I was fortunate to be part of a Google hangout discussing the FTC updates to COPPA with the following child internet safety professionals: Anne Collier (co-director of ConnectSafely.org and Editor of NetFamilyNews.org), Izzy Neis (Director of Digital Engagement & Strategy at Metaverse Mod Squad), and Joi Podgorny (Director of Community Engagement for Smart Bomb Interactive).

We each have our own unique experiences working within the child and family safety space, so it was an enlightening, effective – and occasionally – passionate conversation. See the highlights of our discussion below and let us know whether you agree,  disagree, or have other questions to add to the debate.

Methods of gaining parental consent

In the FTC’s blog: “FTC’s revised COPPA Rule: Five need-to-know changes for your business”, number three on the list are the new ways that companies which market to children can get parental consent:

“In addition to the already-approved methods, amendments to the Rule offer more ways businesses can get parents’ OK: electronic scans of signed parental consent forms, videoconferencing, use of government-issued ID, and alternative payment systems (assuming they meet the same stringent criteria as credit cards).

“The sliding scale mechanism of parental consent — often called “email plus” — remains an acceptable method for operators collecting personal info just for internal use.  To encourage innovation in this area, the new Rule establishes a voluntary 120-day notice and comment process for businesses to get FTC approval for other methods.  In addition, operators that participate in an FTC-approved safe harbor program can use a method allowed under that program.”

Email plus

“Email plus” refers to the registration system on most child-directed products, so when a child enters an age of under 13, the “parents’ email address” is requested, before the child is permitted to take full advantage of the product. Theoretically, parents will receive an email that shares basic information about the product, asking the parent to approve their child’s account and allow him or her to fully explore the game.

Club Penguin registration

It’s useful that this method of consent is still on the books – however, there are further requirements to using this form of consent: to properly use the email plus method, you must take an additional confirming step after receiving the parent’s message (this is the “plus” factor). The confirming step may be:

• Requesting in your initial message to the parent that the parent include a phone or fax number or mailing address in the reply message, so that you can follow up with a confirmation phone call, fax or letter to the parent; or
• After a reasonable time delay, sending another message via the parent’s online contact information to confirm consent. In this confirmatory message, you should include all the original information contained in the direct notice, inform the parent that he or she can revoke the consent, and inform the parent how to do so.

So, if a mobile app company, or the phone’s operating system, whichever houses this data must collect parental approval before the download of say, a mobile game app like Angry Birds™, how are companies supposed to quickly and easily obtain consent? Where and when?

The FTC says that “ideally, collection of parental consent will occur before the download can happen.” But how is this possible?

No cellphone consent

The FTC is to consider new ways of collecting parental consent, but the realities of this prompt new questions. So far, the FTC won’t allow consent via the parent’s cellphone number, which as Izzy Neis pointed out, DOES in fact directly connect to an adult, via a credit card number and billing address.

If the point is to give parents more control of what their children are exposed to and who has access to their information, wouldn’t the FTC want to do their best to get as close to genuine parental information – and therefore, permission – as is possible?

What is ‘personal information’ under COPPA?

The Final Rule includes this modified definition as to what is considered “personal information” by the FTC:

“The definition of personal information now includes … photos, videos, and audio files that contain a child’s image or voice.”

(Although there is  a notable exception: COPPA’s parental notice and consent requirements don’t kick in if the identifier is used solely to support the internal operations of the site or service, “such as contextual advertising, frequency capping, legal compliance, site analysis, and network communications”.)

Images of minors under 13

Any image of a child under 13 MUST be approved by that child’s parent before it can go on public view.  However, this applies only to brands and products that either a) cater to the under 13 demographic, or b) are aware that a certain percentage of their product has an audience with the under 13s.

What this means is that if your brand’s site, product or app is planning to allow minors to upload pictures or videos of themselves, the parent must first give permission. It also means that any pictures that include pictures of other people’s children who are under 13 (i.e. team photos, birthday party group shots) are not compliant unless every single parent approves and allows the picture to be displayed.

Sites aimed at over 13s have no such restrictions.

Any sites claiming to market to a demographic of over 13s do not have to comply and therefore, for example, can still upload pictures of a child’s birthday party to sites such as Instagram or Facebook with all attendees pictured, even if the parents are not aware that their child’s image is being uploaded .

Joi Podgorny asked the poignant question: “Whether this amendment to the law truly helps make a child safe?”  None of us had an answer. And maybe there is no answer at this stage.

The threat to children’s online content

Image courtesy of Flickr/paz.ca

Those of us who work in the field of child safety chose this path because we are passionate about keeping kids as safe as possible – but we also want to create something that young people can enjoy, that will educate them and stretch their imagination while allowing them to be rewarded for their merits.

