Twitter is attempting to gain some kind of control of the use of "Twitter" and "Tweet" in a way that reminds me of Google’s attempt back in 2006.

TechCrunch got its hand on an email that was sent out to one Twitter app developer:

Hi,

Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own. How can we go about having you change your UI to better differentiate your offering from our own?

Thanks,

That prompted an official response from Twitter’s chief of damage control Biz Stone. The use of "Twitter" appears to be pretty much off limits, but his comments about using "Tweet" have me puzzled:

We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of "going after" the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we come across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important.

I’m not a trademark attorney–if you are, correct me if I am wrong–but if you register a trademark, aren’t you obliged to police it? I was under the impression that if you didn’t prevent others from using your trademark, you risked losing the protections granted by its registration.

If that is the case, maybe third-party application developers should be worried after all.

In addition, the above sentiment is how Twitter feels about the situation today, but what about in five years from now? What if it’s acquired by Google or News Corp–and they have a more stringent policy on the use of their trademarks?

One blog post does not make a legal exemption. I’d be careful of your use of Twitter or Tweet if your product can in any way be confused as an official company offering.

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An important element (read: selling point) of Internet marketing is the ability to know more about consumers and their behaviors. Everything can be tracked on the Internet, for the most part, and there is obvious value to marketers and their efforts. The flip side of this ability to track people is the privacy issue and lately the US government has been raising it’s regulatory eyebrows at the online world. In the past this may not have been such big news but with the current administration’s bend toward a ‘name it and claim it’ government style, web advertisers are looking to self police before they draw any more attention from the feds.

Yahoo Tech reports on the efforts of a group of advertising associations that have come together to build a set of rules and regulations that the industry can use to give the consumer the privacy they expect and let marketers keep the freedoms that government intervention would likely hinder.

The centerpiece of these guidelines are the provision of transparency in tracking practices and easier opt-out for consumers. While it is certainly a big question as to how well these guidelines will actually work the hope is that the industry will be less of a focus of the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and Congress.

These guidelines are coming from trade associations that represent 5,000 companies. The consortium comprises the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers, Direct Marketing Association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Better Business Bureau. Their members are some of the nation’s largest companies, including Google Inc., General Electric Co., Microsoft Corp., Coca-Cola Co. and Procter & Gamble Co.

These guidelines include recommendations that companies

1. Tell consumers more clearly when they’re being tracked
2. Educate consumers on how Web tracking works
3. Give consumers an easy way to opt out of being followed
4. Provide “reasonable” security for the data they collect
5. Limit how much data they retain
6. Get consumer approval before making material changes that would erode privacy protections with specific areas such as children’s personal information, financial data and medical records getting more protection.

Anyone caught by this new group will be reported to the federal government. This plan should go into effect in 2010. Sounds reasonable enough but of course there are those who feel that this will not be enough.

Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said the online ad industry’s promise to regulate itself through the new guidelines is designed to undercut the federal government’s increased interest in overseeing online behavioral advertising.

He fears that the guidelines don’t go far enough and that there needs to be fair rules passed by Congress that ‘online marketing can thrive but consumers have greater control on how the information collected is being used.’

I am sure that the views of Pilgrim readers regarding government intervention in business are all over the map so we’ll ask you the question: Should the industry police itself or should the federal government be involved? What are the pros and cons of both options? Here’s your chance to form your own policy for people to see and show off your position on government’s role in business. Sounds like a fun and light topic to consider while enjoying the holiday weekend, right?

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Looks like Twitter is not looking the other way as much these days. TechCrunch reports that there is some concern at the social networking company that developers are using the term ‘Tweet’ too much. Twitter, in fact, is claiming that the use of that trademark in the naming of any third party app is something they are ‘uncomfortable’ with. Here is an e-mail that was passed along to the TechCrunch folks relating to the subject.

Hi,

Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own. How can we go about having you change your UI to better differentiate your offering from our own?

Thanks,

The original reason for the e-mail was apparently around a developers attempt to have a UI so similar to Twitter’s that it may have been confused for the real deal. In the hashing out of that information the above e-mail was sent and the questions are starting to flow.

Apparently Twitter has applied for a trademark . Commentor Rich Hill stated

I just checked the US Patent Office and Trademark website and “TWEET” trademark has been applied for on April 14, 2009 but has not yet been finalized.

The link that was given for the trademark application had expired so if you want to find the application visit the US Patents and Trademarks Office and conduct the search.

So what’s in a name? For the people at TweetDeck, Tweetmeme and many others apparently there is a lot. How will this eventually affect them? Too early to tell and only Twitter can determine just how far they may go to protect the trademark once it is finalized.

I have to wonder that if they thought the term was so valuable why did they wait until April of 2009 to trademark it? Seems that the more we learn about Twitter and it’s business practices (or lack thereof) you wonder what other landmines are out there for them to step on?

Well, we’ll just sit back and keep tweeting while we can still use the term tweet without having to tweet the Twitter legal folks to see if our use of tweet is OK by them. Holy tweet.

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VentureBeat reports that Flickr is finally enabling its users to tweet their photos on the service.

