Posts Tagged ‘linkedin’
I only became aware of Pinterest late last month when I chanced upon a blog from a former Pinterest user, a lawyer who is also a photographer. She had read the terms and conditions of the site and decided she disliked what she saw so much, she deleted her boards from the site. Her blog has gone viral in the weeks since as people realise their legal vulnerability, hidden in the site's terms.
But I'm getting ahead of myself: Pinterest – what is it?
Pinterest is a social photo sharing site which bills itself as an 'online pinboard'. A user who registers then can create 'boards', essentially a themed group of pictures 'pinned' to each board. These boards are then available to be browsed by other Pinterest users, who can also comment on the pictures pinned. However, although you may 'pin' your own photos to a board that you create, the site's own guidelines on etiquette discourage 'self-promotion'. The question then arises, if you are not meant to pin your own photographs, whose can you pin?
Alarm bells started ringing for Kirsten, the lawyer/photographer who investigated Pinterest's terms and conditions, when she found that some photographers who had their pictures 'pinned' were starting to complain about violations of copyright. Upon checking their terms again, she found that Pinterest users are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder for any photos that they pin on their boards, and furthermore they are solely liable for any work they pin. How many people do you think would email the copyright holder first before pinning their pictures up, assuming they know who that might be? Exactly, and right there the whole idea of the 'online pinboard' falls apart.
Kirsten had always made a point of crediting the original photographer when pinning anything to her boards, as the etiquette guide says to do, but realised that this is not the same as actually having consent from the original owner to do that, so investigated further.
She investigated the section on US copyright law dealing with 'fair use'; that is the right to use portions of a copyrighted work without consent under certain circumstances. Although judging what is and what is not 'fair use' can be a grey area, the law states that for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, research, or teaching, a portion of a copyrighted work may be used.
Unfortunately for Pinterest and its members, pinning a photograph on a Pinterest board is none of those things.
According to Kirsten, the outcome of the case of Kelly vs Arriba Soft Corporation is likely to be the one on which Pinterest's whole site relies upon. In that case, a photographer sued a search engine for the unauthorised use of images in its search results. The photographer lost, as the images used in the search engine results were only thumbnails as opposed to the entire work. Again, this is a grey area, warns Kirsten, as thumbnails may or may not constitute 'fair use' and a lot depends on whether only the 'necessary portion' of the image is used or not.
However, Pinterest boards do not use thumbnails. Pinterest takes the image at the same size and resolution as the original source, and pins it to the board. So – Pinterest etiquette says that you are not supposed to pin your own work up (excessively) as it is 'self-promotion', but legally, you can only pin other people's work if you have explicit permission from the copyright owner to do so. If you fall foul of that, where do you stand?
Kirsten once again went back to the terms and conditions and what she found there horrified her.
When you sign up, the terms do state that users must agree not to violate copyright or any other laws, but the section in ALL CAPITALS is the scary part. It says, and I'm quoting directly from their terms:
"YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE ENTIRE RISK ARISING OUT OF YOUR ACCESS TO AND USE OF THE SITE, APPLICATION, SERVICES AND SITE CONTENT REMAINS WITH YOU."
So, if you do violate copyright, however inadvertently, on your own head be it. It gets better – again from the terms, but not in caps this time at least:
"You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold Cold Brew Labs, its officers, directors, employees and agents, harmless from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses, including, without limitation, reasonable legal and accounting fees, arising out of or in any way connected with (i) your access to or use of the Site, Application, Services or Site Content, (ii) your Member Content, or (iii) your violation of these Terms."
In other words, if you are sued by a photographer, you must pay both for your own defence lawyer AND for Pinterest's lawyer. If you lose, then not only must you pay damages against yourself, but you must also pay damages against Pinterest. Furthermore, Pinterest themselves reserve the right to prosecute users who violate copyright laws.
Having sifted through all of that, it is no surprise that Kirsten decided (reluctantly, she says) to delete her boards on the site. Most of us are not lawyers, and most of us are not professional photographers either. She is to be thanked for flagging up such draconian terms and conditions, which the majority of users simply will not see and if they do, will not understand their full implications.
As a follow-up to this story, only last week, Kirsten was contacted by Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann who confirmed in a conversation with Kirsten that Pinterest were working on a solution and promised changes "in the very near future". She added that he described himself as "a guy with a computer who had a vision", and not an expert on copyright law. He even asked for suggestions, she said.
Despite the hopeful tone of Kirsten's follow-up blog, the question remains: why is all liability loaded onto the user that way and if Ben Silbermann really doesn't understand copyright law, why launch a site that can potentially put its users in a very sticky situation?