It is important to take in to consideration how the COPPA Rule will affect community members as well as the management of the community’s safety. At times it seems as if the Rule is not about the safety or privacy of the child but more about enforcing the laws.

Joi Podgorny again: “Who are these parents that have the time [or inclination!] to  jump through these hoops to get their kids to play a game or submit a picture?”

The danger of underground sites

Are there alternatives to COPPA?

It feels like we are back at another COPPA crossroads. So what’s next?

Ratings system

What about the idea of the “ESRB” stamp but for online? [That's the Pegi (Pan-European Game Information) system over the other side of the pond]. Something that is regulated and mandated across any product, website, app or game that is marketed to the under 13s. Something that a parent can take one look at, recognise what it means, and take necessary actions according to their own household rules?

Education

Izzy Neis and I both like the idea of creating a regulated program that would take place between youth, parents and a government body such as the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) in the US. For example, a socially responsible program that could be introduced to schools and mandated across all places of education, from kindergarten through to the 12th grade.

When you get down to it, the internet is just a big, new environment to explore and understand.  Creating, learning and then following social norms is not a new concept after all – for example: we won’t allow anyone to drive a car without first going through Driver’s Education. Navigating online should be treated the same way: in a responsible manner, understanding both appropriate online activity as well as potential consequences.

Compliance and circumvention of COPPA

As for me, I will be watching how companies figure out how to comply with the new mandates. It is timely to note that on 6th May the FTC publicly rejected a request for an extension to comply with the Rule. The final date to begin compliance is 1st July, 2013.

And in the meantime? People will continue to find ways to circumvent a safety system. Businesses will spend endless time, energy and money reinventing their products, and child safety advocates like Anne, Joi, Izzy and myself will continue to support the search for viable, marketable solutions.

Featured image courtesy of Flickr/lancesh

So why is there so much spam and trolling?

It all began with a spam business model…

Spam Statistics for 2012. Source: spamcop.net

 

With the implementation of stricter laws, anti-spam software and educated email users (who reply and forward using the BCC option for example), this creative business model started to decay. Even after the advent of robot-spammers and other automated forms of spam, this was soon fought by new anti-spam tools and programs (which also created new business models for many anti-virus and anti-spam software developers).

 

The social media graph

A few years ago, some people even thought that spam was coming to an end… until Facebook started a new communication revolution. After MySpace and other similar initiatives created a social media need among the internet population, Facebook managed to hook almost everyone into this new form of social gathering.

With slight variations, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and Google+ soon followed the trend and became social media behemoths. And now, while few people are still concerned by email spam, a fear of social media spam is slowly growing to become the ‘new internet problem ’.

 

The ease of sharing a post or re-tweeting creates the spam effect over and over again. And very likely, the same reasons behind email spam are also behind social media spam.

Facebook social graph

 

“This journey is one per cent done, which means we realized there’s an enormous opportunity to do more in this space.” – Soren Lassen, Manager of the search infrastructure team at Facebook

Marketing companies are no longer interested in a simple email address to target random messages to unknown recipients. With an evolved internet, social media created a new ‘marketing paradise’.

Even without knowing someone’s identity, we are now privy to key statistics such as age, gender, geographic location, purchasing habits, political stands, social concerns and, above all, a social graph made by a network of common interests and profiles … exactly what any marketer will pay big money for.

So how far will you go to obtain this information? Reputation and ethics aside, almost any company would be interested in obtaining vital data to push their businesses forward. Marketing experts and social media experts are now ready to harvest this vast amount of valuable data, turn it into information and, ideally, create the ultimate product: market knowledge and consumer insight that is targeted to its audience – and therefore welcome.

 

And the trolls?

Trolls present an interesting psychological profile. While they’re generally referred to as ‘internet sociopaths’ and visualised as bitter individuals that spend their time bashing everyone and every product, company, and institution, interestingly, some of them have hundreds, thousands, and even millions of followers.

How do they earn that amount of attention just from spreading negativity? Why do people read their posts and eagerly await their next move? Are the followers as sick as the trolls they follow?

While I’m not a psychology expert, schadenfreude may explain the inner satisfaction of reading a negative comment that we lacked the courage to make ourselves. Yellow press, gossip magazines, and even a few politicians have succeeded by doing exactly that. If there is a demand, there is also a supply.

 

And what about the connection between trolls, spam and marketing?

Easy. User generated content (UGC), even when negative, generates attention. Attention generates engagement. Engagement generates social followers … exactly what spammers  – and some marketers are looking for. There is clear evidence and plenty of examples of paid trolls: users on a payroll whose only objective is to generate discussion and engagement, usually taking the other side of the general flow of conversation. Even bad press is good press and some trolls are good business.

