Internet marketing has become a necessary thing for a large number of businesses and can provide an excellent way to increase profits and customer bases by allowing customers and visitors from around the world.There are a number of tools, elements and ways to make internet-marketing work for you and the best set for your business is dependent on what you want to accomplish and how you want to go about getting there. One

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Algorithmic flux or selective penalization? Nobody’s sure and nobody that can answer is talking so far, but paid link directories have been plummeting in Google search results. Many are not ranking for their own business name, according to reports, even though webmasters have not received penalty notices.

Is Google Hitting Directory Links?

Editor’s Note: This article doesn’t address the robust discussion of whether Google should or should not devalue paid links, or even the value of directories themselves. This is a hot topic and we know you have an opinion. Speak out in the comments section.

Listen to the audio

As many as 60 directories, according to this report, suddenly dropped in rank, leading to suspicion that Google has begun aggressively (and likely, manually) targeting paid link directories deemed to be in violation of the search engine’s quality guidelines. Some have suggested competitor sabotage via the recently initiated paid link reporting form.

Some of affected directories included Aviva, Alive, Big Web Links, ewebpages, Directory Dump, Elegant Directory, and Biz-Dir. David Eaves, the owner and operator of Biz-Dirtold WebProNews that about 550 of his directory pages have been dropped from Google’s index altogether.

Key Takeaways

Don’t panic, rankings fluctuate Review Google quality    guidelines Clearly label paid links Don’t Pass On PageRank Don’t forget content Resubmit for indexing

Eaves admits to buying links, which he considers a legitimate form of advertising, but says Google gave him no notice that his site was being penalized. Eaves is considering dropping his paid links in order to get his pages re-indexed by Google.

It’s important to note, though, that’s not necessarily the best course of action for everybody. Eaves is obviously quite concerned for SEO and directory clients, and says he can sustain a decent rank with natural links. And he says it wouldn’t hurt him to change the links he paid for to nofollow, as the traffic from those links outweighs the traffic he gets from Google.

Again, Google hasn’t sent out notice, and hasn’t returned request for comment, so it could be just an algorithmic flux. So the important thing to remember is: Don’t panic. This could be just the old Google Dance. I remember a man in 2005 ready to put a shotgun in his mouth because his site was de-listed after an algorithm update. "Don’t panic" was the operative phrase of that day, too.

But Google’s Matt Cutts has been firing warning shots in previous months, both from his blog and from the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, saying that Google was going to be more aggressive about paid links that violated quality guidelines.

During a session at SES called "Are Paid Links Evil?" Cutts presented a slide presentation, which he was approved to release, distinguishing the types of paid links Google doesn’t like. Cutts cited first a Federal Trade Commission ruling opinion that said sponsored or advertising links must be clearly labeled, and further differentiated between paid links by saying the only ones penalized were links that passed on page rank (PPP).

So whether or not you philosophically agree with Google’s point, if being in Google’s search rankings is more important to you than winning an argument, Cutts suggests labeling paid links in the following ways:

· Redirect through URL blocked by robots.txt
· Redirect through URL using a 302
· Use Javascript to direct the link
· Apply the rel= "nofollow” attribute to the link
· Add <meta name = "robots" content = "nofollow"/> to the page header

It may not be fair to say that Google favors buying links from certain places, but there are "certain places" on the approved list, and they include:

·    AdBrite
· Quigo
· IndustryBrains
· Microsoft AdCenter
· Yahoo! Publisher Network
· Any site that doesn’t pass PageRank

>>>Listen to the audio interview with Biz-Dir.co.uk owner David Eaves.

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Users of Facebook will have their profiles indexed by the likes of Google and Yahoo unless they opt to keep their listings from appearing in search engines.

Facebook Opening You To Google

Profiles in social networking sites like Facebook have caused trouble for people whose prospective employers searched for them on those services. Such searches for people on Facebook will get a lot easier in the coming weeks.

Facebook will begin permitting external search sites to index its public search listings. Upon logging in starting today, Facebook members will be alerted to this change, and given the opportunity to opt out of this.

A public search listing in Facebook shows a person’s name and thumbnail picture. “We think this will help more people connect and find value from Facebook without exposing any actual profile information or data,” Philip Fung said on the Facebook blog.

“The public search listing contains less information than someone could find right after signing up anyway, so we’re not exposing any new information, and you have complete control over your public search listing,” he said.