Pinterest is currently getting attention from online entrepreneurs as a way of generating traffic to their sites, it's certainly something I would like to look into. But I won't sign up for a site that loads legal liability so completely onto its users, however seductive its interface is.
I await the outcome of the changes to Pinterest's terms with interest.
I've been dreading subjecting myself to the ritual of sorting through my lists of Twitter accounts which I follow, because although there are several tools out there intended to help the process along, it is still a big job, especially if your list has grown since last you reviewed it.
However this time around the job has become much easier, and it is all thanks to Twitcleaner. It is a tool that's been around for a while but has been completely rejigged, in order to comply with Twitter's own restrictions on auto-unfollowing. The current interface is very easy to use, sign in using your twitter account and let it run a report. When it's done (even with over 6000 in my follow list, it didn't take too long) you will get a Direct Message from TwitCleaner to tell you the report is ready to view. To access it, you have to follow them and the tool is set up so that only you can access the report prepared.
The report is very detailed and groups into several types of 'potential garbage' users, listing how many users are just trying to sell, how many post nothing but links, identical tweets, and those that are using advertising networks. It also gives you a list of dormant users and tells you how long it's been since the user last tweeted, all at a glance. Not only that, but you get to see who is just posting quotes or simply retweeting someone else's posts, and even those who are 'self-obsessed' (the report's words); i.e. referring to themselves in their posts all the time, are listed.
It makes it much easier for you to see what should be unfollowed – for me, I found about 1000 dormant users who had not posted in over 100 days; the users are brought up in a list of thumbnails and to unfollow all you had to do was click each one. There is a limit to how many you can select per day, because of Twitter's rules the app allows 500 accounts to be selected every 24 hours.
I cannot recommend this highly enough for those of you who use Twitter regularly, I was amazed at the sheer number of spam accounts I had collected; some had multiple accounts under similar names and posted for a month, then disappeared never to be seen again – yet they were still in my list. Twitcleaner made it easy to spot these accounts, when you see groups of 'people' who had not posted in exactly 320 days, for example, it soon becomes clear they're spam accounts.
Of course it is necessary to review your Twitter followers periodically, since if you do follow a lot of accounts you need to keep the ratio of followers to followed accounts within 10 percent; i.e. if you are following 5000 users and only 4500 follow you, then you may be disallowed from following any more until you unfollow some accounts. When you collect spam followers as most people do, they're effectively stopping you from following users you DO want. Twitcleaner makes the whole process of clearing out your list far easier than it has ever been before, so I recommend all Twitter users make use of this tool.
Oh, did I mention it was free to use? (That said, you are invited to donate if you have the wherewithal!)
Twitcleaner is available at:
I hope everyone has had a very happy Christmas and New Year.
The start of any new year is always a time for looking forward, and perhaps making plans for the coming 12 months. Most of you will be returning to work after the holiday, to the traffic jams, the crowded buses or trains, and the daily grind. You might even find that the bus or train fares have risen, eating further into your salary.
The past two years have seen severe economic turmoil and 2012 promises to be just as turbulent. Many more people are waking up to the realities about the global money system, and much of what is unfolding now has been foreseen by many of the experts that I am currently studying under. At a conference I attended in Las Vegas, my eyes were opened by what I heard from some very eminent speakers, some of whom came from an investment banking background.
If you are working for a monthly paycheck and finding it is having to stretch further and further, if you are burdened by debt, taxes, if you are finding that planning for your retirement is getting tougher and tougher, or if you have been looking at a franchise business and found that the start-up costs are prohibitive, the business of financial education could be for you. One thing is clear, a storm is brewing and when it comes there will be two groups of people: those who are financially educated and those who are not.
The company I am with (Wealth Masters) offers several levels of financial education; from a multimedia course encompassing audio, video and the Internet, to conferences held in locations worldwide.
I would like to invite you to watch the video presentation which I have linked here and if you have any questions, please contact me.
For further details please see the site linked at the bottom of this post and I look forward to seeing you on the inside!
We've all been to networking meetings I'm sure, where the person you are talking to is eager to get straight into whatever it is he or she is pitching. They talk at length about the product and what it can do, without ever thinking first what it is the person that they are talking to actually does.
If you've ever been to a corporate presentation, or perhaps if you are working and your company has outsourced the department off to a contractor, you will have seen all the slides about the new company's history and their achievements. Whether you are being sold something, or are being sold off yourself, the chances are you did not care two hoots about the company's history!
In both scenarios the selling is pushed on you, and you are naturally put straight onto the defensive. Who is this man/woman, what do they want from me and why are they pitching their product so hard? When people come to networking meetings, or even network online, it is because they are looking for something, most likely a solution to their problem. They don't care about the history of the vendor, they only care whether or not you can help them in the way they are looking for.
