues, 4/4/06]

Buchanan: Vicente Fox's "ultimate goal" is making Mexico and U.S. "basically part of the North American Union." On Lou Dobbs Tonight, Buchanan said, "The government of Mexico is pushing its poor and unemployed into the United States to ease social pressure on itself. Secondly, they get $16 billion in remittances back to Mexico. Third, it is awoken to the idea that it can reannex the American southwest, which it used to hold, linguistically, culturally, ethnically and socially, not militarily by pushing all these people in there and creating a gigantic fifth column in America." Buchanan added: "The ultimate goal of Vicente Fox is the erasure of the border between the United States and Mexico. He has said as much and to make the two basically part of the North American Union in which Mexico will get ... a constant flow of cash from the wealthy USA and La Reconquista is the objective." [Lou Dobbs Tonight, 9/5/06, Nexis transcript]

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has sold “hundreds of thousands of iPads” on pre-order, reports the WSJ, which quotes people familiar to the matter.

The vague figure could be in-line with analysts’ estimates, which guessed that first-day sales may have hit 120,000 units and that Apple sold about 152,000 over the weekend. However, with iPads still not available until the April 3 release date, it’s not clear what people are buying. The WSJ raises concerns that Apple is facing some push-back from content owners and is still frantically working on securing deals for the tablet with just weeks to go.

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has sold “hundreds of thousands of iPads” on pre-order, reports the WSJ, which quotes people familiar to the matter.

The vague figure could be in-line with analysts’ estimates, which guessed that first-day sales may have hit 120,000 units and that Apple sold about 152,000 over the weekend. However, with iPads still not available until the April 3 release date, it’s not clear what people are buying. The WSJ raises concerns that Apple is facing some push-back from content owners and is still frantically working on securing deals for the tablet with just weeks to go.

The B2B Marketing series is supported by the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, where you’ll learn the ins-and-outs of social media as part of your overall B2B marketing mix. Register today!

*Additional reporting by Tamar Weinberg

When we write about how companies or individuals are using social media in their marketing strategies, it’s usually in the context of a business to consumer relationship. However, business-to-business (B2B) marketing is really getting a boost from social media as well. According to a recent study, 60% of B2B marketers plan to increase social media marketing spending this year.

As we discussed earlier this week in the context of PR professionals and social media, even non-B2B-centric services like Twitter and Facebook can still offer great opportunities for B2B shops. Sometimes, the approach is the same as it would be in non-B2B marketing, sometimes it can be very different.

Figuring out how to best implement and harness social media in the course of B2B marketing can be difficult but we’ve put together ten tips to help get you on the right track!

This may seem like a no-brainer, but plenty of businesses and even B2B marketers aren’t on Twitter. Get an account on Twitter and start engaging. While having profiles on other social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn can be equally important, Twitter remains one of the best ways to find and engage with others.

How do you do that? Start by searching for phrases relevant to your business and by monitoring those searches regularly. Look at what people are saying and join in the conversation. If people aren’t necessarily looking for your business offerings right away, start joining other conversations of interest. The more you build bridges, the more likely you are to be noticed.

Second, use hashtags. The #B2B hashtag, for example, will connect you with several other like-minded businesses who are also trying to leverage Twitter to build an online presence. Don’t overdo it, though. There are some people #who #tweet #like #this.

We’ll discuss this in the next point, but consider Twitter to be an informal medium. With social media, businesses can (and should) be human again. That’s why it’s safe to use Twitter not just for pure self promotion but to build a meaningful relationships with those who you are likely to do business with you in the future. If you feel comfortable using your business Twitter feed to talk about what makes you tick (versus purely promoting your business), you might be pleasantly surprised to see that your audience might very well be receptive to that messaging.

What’s great about Twitter, especially from a B2B perspective, is that you can follow just about everyone. Take advantage of the opportunity to follow your industry influencers, connect with potential customers, and keep a heads up on the competition.

A great example of Twitter usage from a B2B perspective is @salesforce. Salesforce has used its Twitter feed to share relevant news, to empower current customers, and to offer customer support.

Social media works best when it is personal and authentic, and thus, it’s important to make sure that the way you communicate when using social media tools comes from a personal and authentic place.

Kevin Dugan, the Director of Social Marketing for Empower MediaMarketing recently wrote a blog post about finding your social voice. I spoke with Dugan about establishing a social voice, and he had this to say:

“It is critical that brands understand a social voice is different from brand voice. Social voice reinforces the brand voice indirectly. Social voice doesn’t follow communication guidelines or identity standards. That’s because a social voice equates to a person. A brand voice is anonymous while a social voice can be found on Google. They must also have an understanding of the brand and a passion for it.”