Previous Facebook changes have generated controversy, particularly when they added feeds that revealed changes one made to a profile to all of their friends. Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg had to offer an apology over that fiasco, which one person called a “stalkeriffic” change to the site.

Facebook, Privacy, Search Engines

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A four publisher deal brings content from major news organizations to Google News and its hosting services.

Deals Bring Publishers To Google News

Google News readers will be familiar with the search results they see when a news story by AP gets picked up by a variety of newspaper websites. The story appears over and over again for that topic, with each newspaper destination individually linked, all for the same content.

There is a new destination for those Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, UK Press Association and the Canadian Press stories. Those organizations will have their content hosted by Google, the company announced on the Google News blog.

Google said that since the quartet does not have consumer sites to host their articles, they haven’t benefited from Google’s ability to drive traffic to news websites. That traffic for articles has traveled to newspaper sites that are members of the given syndicate.

Another feature update by Google News should make more views on a topic available, beyond the multiple duplications of the same wire story on all those newspaper sites:

By removing duplicate articles from our results, we’ll be able to surface even more stories and viewpoints from journalists and publishers from around the world. This change will provide more room on Google News for publishers’ most highly valued content: original content. Previously, some of this content could be harder to find on Google News, and as a result of this change, you’ll have easier access to more of this content, and publishers will likely receive more traffic to their original content.

This update should be a welcome one for smaller publishers whose stories may be overlooked, as Google noted. Newspaper websites may not be as excited over the new hosting arrangements, which could deprive them of traffic to AP or other stories where they would have usually drawn visitors.

Google News, Duplicate Content, AP, AFP

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The current Internet tax moratorium placed by Congress expires in November, leading Google to join a coalition of firms asking for that policy to become permanent.

Google Says No To Net Taxes

Siding against additional taxes is an easy position to take in most discussions. One will find very few people in favor of giving Washington more money to spend on an unpopular war or pork projects like bridges to sparsely populated Alaskan islands.

Google has thrown in with the supporters of Don’t Tax Our Web, a group that opposes duplicative, discriminatory, and hidden taxes. Net companies like Amazon.com, Yahoo, and eBay are also involved.

Google policy counsel Pablo Chavez said on the company’s Public Policy blog that the current moratorium has helped “make the internet a universally accessible, free, and open platform capable of delivering a rich variety of services to consumers.”

Chavez also contended that an extension of the moratorium on Internet access taxes would help increase broadband penetration across the US. We don’t agree with that exact assessment, since we have seen a decade and $200 billion in tax breaks pass in the telecom industry without fulfilling the promise of true high-speed access to households.

We would argue that extending the moratorium should come with conditions to motivate investments in technology that will reach more people, including the rural population, with real broadband service. WiMAX and broadband over power lines could be two solutions.

States like Pennsylvania and others with laws on the books that ban municipalities from offering broadband and similar services, thanks to relentless cable and telco lobbying, need to strike those bans from their books. If tiny Glasgow, Kentucky can deliver inexpensive broadband on a municipal level, cities elsewhere should be allowed the same privilege.

Google’s stance on the moratorium only addresses part of the issue of increasing broadband access. If the public policy makers at Google really want to make a difference, they should be lobbying for more municipal efforts across the country along with their no-taxes position.

Google, Internet, Taxes, Moratorium

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Look for Beelzebub to stroll around in long underwear with a Windows logo on it, now that Microsoft has opted to have its Silverlight media player supported on Linux.

Hell Freezes Over: Microsoft Supporting Linux

Silverlight for Linux will be called Moonlight, and Microsoft’s Linux pal Novell will do the heavy lifting in porting the software. Microsoft made the announcement that to be cross-platform with Silverlight, they would extend support to Linux.

Miguel de Icaza and the Mono Project team at Novell will be the ones to take Silverlight beyond Windows and Mac. He had more details about the announcement on his blog:

The highlights of the collaboration are:

•  Microsoft will give Novell access to the test suites for Silverlight to ensure that we have a compatible specification. The same test suite that Microsoft uses for Silverlight.

•  Microsoft will give us access to the Silverlight specifications: details that might be necessary to implement 1.0, beyond what is currently published on the web; and specifications on the 1.1 version of Silverlight as it is updated.

•  Microsoft will make the codecs for video and audio available to users of Moonlight from their web site. The codecs will be binary codecs, and they will only be licensed for use with Moonlight on a web browser (sorry, those are the rules for the Media codecs).