In short, they are looking for a leader. Someone who can show them how they can achieve their goals, not someone who wants to sell them yet another product. They want to be pointed in the right direction, not simply parted from their cash. The best marketers understand that before people will buy from them, they have to sell themselves as a leader, as an expert, first.
When you are able to show yourself as a leader, then people will come to you instead of you chasing after them. This is the basic principle behind Attraction Marketing.
In attraction marketing, you first of all need to have your own presence on the World Wide Web. This usually means a blog, and you can either use a free online platform like Blogger or Posterous, or you could self-host using Wordpress. The latter involves a little more setting up, but you have greater flexibility. Your home page should be branded to announce yourself to the world, that means a picture of yourself and a short tagline. Say who you are, and what you are about (an 'About Me' page is usually the way to achieve this). Alternatively, if you are on Facebook, why not link to your profile or page? (Your profile would need to be professionally-oriented, which is a subject for another blog).
Make sure your site is clean, well-laid out and easy to read. Templates are readily available for Wordpress which fulfil all these requirements, or you can choose a similarly-clean template for Blogger or Posterous from their selection. If you are feeling adventurous, you could design one yourself or have it made for you professionally. Remember – keep it simple!
Avoid pushing your product onto people – this can't be stressed enough! Attraction marketing works by providing value, leadership, to your visitors and this can be anything from regular tips given from your blog, perhaps a downloadable PDF file with some helpful information on it, or a short video clip with useful content. The essential thing is content – provide good, helpful content and you will be seen as a leader who provides value.
Anyone who comes across your site is likely to be a new internet marketer themselves. They're almost certainly confused, and are looking for someone who can help them understand the way the industry works. You should become that someone! Even if you yourself are a newbie, if you have something of value to share, then share it! All people want is a way to make their life easier, a way to work smarter and perhaps to save some money. Rather than pitch your latest whizzo product at them, you will get their attention more easily by offering them something of value.
In short, you are selling yourself first, not your product. Once you are established as a leader, it won't matter what you are selling – provided you are continuing to offer value people will naturally be interested in what you have to offer. Attraction marketing is a skill-set that not too many understand, but those who do, are the ones who are the highest earners.
Now that you understand the principle of attraction marketing, you can learn more about how to take advantage of this strategy with a free webinar. Yes, I said 'Free' (remember – offer value!) 
If you would like to know more about Attraction Marketing from some of the industry's top producers please follow the link by clicking the image below.
If you watched the video of the speech by G. Edward Griffin (I know, it was lengthy) which I posted in an earlier blog, you may have heard him mention fractional reserve banking.
When I first heard about this myself it shocked me how easy it is for money to be created out of nothing. The fact that money is no longer backed by precious metals such as gold or silver but instead is simply conjured up, was actually quite hard for me to grasp. Most people are totally unaware this is going on; they are not educated about finance.
For those who didn't watch the whole thing, or have not read Griffin's book 'The Creature from Jekyll Island' then I'll attempt to explain the fractional reserve system.
Essentially, a bank which has, say, $100 deposited in it from a customer, can then loan out a multiple of that $100 to other customers. The limit it can loan out is determined by how much it holds in its vault; so if, say, the amount it can loan out is at a ratio of 9 to 1, it can loan out $900 for every $100 it actually holds. The animated short I am posting here is a simplifed history of how banking started, and it also explains fractional reserve banking:
The last part I found particularly interesting: in the event of a run on a bank, the central bank would support them with emergency infusions of gold. The United States is no longer on the gold standard, so what do the central banks support the smaller member banks with now? Bailouts? Ultimately they're paid for by the taxpayer. So whenever a bank fails, the taxpayer picks up the tab to replenish it. Marvellous (!)
For an eye-opening documentary on the conspiracy against your money, please click the image.
I saw a report today that a company importing bananas has been fined over £7million because it was involved in a price-fixing cartel.
Such cartels are of course illegal, and are rightly punished by anti-trust authorities (in this case, the European Union). However, there is another, long-established cartel which operates quite freely and with the co-operation of the government with which is it partnered: the US Federal Reserve.
A little background on how the Fed came into being, for which I am indebted to G. Edward Griffin (The Creature from Jekyll Island, ISBN 978-0912986456).
The Fed is not, as many believe, a US government agency. It is no more 'Federal' than Federal Express! It came into being in 1910, at a highly-secret meeting between leading bankers at a place called Jekyll Island, Georgia. The banks were concerned because whenever there was a run on a bank, and people wanted their money but could not pay (a consequence of Fractional Reserve banking, a subject which is for another blog), the banks went bust. So several of these banks met up, in total secrecy, and got together and agreed to set up the cartel.
