Google Airs Super Bowl Ad, Making Rare TV Appearance

Google Inc., the world’s most popular search engine, aired a minute-long commercial during the Super Bowl, marking a rare use of TV advertising for the company.  The ad demonstrated features of the company’s search engine, including its translation functions. The commercial, called “Parisian Love,” showed an Internet user relying on Google to court someone in France.

And Google responds...

Love and the Super Bowl

If you watched the Super Bowl this evening you'll have seen a video from Google called "Parisian Love". In fact you might have watched it before, because it's been on YouTube for over three months. We didn't set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience.

If you like it too, we hope you'll watch the others. Enjoy.

FBI's Most Wanted: Your Browsing Activity

FBI Director Robert Mueller wants ISPs to track “origin and destination information” about their customers’ browsing habits and store them for authorities’ use for two years, according to a CNET report.  That would mean monitoring the IP addresses, domains and exact websites users visit, and then storing that information for months. If officials who support this measure get their way, federal, state and local law enforcement would be able to access the information via search warrant or subpoena.

How to Run an Online Contest

A year ago we launched the ReadWriteWeb Guide on Community Management with the knowledge that "Community Manager" would become an increasingly popular job title. Since then, the requirements of keeping your customers engaged have become more demanding. According to one report, contests are becoming increasingly popular. ReadWriteWeb caught up with Strutta CEO Ben Pickering, to find out what businesses can do to generate more participation from their contests.

Reinventing John McCain...Dot Com

The Phoenix-based marketing firm Forty has posted a walk-through of just went into the revamping of John McCain's website for his upcoming Senate race. Here's the new site, and here's what the old one looked like. For the design and process geeks among us, these insights into how projects go from conception stage to implementation out in the actual world are like candy. Or bacon, depending on where your tastes lay. More please.

Join Jim DeMint's Virtual Townhall

Senator Jim DeMint is currently touring South Carolina to talk with voters about the wrong direction a Democrat-controlled Washington is taking our nation and the conservative ideas that can restore our freedoms. 

For those of you who can’t make it out to one of these town halls to share your opinions, Senator DeMint is hosting a virtual town hall tomorrow night from 6:00 to 7:00 pm.

Simply visit http://www.ustream.tv/channel/senator-jim-demint 

To ask questions you must have a Twitter or UStream account. If you do not have an account yet, we urge you to sign up today at www.twitter.com or www.ustream.tv. It’s absolutely free! 

WHAT: Senator Jim DeMint’s Virtual Town Hall 

WHERE: Your computer. Just visit http://www.ustream.tv/channel/senator-jim-demint 

WHEN: Tomorrow - Thursday, August 20th, 6:00 – 7:00 PM   

Amid Privacy Concerns, White House Shuts Down Healthcare Tip Line

Following complaints from Republicans, the White House has shut down a two-week-old e-mail tip line launched to take reports from citizens of "disinformation about health insurance reform."

"An ironic development is that the launch of an online program meant to provide facts about health insurance reform has itself become the target of fear-mongering and online rumors that are the tactics of choice for the defenders of the status quo," wrote White House new media director Macon Phillips in announcing the change.

The Content Bubble

So you’ve set up your Facebook Fan Page or Twitter profile and now you’re stuck wondering what to post.

They say content is king, and this holds true. You would be doing yourself a disservice by simply posting content without taking some time to think about the community you want to build.  With the wealth of information available on just about every niche, you can create a valuable social network that people will want to follow.

This is something I like to call the content bubble.

This idea probably isn’t revolutionary, but it has helped when explaining to clients how to fully utilize content on their social networks. Basically, you start thinking about content outside of your immediate subject.

Obama Web-Tracking Plan Stirs Privacy Fears

The Obama administration is proposing to scale back a long-standing ban on tracking how people use government Internet sites with "cookies" and other technologies, raising alarms among privacy groups...

...Supporters of a change say social networking and similar services, which often take advantage of the tracking technologies, have transformed how people communicate over the Internet, and Obama's aides say those services can make government more transparent and increase public involvement. 

FACEBOOK LITE: The Early Details and Screenshots

We just broke the news earlier tonight that Facebookfacebookfacebook is launching a newer, simplified version of the Facebook platform, called Facebook Lite. This news comes only a day after Facebook made its blockbuster acquisition of FriendFeed and rolled out its Realtime Facebook Search. You may be asking yourself “what the heck is Facebook Lite?” or maybe “why would Facebook launch a stripped-down version of its website?” We’re here to answer those questions, and we have screenshots of the new Facebook Lite to help us out.

How Do iPhone Users Find New Apps?

AdMob just released some data about how iPhone users discover new apps in the App Store and how they use them once they have downloaded them. According to AdMob, most users download apps from the App Store directly from their phones. Only 7% go through iTunes to download apps. To find new apps, 62% of all respondents searched for a specific app and 60% looked through the lists of top selling apps in the store. AdMob also found that the majority of users (62%) install between 1 and 6 new apps per month and 22% of all iPhone users download more than 11 apps per month.

Yesterday, I headed over to the Conservative Bloggers Briefing at Heritage for the first time in well... way too long.

It was a good one though. Senator Jim DeMint was the headliner - there to discuss the stimulus bill and Fox News was there with two cameras to get his comments.

I've seen Sen. DeMint speak several times, and he knows how to deliver a solid conservative message. He didn't disappoint yesterday. A few of his quips include:

On the stimulus bill:

This is not change you can believe in. This is business as usual.

On being rushed by the White House to vote on the bailouts and the stimulus bill:

When someone says, you need to make a decision "right now”. My answer is automatically "no".