Business ethics and marketing

We recognise the need of companies to understand a market and their honest objective to improve it to increase shareholders’ value. Marketing experts are paid to research these markets and obtain information to make sound business decisions. The grey area is how far they will go to obtain this data before their competition does?

There are undoubtedly a minority of marketing and social media professionals who bluntly offer this to their employers or customers: “Don’t ask how I will deliver, just be happy that I do”. No need to know, so no business ethics or even legal issues interfere.

But for most of us, as professionals, individuals and consumers, the buck stops there. So, the next time you’re annoyed by a shared post, unwanted message or a disgusting troll, take time to think about who may benefit from their activity. And please, help stop the chain!

 

By César Struve, moderator at eModeration. This post was originally posted on his blog.

Feature image: tburgy

Facebook social graph image: rafiqphillips

Facebook journalism

The keynote speaker was Vadim Lavrusik, Journalism Programme Manager for Facebook. He can also claim to have a foot in both camps as he’s a former journalist at the New York Times as well as a former Community Manager at Mashable. In typical Facebook fashion, his presentation kicked off with an explanation of how the newsfeed works – something we community managers are frequently asked by our clients. While this doesn’t explain how the algorithm actually works, these are the five things that Facebook takes into account when showing content in anyone’s newsfeed:

1. Frequency of engagement with page
2. Engagement with specific post
3. Interaction with types of content
4. Negative feedback to content
5. Freshness of post

This means no one newsfeed is the same – yours will always differ from your friend’s. So while he couldn’t guarantee that your content will make it into your target audience’s newsfeed, he shared some tips that work for journalists as well as community managers and brands.

• Have a conversational tone and personal voice
• Use targeting controls to reach the right audience and avoid inundating all your fans
• Thumbnails should be 600 x 600 pixels and compelling pictures – links with appealing thumbnails enjoy 20 per cent better engagement
• Highlight conversations on air – create conversations on Facebook and say what happened on air

While this last tip was aimed at broadcasting organisations, there is nothing to stop brands from including stats and quotes from Facebook in their marketing materials, websites and presentations.

Lavrusik even used the buzz word ‘crowdsourcing’ to claim that Facebook was the ideal tool for journalists to take a snapshot of sentiment towards an event. The presentation also highlighted how Facebook’s new replies feature, introduced last month, would make live Q+A much easier and simpler on the platform.

As community managers we’ve shied away from this, but the functionality allows brands to really talk one-on-one with users, as well as getting the community involved. You can watch Lavrusik’s complete presentation here.

Journalism and Community Management

One interesting session was entitled Curation: The journalist as manager. This could have been re-titled The journalist as a community manager. Today’s journalist, as well as researching the hard facts of their story, now has to take opinions and stories from social media platforms to incorporate  into their own news stories.

The Huffington Post maintains it is the only news organisation that links to other news websites. If it sees a story has already been written by its competitor, then it links to it.  Why bother rehashing the story when your readers have already seen it? Funny how community managers have been doing this for years.We recognise there is value in good quality content as long as the source is authoritative.

Curation, editing and journalism: the same thing?

Michael Rundle, Technology Editor of The Huffington Post UK, said at the session: “Curation is another name for editing which is another word for journalism – bringing together lots of info from one place.”  This is exactly what a good community manager does as well. By allowing your community to share and discuss topics that are relevant to them, we are acting as curators. That is precisely why we have community guidelines to help us moderate and manage the members, as well as encourage good community behaviour.

Anticipating social media backlash

Speaking of behaviour, it was suggested at the conference that some journalists have changed the angle of the story or toned down their story because of the backlash they expected to receive on social media or comments on their story. In my day, the only time we faced criticism was when someone took the trouble to ring the editor to complain and that was rare. Now we have empowered readers, members, users, communities and the general public to share their views, and they are absolutely entitled to do so. The key is to being able to moderate and manage these comments, and how you deal with them. Yes, it’s another task on the list, but it extends the shelf-life of a good news story, and journalists need to prepare for this.

Social media training

So what support and training are journalists given on social media? Some news organisations have community or social media teams sitting alongside their journalists to help manage the backlash as well as engage with readers, and this is a great way forward. But is the industry doing enough to share best practices around community building, how to deal with irate readers, interaction with members and keeping the community in order?

News organisations are encouraging reporters to join communities to help with their reporting. And if they can’t find a suitable community they should build their own. While community management is not a dark art, it is important that journalists – and anyone else for that matter – knows the basic principles behind good community management or they are in danger of having these communities backfire on them.

A trusted community is a very useful resource for journalists, and can provide valuable information and insight for use in their stories, but in return their members will want to feel rewarded and acknowledged, not just an unpaid anonymous source.