Now as I said before, cartels are illegal. The reason this one is not, is because they actually went into partnership with the US government and had their agreement passed into law by Congress. And so, by 1913, the Federal Reserve Act came into being. It was sold to the people as a way of actually protecting them against the large banks and their grip on the economy – but it was actually created by the same large banks!
So we have the situation whereby it is not the government who controls the money supply of the United States, it is the banks in a cosy cartel. Understand that and it begins to become clear why there is always a 'bailout' or 'stimulus package', whenever one of these banks gets into trouble. The cost is always placed on the taxpayer, i.e. the ordinary person, however.
Of course, whoever controls the supply of money is effectively in charge of the country, no matter who is elected as 'President'.
Back to our banana cartel: it was exposed because one company blew the whistle to the authorities. That's never going to happen with the banking cartel called the Federal Reserve though: it is in partnership with the government, therefore all parties are committed to the system.
Besides, if a fine was imposed, given what we know – who would pay? The taxpayer, of course!
Mr Griffin's book is still available and is recommended reading, but you can hear much of what he says at a speech he gave in 1994. This was several years before the crisis which is now upon us, and it was entirely predictable.
Put simply: There is a conspiracy against your money. It is better to be educated about the financial reality than not, and for more about this please either put in your details in the box to the right (on ronniesoo.com), or click this link:
In the old days before there was such a thing as the Information Superhighway, businesses needed to be able to get people through their doors. The amount of 'traffic' they generated was vital, so placement of their premises was important. A business sited on a busy street would always get more people than one tucked away in a quiet side street.
The difference today is that everyone on the Internet can live on the same virtual 'street'. Therefore it is easier to get traffic through your virtual door than it was in the old days, but although there are more potential eyeballs for your business, you still have to attract them to your site.
To get traffic through to your website, you need to rank well in the search engines. This is so obvious, yet 99 percent of websites fail because they fall foul of just one of four "golden rules" of search engine optimisation.
You may have your website all ready to go, articles, content and everything all set up, yet you're not getting the traffic you hoped for. A great piece of software which I've been using for some time now helps even the internet marketing newbie generate more traffic to their websites, and as we all know, more traffic means more leads, more purchases!
The software is available as a free trial and you can go ahead and try it out for yourself right now. In addition, you will also get sent 4 short video tutorials which will show you how to get much more visitors to your site.
I have this software myself and can attest to how powerful it is – you can see what keywords give a good search ranking, what do not, and which has low competition. This is absolutely essential stuff!
To get your hands on your free trial download and training videos, just click this link.
Market Samurai Traffic Hunting Software
One of the key concepts for the new internet marketer to grasp is search engine optimisation (SEO) or, put simply, how to get your site to appear in the search engine rankings for a given search term.
There are many ways to tweak your site so that it is search-engine friendly; making sure your chosen keyword appears in the title, the body text, even in any image titles are basics for what is known as on-page SEO.
However the real benefit is in off-page SEO, and that entails generating backlinks TO your website from other websites. The common method of achieving this is through Article Marketing; that is to write an article relating to whichever niche it is you are marketing and to submit that to article directories along with a backlink to your own site, with the link suitably titled to include your keyword of course (something known as 'anchor text').
At this point you may be thinking: "oh no, does this mean I have to write lots of articles and submit them to a raft of different websites to get the backlinks?" Yes it does, but there are ways to make the process easier.
One such way is to use the Article Marketing Robot. You can find out more by clicking the link, but essentially what it does is take a lot of the drudgery out of the process, by using the tool to submit your article automatically to a whole variety of article hosting sites out there. It can schedule your articles to go up when you want, or it can 'blast' them. One other feature which the new marketer will find essential is the 'spin' feature. This allows you to change aspects of the article text so that the exact same wording doesn't appear everywhere. For search engines to recognise the links, this is vital.
Presently they are offering the tool as a 30-day no quibble trial; try it out for 30 days and if unsatisfied, they will refund your money. The tool is already available at a discounted rate and is a highly-recommended tool if you need to boost your search engine rankings. Click the image to order:
If you're new to internet marketing and you are looking at setting up your own website, you'll see there are a whole heap of providers out there.
You may have heard of GoDaddy; one of the biggest and best-known providers on the market. They offer good prices and claim over 8 million users. Recognised by the industry as a leader in the fight against online fraud such as phishing, and against spam, GoDaddy can be seen as a safe bet when looking for a provider. If you are considering your own site you will be looking at setting up Wordpress – GoDaddy offers support for MySQL and PHP, but do choose the Linux hosting option for PHP to work.