DeMint's call to action was clear - look at the stimulus bill and help us pick it apart. You can check out the House version of the bill at www.ReadTheStimulus.org.

Appealing to Conservatives on Privacy Issues
The other speakers that I found particularly interesting were from a new think tank called The Future of Privacy Forum.

Jules Polonetsky, co-chair of the forum, talked about where privacy was heading in the digital age and how he thought the Federal government could better protect consumer privacy online.

Polonetsky, who appeared very well-caffeinated with a brook-no-fools demeanor, has spent his career working for leading web firms (AOL and DoubleClick) advising on privacy practices. He also advised the Giuliani and later Obama campaigns on their internet/tech agendas. Clearly, he knows what he's talking about.

I asked him what steps he thought the government should take to better regulate consumer privacy online. He referenced a recent post on their website that lays out a "Consumer Privacy Agenda for the New Administration".

Some highlights include:

1. Appoint a Chief Privacy Officer to Promote Fair Information Practices in the Public and Private Sectors.

2. Ensure that Interactive Tools used by Government Provide Users with Enhanced Transparency and Controls.

7. Encourage Accountable Business Models.

He also touched on the dust-up over the new www.WhiteHouse.gov site placing cookies on site visitors' computers. His take:

Calm down. Take a pill, relax. Then launch a process to decide how to have web 2.0 sites in the government, but maintain users' privacy.

Good advice in my opinion.

I think the hard question for conservatives is whether to support additional government regulation (Oh no, big government!) or trust private companies to self-regulate (big brother, anybody?).

My inclination in this case is to support limited, sensible steps aimed at insuring personal privacy online. But the flip-side to this view, is that liberals could use these "sensible" steps as a trojan horse to ram through much more onerous government regulations.

But what do you think? Leave a comment and let me know you thoughts.

After I read Adrienne Royer's latest post, "Reaching Women on the Right," I figured I'd just leave a comment. But when I started writing it out, I realized that it's worth fleshing out a bit more. So, at the risk of being a single guy without any children trying to act like I know what the heck a woman really wants (my grandpa says I never will), I want to add my two cents.

First off, all women do care about issues like illegal immigration, the War on Terror, wasteful spending, etc. I'd consider these the big ticket, stump speech issues which "move" poll numbers if the message effectively strikes the right cord.

But women, especially mommy's, also care about the very real, tangible, long tail issues that affect the lives of their family. The fact of the matter is that children are spending an increasingly large amount of their time on the Internet and parents are rightfully afraid of things in their lives which they can't control. In other words, it's the Internet, stupid.

In fact, take a look at this recent Pew Internet & American Life Project presentation presented to school psychologists at the American Psychological Association on Internet usage among families:

* 70% of American adults go online
* 93% of American teens ages 12 to 17 use the internet
* 87% of all parents online
* 73% of all families have broadband @ home
* 68% of online Americans have home broadband
* 7% of teens do not use the internet

So while a candidate stumping broadly about "education" or his wife posting recipes on her blog is great and all, what mommy's really need to hear about are the niche issues that actually matter in their modern lives.

Those issues include things like cyberbullying, privacy concerns to avert online sexual predators, and violence in video games and on TV. Let's take a look at the issue of cyberbullying a bit more closely.

The presentation I cited above includes these statistics on cyberbullying:

* 32% of online teens have been contacted online by a complete stranger.

* Teens with social networking profiles are more likely to have been contacted.
- Of teens who have been contacted, 23% say they were made scared or uncomfortable by the stranger contact.
- Girls are more likely to report feeling scared or uncomfortable.

* 32% of online teens have experience some form of online harassment, also called cyberbullying:
-Threatening messages
-Private material forwarded without permission
-Someone posting an embarrassing picture of you online
-Spreading a rumor about you online

Scary stuff. Our kids are online and their being targeted by unwanted solicitations and threats.

Unfortunately, most mommy's won't see the messages they need to see on TV at the end of the campaign because they're not big ticket, blanket issues that "move numbers." I get that. We live in a world with limited resources.

So that's where the modern media folks come in. Let us craft some language and create some web videos and then take Adrienne's advice to find smarter, more effective streams to disseminate that message through.

So how do we do this on the modern campaign trail?

When I worked as the communications director for Mike Bouchard for Michigan in 2006, one of Bouchard's top accomplishments was creating Michigan's sex offender registry as a state legislator. Our media team, Scott Howell & Company, created this solid TV spot which aired early in the campaign (before I was a part of the team), when they were in the process of introducing Mike Bouchard to Michigan voters:

Clearly this was a powerful message but it had had a very short shelf-life because it was a spot which only aired on TV.

Not on my watch. When I joined the campaign in late August, I asked for electronic copies of all of the TV spots we had run so that I could put them up on YouTube.

In one of our kitchen cabinet meetings to discuss polling, we saw that our opponent's strongest strengths were with women voters. So when I saw this video, I recognized an opportunity to try and shore up that support.

The communications team helped put together a full-fledged plan to help curb online sexual predators and we created a micro-site, MISafeSpace.com (currently offline), to help amplify Mike's plan and provide tips to parents to help keep their children safe online.

We, of course, posted Mike's video on the site alongside it.

Ultimately, we lost the race in Michigan, but it wasn't from a lack of trying really, really hard. And even then, we recognized the importance of driving targeted messages using modern techniques and avenues.

To conclude, women are just like you and me. They care about the issues that matter most to them and their families. If we're going to beat Hillary in 2008 our respective nominee needs to be out-in-front on these issues before it's too late.