What took them so long? Flickr now has a built-in feature that lets members tweet their photos. “You can upload directly to Flickr and Twitter simultaneously, or tweet a photo already on Flickr, using a special short Flic.kr URL,” says the company’s FAQ. It also explains how to post photos from your phone, and how to tweet from Flickr.

Flickr spelled out the “how to’s” in the following from their PR firm

To use Flickr 2 Twitter, members need to first authorize Flickr to post to their Twitter accounts. Once authorized, members will be able to tweet photos from the “Blog This” button on their photo page or from their mobile devices.

Mobile uploading is possible once members enable their Upload by Email settings (unique Flickr email upload address + “2twitter”). After you’ve successfully tweeted your Flickr photo, it will look something like this.

Is there anything else out there that hasn’t joined the Twitter trend?

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paidContent has two pieces of good news for Hulu in the past week—they’re commanding not only similar ad prices to broadcast television, but also 10% of the online video ad market.

From a Bloomberg report, paidContent shows that, for some shows, CPMs on Hulu are actually greater than they are for broadcast TV. And when I say broadcast TV, we’re talking primetime, new episode, time-slot-leading network television. (None of that cable syndicated rerun stuff!) Bloomberg’s example:

Marketers typically pay $20 to $40 per thousand viewers for a prime-time ad. On Hulu, which began offering shows to the public in March 2008, an ad on the animated series “The Simpsons” costs $60 per thousand viewers, Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. wrote in a June 18 report.

How can the Internet, with demonstrably fewer viewers (another example, the NCAA basketball championship game, drew 17.6M TV viewers and 7.52 Internet viewers), command such high CPMs?

A couple factors: first, that the Internet is so measurable. As CBS’s chief research officer put it:

“The reason people are paying such a high premium for these ads on the Internet is they do have a captive audience,” Poltrack said. “You know you have eyes on the screen.”

Plus, Bloomberg says, there’s an extremely scarce inventory. A typical Simpsons episode on Hulu carries only 37 seconds of advertising, versus nine minutes on television. But that also means that their overall revenues per-episode are far lower, even with more dedicated viewers. Many analysts and networks worry about television companies “cannibalizing their core business.” But maybe their core business should be shifting online.

Justifying those high CPMs, Hulu commands 10% of the online video advertising market place. Hulu is a distant third in online video viewership, after Google’s properties and Fox’s properties (including MySpace and Fox News). They have only 2.4% of the overall video market and 2.3% of the Internet’s total unique video viewers. So 10% of the online video ad market is pretty impressive.

Screen Digest’s report states that broadcasters direct control 44% of the ad market, while cable operators command 22%. “Other” controls 15% of the market, Hulu 10%, and portals 9%.

Let’s look at that again—Hulu is the only website singled out there. It commands 10% of the market by itself, while the rest of the categories listed are just that—entire categories of sites.

So where does YouTube fall in there? Screen Digest says:

In contrast, third party platforms such as YouTube, Joost and other portals, which have no direct vertical affiliation with major rights holders, nor direct access to premium content rights, will struggle to aggregate ad-supported movies and TV shows. The Hollywood Studios and major rights holders will continue to limit such deals, instead preferring to build their own syndicated ad-supported online video services – such as Crackle, developed by Sony Pictures, and the CBS Audience Network.

What do you think? Is the Internet, specifically Hulu, the future of television and video advertising? Will YouTube ever be able to catch up to Hulu in terms of monetization?

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 (UPDATED) News began to trickle out in the wee hours this morning that The Pirate Bay has been sold to Global Gaming Factory X AB for $4 US million in cash plus an equal amount in stock. GGF develops gaming software and operates internet cafes and gaming centers in Scandinavia.  Details are vague, but the original team will still stay involved and promise to keep the site much the same.

Ownership of the Pirate Bay had been transferred away from the individuals being sued in 2006 according to an interview (translation via Techdirt) with co-founder Peter Sunde conducted on Twitter. Neither Sunde or his fellow pirates are the beneficiaries of the sale according to a PirateBay blog post, but rather  "into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openness of the nets."

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Those tiring of the growing restrictions put by rightsholders on video on You Tube and elsewhere may eventually find a home at The Video Bay.  Currently in "beta extreme", the site is the latest brainchild of the folks behind the Pirate Bay; and if their mounting problems in Swedish courts weren't already enough, this is sure to add to their legal bills.

"Both Live And Drunk Coding"

"Don't expect anything to work at all". reads the simple front page, and a test drive shows that almost nothing does. But the plans are ambitious.

"To stay in the spirit on which TPB was founded and using the Latest Technology™, TVB aims to use the new HTML5 features, more specificly the <video> and <audio> tags with the ogg/theora video and audio formats. This site will be an experimental playground and as such subjected to both live and drunk (en)coding, so please don't bug us too much if the site ain't working properly."