•  Novell will implement Silverlight 1.0 and 1.1 and will distribute it for the major Linux distributions at the time of the shipment. We will offer some kind of one-click install for Linux users (no "Open a terminal and type su followed by your password…" as well as RPM and DEB packages for the major distros and operating systems.

"This is an historical collaboration between an open source project and Microsoft," he continued. "They have collaborated with other folks on the server space (Xen, PHP and) but this is their first direct contribution to the open source desktop."

Microsoft’s "past contributions" to Linux have been much different, including an assortment of veiled threats, highly critical white papers, and other unpleasantness that has been revealed over the years through leaked memos and other accounts.

This is a significant change from the Microsoft that generated the infamous "Halloween documents" listing The Fear Microsoft had of Linux and its inroads into the lucrative server software market.

Microsoft, Linux, Silverlight, Moonlight, Miguel de Icaza

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If you have been looking into various ways to make internet marketing strategies work for you, then you have probably come across the benefits of blogs and ad sense during your search. Blogs provide a place to put content that is relevant and contains keywords that can help direct individuals to the blog.

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If you were specifically looking for the population of the United States, you’d notice the big red numbers in the upper right corner of the US Census Bureau homepage right? Not so fast. A recent eye-tracking study suggests you’ve been trained to ignore things like that.

If It Looks Like An Ad They Ignore It

Editor’s Note: Studies are great and all, but sometimes real-world examples are more powerful. Have you recently redesigned your site and seen drastic results? Let us know how you did that in the comments section.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen, who’s been studying how people interact with webpages since there were webpages to interact with, follows up on previous explorations to show once again that people not only ignore content that looks like advertising, but need things plainly spelled out for them.

The task was simple enough: find the country’s current population. Nielsen even gave them the website to use. But 86 percent of users failed to find the answer even though it was displayed in large red letters in plain sight.

"Users tend to ignore heavily formatted areas because they look like advertisements. Thus, about 1/3 of users never even saw the Population Clock. However, most people did fixate on this area because it’s not as overly formatted as most promotional features. So, most users saw the Population Clock; they just didn’t use it, even though it contained the exact information they were looking for."

Okay, so a third doesn’t exactly make up 86 percent. Why did the others fail when, in my grandmother’s language, if it was a snake it woulda bit them? There are many reasons, but a large chunk of it, says Nielsen, lies in the language.

Most users scanned the big red number U.S. 302, 781, 150, as of today, but only made it to 302 before skipping off to the search box labeled "Population Finder" or some other area. (Or in one case, a man after my own heart, frustrated with poor site search, said "forget it, I’m going to Google.")

The big red number was labeled "Population Clocks," which isn’t exactly an intuitive label. It sounds more related to time than it does to number of people. It’s a classic case of leveraging core competencies rather than using your strengths. As users didn’t automatically grasp what a population clock was, they skipped it.

The suggestion here then is that a simpler label of "Current US Population" would have worked much better, giving the user what the user expects, which is the end goal.

Andy Beal, editor and Internet marketing consultant for MarketingPilgrim.com has another take on it, which might make sense to you. Users may have taught themselves not just the look and feel of advertising, but also the location of advertising.

"The study demonstrates that it’s not just paid ads users are filtering from web sites, but areas that might contain ads. Web users are conditioned to focus on the main area of a web site, when looking for meaningful information.

"They’ve been taught that the areas to the left or right are typically reserved for navigation or advertisements. As Neilsen suggests, it’s important to make sure important information is located in the area of the web page users expect to find it." 

AdvertisingUsabilityJakob NielsenAndy BealWebsite designMarketingEye tracking

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With the nationwide expansion of fiber-optic wiring and digital delivery at the turn of the century, the federal government reclaimed and is still reclaiming large amounts of spectrum. Much of it, according to a former government official, has remained unused for seven years, and he blames the Federal Communications Commission for stifling competition in the wireless space.

Is The FCC Blocking Wireless Competition?

M2Z Networks created quite a stir and sort of speeded its own rejection by hammering the FCC into a decision about the company’s proposed free, advertising-supported wireless broadband network. But also, M2Z has sparked fierce public debate over a host of issues that aren’t easy to resolve, including debates about free speech and Net Neutrality. 

Perhaps the most pressing (if not the largest) issue: What to do with all that unused spectrum?