Social networks are now helping to put the “human” back in businesses again. The traditional messaging of yore has been replaced by businesses who actually appear to show that they care about their customers. With a social voice, informal is perfectly acceptable. Having a social voice, as opposed to just a generic “brand voice,” is an important step when connecting with potential customers. Prospective customers want to connect with businesses who think just like them.

Just because your clients are other businesses doesn’t mean that the “social” aspect of social media needs to disappear.

LinkedIn is continuing to get bigger and bigger — and it continues to be a great resource for businesses and employees to connect with one another.

One of the best things about LinkedIn is the Shared Connections feature. This feature makes it possible to find people — like potential clients — and then see what connections you have in common. Shared Connections then makes getting a virtual introduction that much easier.

Building up a strong LinkedIn network and being willing to introduce others (in good faith, of course — always use your best judgment) can also increase what opportunities you can get in the future.

B2B marketing is often built through trust and word of mouth. Having a shared connection is a great way to start establishing some of that trust from the very beginning.

LinkedIn also has a community of active participants. LinkedIn Answers serves as a knowledge base where business representatives can establish authority and expertise by participating in the ongoing discussions. LinkedIn Groups is an opportunity for business professionals to interact with other topics relevant to his/her interests. One business successfully used LinkedIn Groups as a way to build business leads. This business opted to engage in relevant industry discussion and offered business services when requests were made, thereby bringing in a highly targeted business lead. Actively participating in LinkedIn is often one of the best ways to not only help people out, but also to make a connection for your service and even generate leads.

Answering questions across LinkedIn Answers and LinkedIn Groups doesn’t mean to simply put out the marketing blurb, but to really engage and offer feedback and solutions. Again, social media is most effective when it is genuine.

Social media provides the opportunity for companies to promote themselves but also to welcome commentary from a community of peers. By starting a blog, you give your readers an opportunity to see you with your social voice outside the typical corporate website’s newsroom. Blogs become platforms where you can announce new product releases, share personal company stories, answer any specific questions from your customers, and empower customers to achieve success with your products and service offerings. Blogging can also establish business professionals as thought leaders in their field, thereby aiding with client acquisition.

Blogs can build up qualified prospects through search engine rankings too. Be sure to update your blog regularly with valuable content and follow up with the comments written on each individual post.

Social media means that content is being posted everywhere, and businesses have a unique opportunity to gather intelligence to make well-educated and informed business decisions. Google Alerts is a great tool to keep up with what’s happening in relation to your company, your industry and your competitors. You can get updates via e-mail or in RSS (and even in real-time) about new search results or news stories for a certain query or topic.

Further, free tools like Social Mention and YackTrack will monitor the social sphere for other mentions of your business on social sites, especially. BackType will take that a step further and monitor phrases in comments on blog posts. All of these aforementioned services can be emailed to you in a daily digest format which your team can evaluate to find opportunities.

If you don’t already have alerts set up on these services for your company name, do it now. Also set up a more generic alert for your industry as a whole to see what people are talking about. If you want to see what your competition or other big industry players are doing, add those to the mix as well.

Monitoring can also be useful because you can then highlight the big stories on your own social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, etc.

While you don’t want to be creepy (see below), it’s important to not let potential opportunities slip by when using social media. If you’ve answered someone’s question on LinkedIn or on Twitter, don’t be afraid to reach back out to that person to ask if they have any follow-up questions or if you can send them more information. There’s an abundance of opportunity to strengthen a business relationship but it starts by initiating and then making sure that your business is fresh in your prospects’ minds.

Staying engaged and staying communicative is really important. Social media is not about setting it and forgetting it. It’s about being social, so don’t be afraid to reach out and check back in with potential leads you meet using social media. Similarly, don’t be afraid to direct message your followers on Twitter when an opportunity presents itself. They followed you because they want to hear from you. Use that opportunity to your advantage but don’t overdo it. Auto-DMs are a no-no.

If you’re going to blog, don’t leave that blog stagnant. Provide valuable content on a regular basis. Give employees of your company an opportunity to help build your brand. You can get a lot of great blog content by involving many company employees in the process. Similarly, get many employees of your company to utilize the social networks and to be continually responsive to customer inquiries. Remember, the more visible you are on the social networks, the more likely you are to be remembered when another business actually needs to utilize your services.