One audio and one video demo are up on the site, but to view any audio or video clips on the site you need a browser that can handle the HTML5 <video> and/or <audio> tag including:

• Firefox 3.5 beta 4
• Opera 9.52 preview
• Google Chrome 3
• Safari 3.4 & Safari 4

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I am not an author. I’m a blogger. If I say something that someone disagrees with they can let me have it in the comments section of the blog. At that point, the decision needs to be made how, or even better if, I should fire back. In most cases, I make the decision to let bygones be bygones because comment crossfire usually ends badly (or at the very least awkwardly) and it doesn’t accomplish much in the end. As long as there are no off color comments regarding direct family members or my heritage, I can take it. Most online attacks come from people who are only exercising their Internet muscles anyway (meaning since they never actually have to face someone in person they can look like they have some nerve).

The New York Times covered an story that turns out to be a ‘how not to handle a situation online” mini case study. It appears that the author, Alice Hoffman, apparently got a bad review of her new book “The Story Sisters” from Roberta Silman of the Boston Globe. Silman’s review included the comment “This new novel lacks the spark of the earlier work. Its vision, characters, and even the prose seem tired.” Apparently Ms. Silman gave away the plot as well. It appears safe to say that this was a less than stellar review and a dwindling number of Boston Globe readers may or may not have seen it. We do know, however, that Ms. Hoffman did.

So how did Ms.Hoffman respond? With a Twitter tirade, of course. (Note to self: If you feel slighted it may not be in your best interest to write something similar to the following)

“Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron,” she wrote. “How do some people get to review books? And give the plot away.” Ms. Hoffman also lambasted The Globe and went so far as to post Ms. Silman’s phone number and email, inviting fans to “Tell her what u think of snarky critics.”

Fast forward to the new media version of the stockade; the written mea culpa (a fancy word for eating your mistake whole and in public for everyone to snicker at). Hoffman’s statement through her publisher, Shaye Areheart, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group division of Random House included:

“I feel this whole situation has been completely blown out of proportion. Of course, I was dismayed by Roberta Silman’s review which gave away the plot of the novel, and in the heat of the moment I responded strongly and I wish I hadn’t. I’m sorry if I offended anyone. Reviewers are entitled to their opinions and that’s the name of the game in publishing. I hope my readers understand that I didn’t mean to hurt anyone and I’m truly sorry if I did.”

Oh, and she also took down her Twitter account. Hoffman is just another in a growing list of people who shouldn’t be allowed to use social media. Heck, you need a license to drive a car, what about social media? Until it is recognized that no good rant goes unpunished on the Internet, these online reputation suicides will continue to occur with startling regularity and intensity.

What is your technique for keeping your emotions in check in online environments? Ever hit the send button and regretted it? I would venture to say that you aren’t truly involved in social media unless you have done that to some degree or another. What separates the online men from the boys is if you let it happen repeatedly and what level of intensity (or stupidity) you allow your emotions to take you to.

If you remember the TV show “Hill Street Blues” the cops never left their morning briefing without the words of Sergeant Esterhaus saying “Let’s be careful out there”. While not as dangerous as mean streets of some urban center, the Internet carries it’s own set of risks so that people should heed the warning as well.

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When Microsoft acquired aQuantive in 2007, it wanted to bolster its ad network. Unfortunately, it also ended-up with a conflict of interest, as aQuantive came with Avenue A | Razorfish–an ad agency.

Since then, you could argue that about the only good thing to come out of that particular acquisition was the re-branding from the awkward "Avenue A | Razorfish" to the more practical Razorfish. Really, what did Microsoft want with an ad agency anyway?

Well, the FT has yet another rumor–in a long line of rumors–that Microsoft plans to sell off Razorfish.

Microsoft has appointed Morgan Stanley to find a potential buyer for Razorfish, its digital agency…In August, two years after the aQuantive deal, more favourable tax implications will provide an opportunity for Microsoft to sell an asset some view as a conflict of interest with Microsoft Advertising, which sells technology to rival agencies.

So far French marketing firm Publicis appears to be the front runner–with barely a mention that WPP may once again be interested.

So what’s Razorfish worth? Back in 2008, AdAge slapped a $800 million valuation on the agency, but we’re in a totally different economic climate right now, so FT’s $600m-$700m might be more realistic. But, really, that’s just a very small drop in an insanely large Microsoft bucket. Why bother either selling?

Well, that brings us back to the conflict of interest issue again. Microsoft has a renewed focus on its own online advertising sales, and so the time might be right to get rid of any distractions.

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It seems that Microsoft’s taking three steps forward and one step back, with its hiring of other companies’ employees. It just lost Hugh Williams to eBay.

He left Microsoft to become vice president of development for search for the auction site and, judging by Williams’ LinkedIn profile, eBay gains the guy that helped created Bing:

I was a Partner at Microsoft, and a development manager in the Bing team. I’m proud to say that many of the features of the first Bing release were created by my team.

I managed the development of all user-facing web search relevance features, including the left-rail explore pane (with its "table of contents"), navigational query treatments, query-biased summaries, "deeplinks", related searches, and whole page results relevance. Additionally, I managed the Powerset team in San Francisco.

He also played a key role in Microsoft’s development of Internet Explorer 8.

So, two questions. What damage does this do to Bing, if any? And, what the heck does eBay have up its sleeve?

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