Listen to the Muleta Interview

M2Z CEO John Muleta, whose venture-funded Silicon Valley company proposed the FCC carve out the 2155-2175 MHz band that had lain fallow since 2000 for their "family friendly" network, says the FCC is "sitting" on a lot of unused spectrum that could be used to create new wireless broadband competition.

Muleta brings not just his vested interest in the proposal, but also a Washington Beltway insider pedigree. From 2003 to 2005, he served as the chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.

In an interview with WebProNews, Muleta describes M2Z as an answer to the telecom/cable broadband duopoly, and an anticompetitive market he suggests the FCC has helped to create by blocking startups such as his own.

M2Z was quite vocal in the final days leading to the dismissal of its proposal, noting the speed with which the Commission approved the largest merger in US history – the AT&T/BellSouth merger – and comparing it to the relative slowness of considering uses for fallow spectrum.

"The FCC has spent 15 months looking at our proposal and decided to think some more about it," said Muleta.

Commissioners criticized the proposal for not being aggressive enough in its build-out plans, and for not offering fast enough speeds. Muleta rejected both arguments, saying that the goal to reach 95 percent of the US population was "aggressive" and that 384 Kbs was comparable to the wireless broadband offerings of AT&T and Verizon, who charge $60-$90 per month.

Though the FCC said it needed time to devise rules and invite public comment on what to do with the spectrum (M2Z proposed a 5 percent of profit trade out), for deciding to license or not license, to auction or not to auction, etc., one Commissioner, Jonathan Adelstein, expressed disappointment that the Commission had not sought comment on service rules for this band before now.

"Why does it take 15 months to [initiate rule making]?" echoed Muleta. The answer may lie in that it’s more complicated than throwing spectrum to the first startup that asks for it.

Though there is certainly evidence that the FCC has sat on its heels in divvying up spectrum to would-be wireless competitors, or indeed, as Muleta put it, is flat out "getting in the way" of competition, M2Z’s proposal introduced two new and quite sticky elements to the debate: a Constitutional element; and a Net Neutrality element.

M2Z said content coming across its free network would be "family friendly," which means filters would be in place to block adult content. A premium service would also be available where the filter could be turned off.

Muleta equates it to free over-the-air broadcast television and radio, which has been (quite arguably) family friendly for decades, self-regulated by the networks with oversight by the FCC.

"If we granted a free service," he said, "we think it’s common sense that children don’t inadvertently get to pornographic material."

Listen to the Feld Interview

But Harold Feld, Senior Vice President of Media Access Project, a 35-year-old nonprofit organization dedicated to free speech in media issues and, more recently, opening up spectrum bands for unlicensed public use, says that the FCC granting a license allowing a network operator to filter content would be "an outright violation of the First Amendment."

Feld differentiates between broadcast and wireless broadband with some classic communication theory that involves passive versus active users.

"The problem was you’d be sitting there with your kids huddled around the television set or listening to the radio in this sort of Norman Rockwell type picture and then suddenly this terrible indecent content would jump out at you before you even knew it was there and your kids were exposed to it before you could even turn the dial."

Those were passive users. Active users, as with Internet users, seek out content.

On the Net Neutrality side of the debate, you might imagine, this would involve a government sanction for allowing a network operator to sniff around data packets, separate content, and ultimately decide what the end user can view. And that, says Feld, "sets an extraordinarily bad precedent."

Muleta is quick to answer, though, falling back on the argument that the free market will cure all ills and that the FCC has created the problem of Constitutional concern by clogging up the market in favor of incumbents, and preventing new entrants by doing nothing with the available spectrum.

In the rejection to M2Z’s proposal, Muleta notes not even these concerns were addressed. "What are they thinking?" he asks. "What are they doing out there? Are they fighting fires?"

FCCM2ZJohn MuletaHarold FeldMedia Access ProjectNet NeutralityBroadbandWirelessSpectrum

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PLR or Private Label Right content is made up of articles that are written by others and the sold. This type of content can provide a huge base for your blog and web site and can help to really strengthen your internet marketing strategy and help to produce results more quickly than by using just back linking and submission methods.

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My article is about how investing in internet marketing can be extremely profitable.

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A piece by a New York Times writer drew material from an interview with a blogger who broke the story, but failed to credit him or his blog thanks to an editor’s removal of the reference.

NYT Editor Cuts Blogger As Story Source

“All the news that’s fit to print” may be the Times’ motto, but they sure are selective and protective of themselves at the cost of others.