After you’re involved enough in the social space, you’ll likely see tweets, retweets, traffic, and social network links that point to various parts of your company website. Take a look at your website analytics and start seeing where you’re making a difference, especially as it relates to ROI measurement. Don’t lose sight of your business metrics and start considering practical social media measurement to assess clickthroughs, popularity of links, and other important metrics.

As part of measurement, consider using URL shorteners. Not only do they make links more manageable (and limit the number of characters in a Tweet or Facebook message), they also can be a great way to track data as many URL shorteners provide valuable statistics about the performance of each individual shortened URL. Monitor this data throughout the process with your main website analytics package to see if your message attached to the shortened URL resulted in conversions.

When looking at conversion trends or successful tools in building leads with social media, reviewing analytics data is crucial. It gives you insight into content that performs very well in the social space but also through other marketing techniques, such as search engine optimization. Use the data as an opportunity to improve your content or your social media/search marketing efforts.

B2B social media marketing is often about connecting with the right people and about building relationships. Social media makes both of these actions simple and painless. Being aware of who the influencers in your industry are and then following them, whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook or their own blogs, is the first step to building a connection with those influencers. With a genuine relationship, these influencers may be able to help you make your mark in the social media marketplace. This is especially true of influencers who may already have your target audience at their disposal.

This doesn’t mean you need to retweet every tweet or share every blog post on Facebook, but it does mean that you should be aware of who the movers and shakers are. By following them and then reaching out when appropriate or just to get to know them further, you have a much better shot at getting some attention.

Even if you’re not necessarily connecting to influencers, social media affords the opportunity to connect with other people in your industry and your customers. Use the various social media platforms as an opportunity to connect with these industry colleagues and peers and build upon each other. Consider celebrating your colleagues’ or customers’ success. Make it known that you’re here to help them — not just yourself. Repeat this process with anyone of interest and you’re bound to attract eyeballs.

Sometimes, the hardest part of social media is sticking out from the sea of other users. Giveaways and promotions are a great way to help differentiate yourself and your business. Using Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, you can target your desired customer base and then let them know (if appropriate) about different promotions or giveaways related to your product. If you offer a service, consider giving a free year to a loyal customer. If you manufacture products, give some away.

Offer a coupon on your company’s Facebook Page and pair it with a lead-generation form for future contact. Let people know on Twitter about specials or contests that are going on and follow-up with those that show an interest. Perhaps you can have a retweet contest where you can monitor responses or host some trivia on your Facebook Page. You can also open an online survey to get feedback about your offerings and reward participants. The possibilities are endless. Creativity in this capacity breeds success.

Companies like Wildfire make it really easy to build these sorts of promotions directly inside your own social media channels.

If you use social media like a keyword searching robot, you are going to come across as creepy and turn off potential clients. Don’t be creepy.

Use best judgment and common sense when approaching people using social networks. If you wouldn’t want to be approached the way you are approaching another user, don’t use that approach. It’s as simple as that. Social media etiquette isn’t much different than real life relationships, so what won’t work in “real life” probably won’t work online.

Respecting boundaries doesn’t mean you can’t still answer questions, engage and follow-up with potential leads, it just means that if it’s clear that the other party isn’t interested, or more importantly, if the context of their communication really doesn’t involve or seek out input from your company, don’t do it.

Context is really important in social media and it is something that is very, very easy to overlook. While we think that using keywords and Google Alerts are good methods for keeping atop of your field, that doesn’t mean you can automate your responses or just go into autopilot based on those alerts.

There are many different social media marketing opportunities for B2B, and there’s great potential for success as more companies jump on the social media bandwagon. How do you use social media in B2B marketing? What tips can you suggest to others? Let us know!

Drive sales and make social media work for you at MarketingProfs B2B Forum! You’ll learn the ins-and-outs of social media as part of your overall B2B marketing mix – from integration and engagement to measurement. Get 1-on-1 access to the best and brightest B2B marketing stars who will share best practices and FREE advice! Plus, our loyal attendees say our events are ridiculously fun, interactive and the kicker is – we have the best Freebies in the biz! (no keychains here...FREE industry research reports & memberships—stuff to help you really drive sales in 2010!) Register today!