Alternatively, you may wish to consider Hostgator. Also offering competitive prices, they advertise unlimited disk space, bandwidth and guarantee 99.9 percent uptime. Hostgator also use the popular cPanel interface which is specifcally designed to make the entire process of hosting a website that much easier. Of course hostgator also supports PHP and MySQL, for when your Wordpress masterpiece is ready.
Whichever you choose to go with (and there are many more out there besides the two I mentioned) do make sure they offer all the features you need; for instance not every provider offers PHP support out of the box. Also, if you were considering a bespoke content management system for your website, that system may not allow you to use your own server-side code and you may be forced to work with what they offer. You may also not like the interface on some CMS systems.
A couple of years ago I worked alongside some colleagues who were agents for one popular CMS, now owned by one of the biggest technology companies in the world. Although it was powerful, and great for someone who just wants a website out of the box, it wasn't long before I found the system too restrictive to work with for my marketing purposes. For instance, it did not support PHP, and the interface was difficult to work with; it was designed to resemble Microsoft Word and only provided a small window in which to enter content or code. The CMS was meant to be an all-in-one solution, and it was a tough sell to small businesses who may already have some parts working and were understandably reluctant to throw all that out in favour of a completely new setup.
For these reasons I have changed to using Wordpress myself; the system is remarkably straightforward to set up and there are all manner of 'plugins' you can obtain (free) which vastly increase the functionality. For a marketer such as myself, Wordpress fits the bill far better than a hosted CMS which may be more orientated towards an actual online store. Wordpress's roots are in blogging, and as any internet marketer will tell you, content is king. Frequently updating content is vital and the SEO-friendly nature of Wordpress makes it more suitable for this business.
But – I'm getting ahead of myself. To have a site, first you need a provider. Either of the two I suggested will suit the new internet marketer (or you can do your own investigations) and I shall provide links to both GoDaddy and Hostgator here:
The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee today confirmed that they would, as reported, print more money to 'inject into the economy'. The reports were that £50 billion of 'new money' would come into the system, but it will actually be £75 billion. £75 billion 'new' pounds created from thin air.
I found this explanatory video from the Bank of England themselves which purports to show how QE works. Before even watching it, on the popular video-sharing site it is hosted on, I noticed that comments had been disabled. Watching it, it soon became clear why. Here is the video:
For a start, the 2 percent inflation target they mention is further away than ever; it is currently 5 percent. Now I do not claim to be an economics expert, but a child can see that to print a stack of new banknotes (£75 billion in this case, remember) merely devalues the money already in circulation. The video claims that there is "not enough" money in circulation – which begs the question: what is that money backed by? If you think it's gold or silver – it isn't. The pound hasn't been on the gold standard since 1931. You cannot create gold or silver out of thin air, therefore you cannot print more money if it is backed by a finite amount of precious metal.
The pound, like most currencies, is a 'fiat currency'. That means it only has any value at all because the government says so. But what about the promise on the notes? It says and I quote:
"I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of – pounds", and it is signed by the Bank's chief cashier. That once meant that you could go and exchange your note for the banknote's value in sterling silver, but try that today and the chances are you would simply get another banknote.
A banknote is merely an IOU, and the law as it stands says you cannot pay a debt with another debt. However, because the government says that the note itself is legal tender, they get around this rather niggling inconvenience. That's why they can print all the banknotes they want, but if you or I decided to try that we'd be carted off to jail before you can say "economic collapse".
Therefore all banknotes are debt notes; what you think is your money is just debt.
So, when the Bank of England announces it is "injecting £75 billion into the economy", it has just saddled the whole country with another load of debt.
Slowly but surely, people are starting to wake up to what is a coming global crash. When I first attended a very eye-opening conference two years ago, that was when I first woke up to what was going on myself. The main question asked of attendees there was simply this: you can choose to be either financially educated or uneducated. The vast majority are uneducated; they have been deliberately kept in the dark about the dire situation, or their attention is diverted by television, celebrities, showbiz or even sport.
The point that was stressed to us was as follows: if you do not take action you have still made a choice – a choice not to be educated. When the crash comes I intend to be financially educated – what about you?
There is a Conspiracy Against Your Money – please click the link to access a vitally important documentary.
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+Ronnie Soo
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Former IT technician turned internet marketer and blogger, with an interest in the ever-changing world of search engine optimisation and the use of Social Media for business.
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Former IT technician turned internet marketer and blogger, with an interest in the ever-changing world of search engine optimisation and the use of Social Media for business.
Copyright © 2011 Ronnie Soo. All Rights Reserved.