Dr. David Michaels blogs at The Pump Handle, and has been trumpeting the need for greater attention to “popcorn lung,” a terrible lung disease believed to be linked to a chemical used for flavoring in microwave popcorn.

His latest post discussed a patient suffering from the ailment. Times writer Gardiner Harris interviewed Michaels, according to the Effect Measure blog at ScienceBlogs.

Though Harris’ story cited both Michaels and his blog, Michaels told Effect Measure a Times editor removed those citations from the story subsequently posted by the Times.

Effect Measure blasted the Times for this edit, which makes it appear Harris directly dug up the details about the popcorn lung patient:

So when the conventional print media complains that bloggers don’t do “real” reporting and parasitize off of “real” reporters, just remember how they make sure this is true. Bloggers, on the other hand, including this one, usually cite our sources and even link to them so you can check what we say isn’t out of context. Apparently that is just blogger ethics, though, not the ethics of “real” journalists like the editors at The New York Times.

You know which ones. The ones who helped bring us the War in Iraq.

The Grey Lady just isn’t as dignified as she used to be.

The Pump Handle, New York Times, David Michaels, ScienceBlogs, Effect Measure

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If want your website to rise from the ranks and be one of the first page search engine results. You need to know which keywords work best for your website and how to incorporate them in your content without ruining its cohesiveness, coherence, and value.

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If you will remember the three Ps of Internet marketing you will succeed. These are Patience, Perseverance, and Punctuality. Lets take a look at why each of these is important to your Internet home business.

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Home Business Tips And Home Based Business Ideas

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This new product may never make it out of research and development, but word has it that Yahoo is working on a social network called Kickstart.  If successful, Kickstart would effectively bridge the gap between Facebook and LinkedIn.

Yahoo Tests A Facebook/LinkedIn Contender

Of course, Facebook and LinkedIn are also trying to bridge that gap, and so are a dozen other companies; hence the “never make it out of R&D” bit.  Still, when CNET’s Harrison Hoffman got a sneak peek at Kickstart, he came away impressed.

“I personally think that Kickstart is a really solid concept and that it’s a possible game changer in the professional networking space,” wrote Hoffman.  “Hopefully we’ll see Yahoo kickstarting some careers in the near future.”

And that’s what Kickstart is designed to do.  By connecting college students to alumni within certain companies, the social network would attempt to give users a leg up in the job hunt process.  I’m not sure that it wouldn’t just result in some annoyed alumni - getting asked to vouch for strangers could grow tiresome - but it’s an interesting idea.

There’s no telling how much time and money Yahoo has put into Kickstart so far.  There’s also no word on when Kickstart will either graduate to the next stage of development or kick, instead of a person’s career, the bucket.

Tags: Yahoo, Kickstart, Facebook, LinkedIn

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This is a critical review of Internet Marketing guru Shawn Casey. If you are thinking about getting involved, see what the experts have to say first.

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If anybody tells you that their program is a quick rich scheme, run away quickly. Why? I have been on the internet for many years and after experiencing it myself, those words like autopilot and turnkey are not really what it meant to be.

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With the continued growth of the computer age, there is a whole new way of marketing a business. Especially for businesses who perform most of their transactions online. When reaching for online customers, internet marketing becomes the main target for your marketing efforts as it will attract the customers in your demographic online users.There are two distinct styles for online marketing, one is business marketing, the other is website marketing. With web site marketi…

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There are lots of things youve got to work through before you can sell your stuff online: inventory, prices, marketing, site design, sales copy, traffic techniques, domain names, bandwidth quotas, and more, but there is one essential thing that you have to get done first, and its the most simple step of all - set yourself up with Clickbank account.

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So you have decided that making money the conventional way is not the way for you. You have decided to be your own boss. You have decided to make your money online. Then do not overlook these 5 golden tips.Tip #1: Refrain from buying every product that is presented to you. First of all they are sold a lot of the times by people who have never used them but could write a good convincing sales letter to “rope you in”. Be aware.Tip #2: Get a good mentor. They are many, m…

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That 36-hour blank spot where Skype’s login and authentication systems used to be may have been down for reasons beyond the official party line…but you have to believe the *truth* is out there.

Skype Outage Dials Up Conspiracy Theories

Not everyone has been satisfied with Skype’s assertion that Microsoft’s latest patch updates caused thousands of Skype users to logout and try to log back in at the same time, crushing Skype’s login system.