It looks as though reporters of the future will have to wear two hats  – community and journalism – but I think the pairing works very well.

For more on news:rewired’s Digital Journalism conference on April 19th, here’s the Storify round up of the event.

Image courtesy of Flickr: NS Newsflash

CEO Tamara Littleton delivered a six-minute iPitch to the iStrategy judges and crowd on eModeration’s ground-breaking ‘Social Media Simulation’ training tool.

Here’s the story!

Facebook Replies: a summary

Previously, page owners or users were not able to reply directly to any single comment on Facebook, and new messages just went to the bottom of a chain of correspondence.  This made it hard for readers to follow and did nothing for the brands’ engagement with their customers. With Facebook Replies enabled, brands and Facebook users will have the ability to reply directly to comments left on page content and start conversation threads,  making it easier for community managers to interact directly with individual readers and keep relevant conversations connected. It will also allow fans to talk to each other and the brand on a one-to-one basis, rather than one-to-many.

Facebook has also thrown something extra into the mix by showing the most active conversations at the top and any comments marked as spam are moved to the bottom (although users won’t see the posts marked as spam). What is really important for moderators  and community managers to note is that this means that not all content will be appear in chronological order.

How the Replies ranking system works:

For example, let’s look at this conversation on a brand page:

You can see from the example above that the time stamps are in no particular order. But if you look at the top two comments they have risen to the top because they have been ‘liked’, automatically jumping to the front of the queue.

How threaded replies work

So now if you reply as the brand owner, the comment will appear directly underneath the user’s comment.

Here’s a further example of how the threaded conversations will appear on the front end of the page:
On a different brand’s page, Reply has been used but they are not shown.

When you click on 2 Replies they drop down so everyone can see the conversation.

The brand has used Reply and the customer has replied to the reply.

How to monitor, moderate and manage Facebook Replies

If you are not using a Facebook management tool which has integrated the new API, then, although this change does dramatically improve how companies and customers can engage on the platform, trying to monitor a page for new content is an awful lot harder. Now new messages might be embedded anywhere in layers of conversation, rather than being at the bottom of a post.

Community managers and moderators will have to do a lot of careful scanning and will need to be extra vigilant on the Activity Log and Notifications tabs, as detailed below.

To see exactly when users are posting, you must use the Notifications, which will then show all comments from the users in strict chronological order:  Click on ‘See All’.

By clicking on the words Wall Post, Photo, Timeline, or Link, you can open the thread in a separate page. This will still bring up comments in non-chronological order but will help you focus on just that thread, and make it much easier to hand over between shifts.

Summary

So here’s a reminder of how to moderate comments on a shift using Facebook’s Activity Log and Notifications. In Activity Log – under Edit Page – check:

• All
• Spam
• Posts by others

In Notifications click ‘See All’ to the recent activity. If you click on the words Timeline, Photo, Wall Post, you can see what’s been written by each user in chronological order.

When there are new items in either the activity log or notifications, a red number will show on the page to indicate that a user or users have done something on that page.

We’d be interested to hear what other community managers think of threaded replies and whether you think this helps improve the relationship between a user and a brand?  Tell us how are you dealing with moderation if you don’t use a third party tool?

I’ll summarize the ‘fireside chat’ featuring members of the Federal Trade Commission(FTC). Please note, eModeration is not offering legal advice or comment here: we are reporting the Q&A session to help build the sum of knowledge about the COPPA changes.

The chat was hosted by Liisa Thomas (Partner, Winston & Strawn LLP), with FTC representative Mamie Kresses joining via Skype. The pair discussed many of the upcoming changes to COPPA that consumers, businesses and child safety advocates need to know about in order to comply with the changing law. Mamie has worked  at the FTC for many years, focusing on COPPA and the many technological and social media changes since it was first put into law, 13 years ago.

All the questions asked were practical and addressed the key issues people have been itching to understand. Here’s our summary – and our own interpretation – of answers to the most frequently-asked questions posed to the FTC representatives. 

Liisa Thomas

LT: Many of us [representing the private sector] are worried about Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA) and the need to get parental consent. If we have a website appealing to both kids and adults, and we have reason to believe that both audiences are using the site, does that mean that we can’t use OBA without parental permission? Or should we just not use OBA once someone actually tells us they are under 13?

Mamie Kresses, FTC

FTC: If your site is in that category of catering to both under and over 13 year olds, even if it is a site that is already directed to children, but you know or have reason to think that you are not limited to under 13s, you must assume everyone is under 13. We recognize that not all sites directed to kids are in practice catering to kids, and if you wish to market differently to each, then we won’t necessarily go after you. However, by July 1, if you wish to continue using OBA then you must age-gate your product so that only those claiming to be over 13 will be subject to this form of advertising. If you cannot separate out your users by age and you continue to use OBA then you will not be in compliance with the law. However, you can use OBA if you get parental permission.

