Congress May Expand Powers of FTC Promoting self regulation of the email and digital marketing industries has been a hallmark of the US Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) approach to regulation. Catching and penalizing spammers has always been a central part of the agenda, but new privacy legislation introduced this year in the House of Representatives, along with a proposed provision to expand the powers of the FTC would both have significant impact on email marketers.
- Released by Stephanie Miller, VP, Global Market Development (Read more)

Major Online Advertiser Settles FTC Charges. "Free" Gifts Weren't Free; Settlement Calls for $650,000 Civil Penalty. A large online advertiser that drove traffic to its Web sites using spam e-mails with misleading subject lines has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it failed to disclose that consumers have to spend money to receive the so-called "free" gifts it offers. The settlement, filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC, requires the defendant to disclose the costs and obligations to qualify for the advertised "gifts," and bars it from sending e-mail that violates the CAN-SPAM Act. The settlement also requires that the company pay $650,000 in civil penalties ...
- Released by the Office of Public Affairs, FTC (Read more)

Protect yourself from Online scams - Press Release from NYPIRG. Google Inc. is snapping up YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in a deal that catapults the Internet search leader to a starring role in the online video ...
- By Katrina Smith - wstm.com (Read more)

Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion - U.S. Business - MSNBC.com. Google Inc. is snapping up YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in a deal that catapults the Internet search leader to a starring role in the online video ... - By U.S. Business - MSNBC.com (Read more)

Lead Generation - Increasing Revenue Through Business Networking. Lead Generation is often seen as hard work or the result of an expensive marketing campaign. But it doesn't have to be that way. Networking groups are springing up far and wide to help business with their lead generation. Consultants are being told the most effective form of lead generation is to build long-term relationships through word-of-mouth marketing. - By Will Kintish, Kintish Ltd. (Read more)

Security Threats Are Evolving. Is Your Strategy Keeping Pace? It seems like only yesterday that a firewall and antivirus were all a small business needed to protect its data. By current standards, yesterday’s threats were slow-moving and predictable, and blocking them at the network perimeter kept their impact to a minimum. But things have changed. The question is whether small businesses are keeping pace. A recent survey of 1,000 small businesses by Symantec and the Small Business Technology Institute found that small businesses are largely unaware and uneducated about information security risks and their economic repercussions. - By Jon Brody, SmartBiz (Read more)

Who killed the newspaper? The most useful bit of the media is disappearing. A cause for concern, but not for panic Of all the “old” media, newspapers have the most to lose from the internet. Circulation has been falling in America, western Europe, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand for decades (elsewhere, sales are rising). But in the past few years the web has hastened the decline. - From The Economist print edition (Read more)

America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely. - By Saul Hansell & NYTimes.com (Read more)

Internet video traffic is doubling every 3 to 4 months
From October 2005 to March 2006, the number of Internet users watching video online increased 18 %, while the average viewing time per user rose 18%, according to ComScore. And we mentioned the last week, Internet video traffic is doubling every 3 to 4 months. - By M. AMIGOT, IBLNEWS (Read more)

UW athletes warned about blogs
"They know they're under a microscope," UW compliance director Matt Whisenant said. "Anything you do, you're representing the University of Wyoming athletics department. Being a student-athlete is a privilege, not a right." - Gazette News Services (Read more)

World Wide Web Introduces Corrupt Connections
The World Wide Web not only helped to create the global village, it also produced a paradigm shift in the way people work. In the “old” offline computing environment, electronic information in most cases was pushed to the desktop, usually either by email or diskette. In today’s wired world, corporate users are always connected and use the Web to access information that they need to carry out their work activities.
- By Yuval Ben-Itzhak, TMCnet Web Security Columnist  (Read more)