Skype official types have blogged a couple of times that the long service outage was not due to an outside exploit or other malicious activity. Microsoft, for its part, has reacted with virtually a WTF to claims that for the first time ever a Windows update and restart sequence caused this kind of disruption across a peer-to-peer system that should withstand such activity.

Whenever there is controversy, people like to try and fit baffling circumstances into what they do understand. Conspiracy theories fill in the gaps where facts fear to tread, and that’s where Jabari Zakiya’s article at Free Software Magazine picks up the Skype outage thread:

“The Skype network has been a concern of government intelligence agencies since its inception because it provides a worldwide network of encrypted VoIP calls to potential “terrorists”. So how coincidental is it that 10 days after Bush signs into law a Bill giving the government authority to track foreign calls that go through U.S. networks that Skype, for the first time in its existence, undergoes a massive worldwide outage?

Zakiya refers to the signing of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), on Sunday, August 5th. Broad surveillance may be conducted without a warrant. If you don’t think a telephonic service provider would willingly cooperate with such an invasion into the privacy of its users, the Washington Post and groups like the ACLU and EFF suggest you think again:

The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time that telecommunications companies assisted the government’s warrantless surveillance program and were being sued as a result, an admission some legal experts say could complicate the government’s bid to halt numerous lawsuits challenging the program’s legality.

“[U]nder the president’s program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us,” Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said in an interview with the El Paso Times published Wednesday.

Let us add a little fuel to the fire. In fiercely Democratic, or lower-case ‘L’ libertarian at best, Silicon Valley, eBay CEO Meg Whitman stands out as a Republican booster. EBay owns Skype, and certain Skype shareholders stand to make another $1.5 billion if Skype hit certain undisclosed milestones by 2009.

Who is to say that Skype didn’t receive a little pressure to give the Bush Administration access to network traffic, above and beyond whatever the wiretaps at AT&T switching facilities could gather from the Internet?

It makes for a good conspiracy theory. The paranoid should consider Zakiya’s suggestions of Zfone from PGP’s legendary creator Phil Zimmermann, or the Asterisk or OpenWengo projects.

EiL eht eveileB.

Skype, Microsoft, Wiretap, Surveillance

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This article describes the elements which go in to the creation of a succesful affiliate marketing programme and covers topics such as how to convince affiliates to sign up, how to help them to succeed and how to motivate them to sell your products or services at a high rate. Using the information in this article anyone can build a hugely succesful affiliate marketing programme and push their profits through the ceiling.

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A look at 1up and 2 up Programs and what does that mean for the Internet marketer who is taking a look at these programs.

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business opportunity edc gold opportunity keys to success

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The Internet company continued to cite a need to comply with local laws as they asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit against it.

Yahoo Protesting China Lawsuit

Being accused of abetting the prosecution and torture of journalists in China can’t be something that looks good on the annual report. Yahoo has been in a position to be accused of doing that, with Chinese reporters suffering the results.

The request noted by the Washington Post stated that although Yahoo did release personal information to Beijing investigators about Chinese writers, Yahoo had to do so as a matter of doing business in China.

The World Organization for Human Rights USA sued Yahoo in April over its role in the cases of Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning. It is believed that both men have experienced abuse and torture as a result of their pro-democratic writings.

A Yahoo spokesperson said in the report, “The U.S. court system is not the forum for addressing these political concerns.” She characterized the real problem as the “behavior and laws of the Chinese government.”

Yahoo representatives should have the opportunity to explain their position in depth when they visit Congress. Testimony by Yahoo’s Michael Callahan before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about what Yahoo knew of the investigations has been contradicted by other evidence that emerged this year.

Yahoo, China, Human Rights

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Discover three of the most cost effective strategies to market yourself as a speaker, trainer, author or consultant.

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One executive moves out, another gains a little more power, and a new division comes into being, as co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang’s reorganization efforts reshuffle Yahoo.

Yahoo Pulls On The Reorg Boots

Rumors of a Yahoo shakeup proved true, and much broader than just company president Sue Decker’s pal, Hilary Schneider, gaining at the expense of another executive’s job again. Greg Coleman had been the executive in charge of global sales, which included the search and display ad business.

Coleman was also the guy who gave Wenda Harris Millard a not-so-fond farewell in June 2007. “The industry has shifted and requires a different set of skills to take the business forward,” Coleman said of Millard at the time.