We [at the FTC] also don’t know what is coming down the road with regards to collecting data from particular users. There will be tougher decisions in the future when and if we are dealing with a site that caters to more than one age group. People working on sites that are not directed at children will continue to be able to use OBA unless they know for a fact that they are catering to a child.

LT. Let’s say we are creating an app where kids can take photos and add a widget to the picture. The app, once downloaded, will not have any interaction back with the company and will live as a stand-alone on a user’s phone. Do we need to get parental permission – or does this scenario fall under an exception – under the Rule?*

 In other words, would the FTC view the company as “collecting” a child’s photo even though the pictures are not being sent back to (or seen by) the company? The app is simply facilitating someone taking the photo and “doctoring it up”.

FTC: [Paraphrased] This is currently under discussion. A website or online service has to involve a transfer of information across the internet for [the Rule] to apply. As the app itself in this scenario is not working with the online environment (sharing digitally), it would not be an online service within our definition.

LT: At what point do we put the consent block during the download of an app when we KNOW we are advertising and creating kid-based apps? Is it just before the download? Where? When?

FTC: The point before you need to give notice and get consent comes just before the purchase of the app takes place. You don’t need to collect information from every person on the account. If you have collected something from the user that indicates they are a child, you must collect parental consent and make account information easy to access for the parent; the usual place being somewhere on the company website where it can be found and edited if the parent wishes.

The FTC has tried to broaden the non-exclusive list of acceptable methods for collecting consent. If you as the company are doing your best to obtain parental consent even if it doesn’t fall under the list of acceptable means, FTC will accept it.

In the process of downloading the app, you will be collecting information. The first step of the download should be the place to get parental consent. However, app stores need to make it easier for developers to incorporate consent and collection of parental consent information.

The FTC will not prescribe a method, but in looking at past methods, you may want to do something new and this could be acceptable if the person on the other side is known to be a parent or adult that is accepting the consent. However, collecting an Apple ID or Google ID is not sufficient at this time.

LT: Many companies have concerns about what is viewed as personal information – information about the child submitting the data online, or anybody’s personal information that the child submits. For example: would you view the Rule as being triggered (and therefore being a need to get parental consent) if a child submits a parent’s information? What if the child submits information about a friend?

FTC: The Rule is triggered by information being given by a child. It doesn’t have to be their own information for the Rule to apply. In July [2013], we will have finally defined the concept of collecting a parent’s email address as a viable method for collecting consent.

If a child submits pictures or videos of another child, you as the company must remove this information from your records, on the basis that this falls under the category of collecting PII from a child without the consent of that child’s parents.

There is nothing that prevents the general public uploading pictures of another child in a general audience type of site, however.

LT. Let’s say that we are a publisher with in-app purchases. Other than your new graphic disclosure, what other things should we think about? Where should we place this graphic?

FTC: There is a new infographic at the FTC website. [http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0018-understanding-mobile-apps#kids]

The infographic was designed  by our Consumer and Business Education Department to give parents general information about what could be going on with the apps they buy, that there are different types of information, and to teach them how to get more information on apps.

There is no onus on companies to post it, but it has been widely picked up and it could be helpful to see this on an app store in the future.

As to whether or not in-app purchases are covered under COPPA, the vital thing to remember is that if your business is in a kids’ space, or is attracting youth, this is the kind of information parents want upfront rather than to find out later. It is more about being a good business model and delivering COPPA information and obligations in a common sense setting and could help you head off  trouble down the road.

LT: Let’s talk about screen names. The Rule now says that these are Personally Identifiable Information if it permits someone to directly contact the person online. How does this play out on a website with a chatroom? In particular, one where kids can register without parental permission because the only information collected is a screen name and the site has only set sentences that people can use to communicate with each other?

FTC: [Paraphrased] Whether the screen name has a “life of its own” outside the context of the site is seen as the key criteria here. For example, if on its own, it reveals something personally identifiable, something that could trace a person across other forms of online communication, I would see this falling within the Rule. The less personal information a child can put in to the username, the less the risk there is of being able to personally identify them. If they can put say, fullname@yourcompany.com, this can constitute PII.

In the chat context, the more restrictive you are with the type of information a user can put in, the more likely you will be to stay within the Rule. However, this is still a very gray area and one to approach with caution.