(Photo Courtesy of visual.dichotomy on Flickr)

Tags: b2b, b2b marketing, b2b marketing series, facebook, linkedin, MARKETING, twitter, wildfire

In the second set of documents released today from Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against Google (NSDQ: GOOG) over YouTube’s posting of its copyrighted works, e-mails among the video site’s three primary founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawad Karim, demonstrate the debates the trio had over how to handle unauthorized content. The e-mails, from the first year of YouTube’s existence, detail clear concerns and veer to outright indifference among the founders and about how it should handle the issue.  For the most part, Hurley is mostly worried about creating ill-will among large media companies he hoped would pay “big money” to acquire YouTube. The court documents also reveal the specific payouts the founders, along with their investors, received after Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion over three years ago. (The full PDF can be downloaded here; for a summary of Google’s arguments, see Joseph Tartakoff’s piece here)

In second set of documents released today from Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against Google (NSDQ: GOOG) over YouTube’s posting of its copyrighted works, e-mails among the video site’s three primary founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawad Karim. The e-mails, from the first year of YouTube’s existence, detail clear concerns and veer to outright indifference among the founders and about how it should handle unauthorized content on its site. For the most part, Hurley is mostly worried about creating ill-will among large media companies he hoped would pay “big money” to acquire YouTube. The court documents also reveal the specific payouts the founders, along with their investors, received after Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion over three years ago.

Faced with claims that it encourages piracy, YouTube accuses its rival of sour grapes - as well as claiming it ran covert operations to upload thousands of videos to the site

American media conglomerate Viacom considered buying YouTube just months before it launched a $1bn (£655m) piracy lawsuit against the video sharing site, according to court documents.

Files released today by a US court suggest that the television giant - which owns channels including MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central - had considered purchasing YouTube in 2006 in what executives said could prove a "transformative acquisition".

That deal was scotched when YouTube was bought later that year by internet leviathan Google for $1.65bn - shortly before Viacom launched its billion-dollar lawsuit accusing YouTube of "massive intentional copyright infringement".

The claims have come to light after the US court hearing the case unsealed hundreds of documents as it prepares to make a ruling on Viacom's claims. Lawyers have been arguing the case, which experts say could redefine the relationship between media and internet companies, behind closed doors since 2007 - but the court's move has made the astonishing revelations from both sides public for the first time.

Viacom's case hinges around the accusation that the video sharing site's founders - Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim - knew that copyright infringement was taking place, deliberately encouraged it and then failed to act properly when asked by rights holders.

In one filing, Viacom quotes an email from Chen who tells his colleagues to "concentrate all our efforts in building up our numbers as aggressively as we can through whatever tactics, however evil".

The company also submitted evidence showing that Karim was among those who had submitted videos that infringed on the copyright of its owners - and that his colleagues were aware of the situation.

YouTube has consistently rejected the accusations, however, suggesting that it does not encourage illegal activity and that US copyright law means that it does have to police every uploaded to its servers.

It says that Viacom's evidence is largely used out of context - and that the entire court case could even be an outbreak of sour grapes.

One filing by YouTube suggests that Viacom had seriously entertained the possibility of buying the website in 2006, referring to an internal Viacom presentation which said that "we believe YouTube would make a transformative acquisition for MTV Networks/Viacom that would immediately make us the leading deliverer of video online, globally". It is not clear how serious this proposal was at the time.

In addition, YouTube argues that not only did Viacom "routinely" take the step of deliberately leaving pirated clips from ordinary users on the site because of their promotional value, but that it actually put up videos on YouTube - often surreptitiously.

"For years Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there," said Zahavah Levine, YouTube's chief counsel, in a blog post published today.

"It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately 'roughed up' the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses."

Faced with underground marketing efforts which had the stated aim of making video "look hijacked" in order to make sure it would "leak on YouTube", the site argues that it could never have been expected to accurately gauge whether or not had permission to post videos online.

Under American copyright law, internet service providers and websites are not directly responsible for the actions of their users and it is the duty of copyright holders to request that pirated versions of their be taken offline. However, the situation has become more complex in recent years with the advent of widespread file sharing and systems that make it easier to share copyrighted content without permission.

In the seminal Betamax case of 1984, a judge found that home video taping was legal because the technology could be used for legal purposes and not just piracy. But in 2005, the US Supreme Court ruled against file sharing site Grokster - whose lawyers had argued their case on the same basis - because it found that the company had deliberately encouraged users to infringe copyright.

Since launching in 2005, YouTube has become the world's most popular video website - garning hundreds of millions of users worldwide and having 20 hours of video uploaded to its system every minute.

A final ruling from US district court judge Louis Stanton, who is hearing the case, is not expected for several months.

• YouTube
• Digital video
• Piracy
• Piracy
• Television industry
• Law and technology

• "The OTA software update for the Droid by Motorola is TBD. A new date will be communicated as soon as possible.
  
• The 3/18 OTA software update will not happen as planned. A new date will be communicated as soon as possible."

Verizon delays Android 2.1 rollout to Motorola Droid, new date is TBD originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.