Now it’s Coleman who’s being shoved out the door, as more changes take place at Yahoo. Rafat Ali at PaidContent managed to score a copy of the internal Yahoo email about the shuffling of Yahoo’s sales deck.

Yahoo has created a new division called Global Partner Solutions (GPS). Schneider has been minted the new head of this group, which will develop international business while overseeing all of Yahoo’s US sales, marketing, and business development when it comes to advertising.

“Therefore, with the decision to create this new Global Partner Solutions unit under Hilary’s leadership, we mutually agreed that Greg would leave Yahoo! to pursue other opportunities,” Decker said in the memo.

That includes the performance of Yahoo’s search advertising product, which has yet to make a big impact on Yahoo’s financial statements. Executives who are depending on Panama to deliver profits now have the added pressure of being under the dual Schneider and Decker microscope.

They see what happened to Coleman, who was in the way. Reorgs aren’t much fun for anyone, but the corner office dwellers will really sweat profusely when the third quarter earnings announcement takes place in the fall.

Yahoo, Greg Coleman, Sue Decker, Hilary Schneider, Reorganization

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There’s no need to get Tipper Gore involved or anything. No need to relive that old Twisted Sister mess. But neither MySpace, Fox, nor the band in question has returned requests for comment, and usually, if somebody doesn’t want to talk about it, then it probably should be talked about.

MySpace, Say Anything But That

So, my future stepson’s fourteen. Big YouTube fan. Likes his music irreverent, edgy, antiestablishment. I think that’s healthy and normal. His mother’s taught him right. He calls me over to the computer and says, "Have you heard of ‘Say Anything?’"

And I’m like, "Duh!" John Cusack with that stupid boombox over his head. And he’s like, "What’s a boombox?"

He says, "No, old dude," (I’m 30), and he brings up a YouTube video that I’m not going to link to because I’m sure it will be DMCA’d as soon as I do. It’s a tribute video, not the studio production of the band Say Anything’s song "Little Girls," with the lyrics appearing in sync with the audio, a Web 2.0 version of the old red bouncing ball, of which he probably also knows nothing.

The lyrics go:

I kill, kill, kill little girls.
I kill, kill, kill little girls.
It’s such a thrill, thrill, thrill to the world
when I kill, kill, kill little girls. 

The video cycles through pictures of little girls at birthday parties and such.

As my stomach turns, he’s laughing his head off and looking at me like I should be laughing with him. If the teenagers in the comments section beneath the video were standing in the room with us, they’d all be lmaoing and wondering why I wasn’t too.

I’m not laughing because I’m at once disgusted and conflicted. I think of Columbine and Virginia Tech, of child predators, of all the sickos out there that these teenagers probably haven’t thought much about between Biology and English. They’re not having the visceral, sad, sickening feelings I am when I think of it – it’s just a bunch of nonsense to them. They don’t watch the news.

But I’m also a defender of the arts, of free speech, and I remember how unjust and crazy and un-American I thought it was that Dee Snider was yanked in front of Congress to talk about some stupid song lyrics that the kids seem to get but the adults were outraged by.

And here I am, with only a few white hairs parked amid my dark chocolate waves, just one foot into full-on adulthood and still breaking in a 401(k), thinking the world is about to end because of a rock band. I could stomach Ozzie, Marilyn Manson and Mudvayne, but not this?

To be fair, judging from other lyrics it does seem to be some sort of shock rock attack on prettiness – you know, all the glossy lipstick DUI insanity inflicted on us from the Lindsay Lohan absurdities out there.

Other Say Anything titles include "It’s a Metaphor, Fool" (okay, fine, you don’t really want to put sixteen bullets in my head) and "I Will Never Write An Obligatory Song About Being On The Road And Missing Someone" which is just hysterical. 

With over 238,000 friends, the band is quite popular on MySpace, which is why I bring it up here. That, and by sheer coincidence, the day after I first heard their song about killing little girls, MySpace announced their first concert tour.

Guess who was headlining.

Weird, huh?

I tried to contact the band to ask them to explain the lyrics to me, but they have not responded.

I wanted to ask MySpace how promoting a band that sings songs about killing little girls fits into their aggressive campaign against child predation on their website, but neither MySpace nor Fox Interactive Media returned requests for comment. 

MySpaceSay AnythingRock musicMediaTeensViolenceChild predatorsParentingLyricsConcerts

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