LT: Let’s talk about the mechanism you built in to the Rule to add additional types of parental consent. Can you walk through how that would work, and explain  any specific ideas about this? Video consents, where the parent records themselves giving permission? Scanned images of IDs? Any others? It may be helpful to remind people that they can select many different ways for getting consent; they don’t have to use one. Isn’t that right?

FTC: Here are some examples of how to collect parental consent. However, this list is not exhaustive:

• Collect the parent’s email
• Have the notice and consent on the screen, but collect the parent’s name and credit card information
• Video consent is being considered and may be acceptable, but there is not a final decision on this as yet

Video consent might even be fun, but as a practical business matter you must always give parents a place they can return to in writing so that they can review and change [consents]. Particularly with COPPA, where parents have multiple ongoing rights. As long as this happens if the company decides to use video consent, it should be fine.

LT: Are you considering how companies have attempted to collect parental consent before the changes to the Rule? What should businesses do with these accounts and account information?

FTC: That will be addressed in the upcoming FAQs, due out by the end of this month [April 2013]. Update: here are the new COPPA FAQs (Updated: April 26 2013)

___________________________________________________________

So there you have it. Clearly there are still a lot of areas that the FTC is ironing out, and a lot of practical situations to which there are not yet clear solutions. What is clear, however, is that more companies are becoming aware of the magnitude of these changes, and want to do the right thing by their customers and users, and for their business.

Next week, I’ll pick up where this conversation left off, with a panel of business lawyers and community professionals discussing the practicality of the COPPA mandates and how they will affect the practicalities of running their businesses.

*The “Rule” refers to COPPA

 Image via Flickr from IntelFreePress

In the UK, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) was replaced by a ‘strengthened regulatory architecture’ comprising two separate organisations. The Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) now regulates financial organisations to make sure they operate safely; the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is there to protect consumers. For the first time, there is significant guidance – an entire section of the FCA’s handbook – on ‘internet’ and ‘real-time’ communications, which can be seen on the FCA’s website.

In the US, the SEC issued further social media guidance to financial organisations. Companies are now permitted to post earnings and investment updates to Twitter and Facebook, as long as investors are told where to look in advance of the postings.

 Another communication channel for bank customers

It seems that regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have taken the view that social media is another communication channel, rather than a new way of communicating. And yet less than three years ago, Thefinancialbrand.com published Why social media is a waste of time for most banks and credit unions, arguing that social media was useless for the financial sector. Some of the arguments then were that ‘banking is boring’, it was too risky, it was hard to do, and it was un-measurable.

So much has changed since then. As more of us turn to social media channels, banks – as so many other industries – have to respond over the channels that consumers choose to use to contact them. This is particularly true of younger customers, of course. There are some really interesting initiatives being taken by banks over social media, from Citibank using Twitter (@askciti) for customer service in the US, to HSBC running student bursary competitions on Facebook in the UK.

 Changing customer behaviour

In light of these changes – both regulatory and in consumer behaviour – we have updated our guide to social media for financial organisations: Managing social media engagement for financial organisations, which is available from our website. Please note, this is not intended to replace legal or regulatory advice; each company should have their own detailed legal advice on how and when to engage with customers on social media, to be compliant with new FCA regulations.

Whether you use social media for customer service, research and development, customer insight, recruitment or CSR, I hope the guide will help financial organisations develop a practical approach to managing customers who want to communicate over social channels.

Until recently, the concept of social media as a career or field of study was an entirely alien one to me. I mean sure, Facebook and Twitter were a fun distraction to a teenager studying to gain a place at university, but there were more important things to think about, right?

Fast forward to today and you’ll find me an aspiring Community Manager with a big question on my mind: how can you ‘get there’ in social media? Cue the appearance of specialised social media degrees, treating the topic as a ‘traditional’ business discipline. But just how useful are they and what do they entail?

We spoke to Dave Harte of Birmingham City University, where he is award leader of Britain’s first MA in Social Media

Most people working in social media never had the chance to take a degree in the field – why do you feel that such a degree is now valuable?

We need to distinguish between what you might call social media studies and social media practice. In the same way that film studies degrees are targeted at students who will never be film directors, we still study film because it tells us a lot about society and because it’s a major form of communication. Social media should be studied as a media text because it’s central to the way we communicate.

My course offers the chance to study social media as a phenomenon, but it also teaches people how to be a practitioner. To go back to film studies, some students do go on to be film directors and are better directors for understanding how film communicates. Likewise, we attract students who might be potential marketeers and potential community activists. They both want to work with social media for very different reasons, yet benefit from a deeper understanding of the theoretical approaches to studying social media.

Social media is constantly evolving – how do you deal with the challenge of teaching an ever-changing subject?

What are the changes? Some changes we see are different businesses coming into the space, trying ideas which don’t work and then not being there any more. So for example Posterous. It appeared, we used it and by the end of April it will be gone. That seems very quick but actually doesn’t change our approach to understanding how blogging works, or how platforms like that can be utilised.

Students need to understand the social media industry, how change happens within that industry and why it happens so rapidly – because of the volume of start-ups, the way investment works, because there’s an appetite for investing in small agile companies with new ideas. So the changes are there, but they are around the business of building and ‘doing’ social media platforms. Beneath that, the way in which those communication platforms work is fairly stable.

Take for example the definition we use of social networking sites outlined by Danah Boyd: what these platforms often share is that one can create a list of users, and other people can look at this list of users and can choose to follow some of your users or not – and some platforms restrict that ability and some don’t. That is probably the common thing to most micro-blogging platforms. It is best to look at why they work as business platforms and concentrate on that.

How confident are you that career prospects from a social media degree match the investment?

I am fairly confident, but that is an instinctive response based on the number of vacancies around the  industry and the need I see from companies to buy in specialists with the skills our degree provides.

As a post-graduate course we often attract students who are already working and are using the degree to accelerate their career or to update their skills. Often a few years later they are in the same line of work, maybe at a more elevated level, and have used this knowledge to sustain their career. So while I have data to say they are all still employed, I can’t say our degree has turned them all into multi-millionaires!

We also offer a module about enterprise, and students will benefit from thinking about themselves as entrepreneurs. To sustain a career in the creative industries, you need to have an enterprising approach, probably a portfolio type of career. It might be a year here, three months there. You need to be constantly thinking “where is my next thing coming from?”, and students leave with that kind of entrepreneurial mindset embedded within them, which helps them in terms of employment.

What should a prospective social media student be doing right now to prepare themselves?

They should take an interest in the industry that is social media; the way in which companies start and deliver services and how these companies receive investment. If I was a student I would find out lots about a particular niche social media service. For example, there’s a Foursquare based service which people use for beer, called Untappd. As a student I’d be thinking around it: how does that make money? Does it make money? Why do people want to share that?

Then you think about networks and how they work and you’ll have a rolling set of interesting questions that can be applied to a wide range of topics and industries.

How important is it for universities themselves to have a strong social media presence and how do you utilise the medium at BCU?

At a corporate level, universities have cottoned on to how they can use social media to attract customers, the students. I think the real strength though, is in how you deal with it at the level of the course leader, the academic, because students will go and search you out on social media.

Social media enables you to break down the image of an academic as a distant, stuffy figure at the front of a classroom. Students can ask me a question at 10pm on a Friday night via Twitter and I’ll probably answer it. I might have a glass of wine in my hand when I do it, but I’ll probably answer it.

That’s a big change which I think really benefits students. Social media is a really good platform for humanising the academic experience: universities are intimidating places – big buildings with lots of corridors and difficult to find people – and it can help break that down.

Thank you to Dave for his informative responses to our questions. Dave has an extensive knowledge of the creative industries and regularly blogs at http://daveharte.com/.

Have you taken a social media degree or an alternative route into the industry? What are the contrasting benefits of ‘vocational’ versus ‘academic’ qualifications? As an employer, would you look favourably on someone with a social media degree? Please leave a comment: it would be great to open up this discussion.

This month however, the news is slightly more encouraging.  Thanks to the reports which are being made, IWF has just taken action against its 100,000th child sexual abuse webpage. 

Additionally, in the past two years 12 children have been rescued from their abusers as a direct result of IWF actions.

Says Susie Hargreaves, IWF CEO: “Taking action against 100,000 webpages hosting child sexual abuse content requires the skills and dedication of many individuals and organisations. More than 100 organisations actively support the IWF’s work and vision and act quickly to remove some of the worst types of abuse online. We’re grateful for this support, because without it, our work would be more difficult and removing content would take more time.“

The IWF’s 2012 IWF Annual and Charity Report  revealed that of these images:

• Four in five child victims in online content appear to be 10 years old and under
• Most of the content dealt with by the IWF (53%) is the worst on the scale, showing the rape and sexual torture of the child victim

The importance of preventing sexual abuse images from being seen

Recent research from the Lucy Faithfull Foundation into the motivations, behaviour and actions of people who view indecent images of children online indicated that the first viewing is usually accidental.  The people interviewed said that they didn’t actively seek out the images but ‘strayed into’ them when looking at other pornographic sites and via ‘risky’ word searches.

The subsequent illegal behaviour of these individuals then developed over time.

What is imperative therefore, is to prevent this first accidental viewing from happening, and the Internet Watch Foundation play a vital role in this fight.  Read the Lucy Faithfull Foundation’s recommendations for actions to prevent first viewing here.

How does the IWF work?

The charity was formed in 1996 with the aim of eliminating online child sexual abuse content, and is supported by its members, (including eModeration).

eModeration CEO Tamara Littleton comments, “Child safety is at the heart of eModeration and we respect and admire the important work that the IWF does. Every child matters, and it’s crucial that the IWF and wider digital and telecomms industry work closely to combat child abuse.”

The IWF relies on reports from the public to its UK Hotline – which can be made anonymously – to locate the content and assess it against UK law. If a webpage contains child sexual abuse content, it is traced to determine the country hosting the content.

If it’s hosted in the UK, the IWF issues a notice to the hosting provider who then removes the content, typically within one hour.

If it’s hosted abroad, the details are sent to the corresponding hotline in the host country, via INHOPE (the Association of Internet Hotlines). If no such hotline exists in that country, the IWF works with the relevant police service in order to get the content removed. You can see a video explaining its work here.

As a measure of effectiveness, in 1996, before the IWF was formed, the UK hosted around 18% of the known child sexual abuse content. Since 2003, the IWF, working with the online industry, has reduced this to less than 1%. (54% is hosted in North America and 37% in Europe and Russia, 8% Asia; less than 1% for South America, and Africa.)

*Figures published in the 2012 IWF Annual and Charity Report

Feature image courtesy of the IWF

What is Google Authorship?

Google Authorship is a feature which allows Google to associate content to an individual person, and display a related headshot and name next to it in Search. You can link content you publish on a specific domain (such as your blog or a website you contribute to) to your Google Plus profile, and Search results will display as in the screenshot below.

Benefits of Google Authorship

Google created Authorship to allow the correct attribution of content, which means writers can claim which content they have produced and be associated with it visually. It also allows searchers to easily navigate to other content written by the same author, which helps establish credibility and legitimacy around content producers.

It’s widely considered in SEO circles that establishing authorship attribution results in a higher click-through rate: the content stands out within the search page, and there’s also an increase in long-tail clicks since searchers can more easily see your other content.

So how do I claim authorship in Google Search?

Your first step is to create a Google Plus account, if you haven’t already done so. There is a straightforward walkthrough to help you set up your profile, so make sure you fill in all the fields and include a good quality photograph, showing your full face (no avatars, logos or arty shots).

Setting up your “Contributor to” links

The next step is to fill in the “Contributor to” section of your Google Plus profile. List all the websites that you are writing for or have contributed to. The images below show the editing panel and what the result will look like.

Verification by email (the easy way)

The easiest way to verify your Google Authorship is by having an email address in your name from the website you are publishing or being published on, i.e. having an email address with the website domain. So if your website is www.emoderation.com, then you can verify an email like [yourname]@emoderation.com by adding it to your list of emails in your Google Plus profile and clicking the link in the confirmation email that is sent. Similarly, if you write for another website, it’s worth asking if they can give you access to an personal email address from the actual domain name of the site. You can also verify the email for authorship by following the instructions on the simple Google+ Authorship page.

The benefit of verifying in this way is that once you click the confirmation link that is sent to your email to confirm it is yours, the “Contributor to” section of your profile is automatically updated with the relevant website link. You can check that the email addresses are confirmed by the presence of a little tick next to them.

Verification by rel=author tag (the hard way)

Don’t have an email address that includes the domain name of the site you are writing for? There is another way. Once you have set up your Google Plus profile, you will need to insert a small piece of code which includes the rel=author tag into every page you have had published in your name. This rel=author tag links up your content with your Google Plus profile and means Google can then verify the relationship and display your attribution in search. This piece of code can be placed anywhere in the content, but the best place to put it is in the sidebar embedded in a Google Plus icon, or hidden in the HTML code of your header or footer, if you can edit it.

The stock code is:

which you’ll need to edit to include your own personal profile URL. Mine would look like this:

Confirming Google Authorship is working

Google provide a tool called the Google Structured Data Testing Tool which will allow you to check you have set up your Google Authorship successfully. Just drop in the URL to one of your articles on site you have linked following the instructions above, and if it’s worked it will show you what should be displaying in Search.

What about Guest Posts? How do I link them to my Google Plus profile?

If you are guest posting across multiple sites, it is highly unlikely that you will either have an email address from those sites or the ability to edit the HTML header code either. So here’s a way to claim Authorship for your guest posts. Follow the steps above in the section titles “Verification by rel=author tag”, but when you get to the point of needing to insert the rel=author code, insert the following into the HTML of your bio on the website you are guest posting on (or ask the editor or admin to do it):

So, to write ‘and you can find him on Google+‘ which links to my Google+ profile, this is the html I use:

I did this on my SocialMediaToday bio, and this is what it looks like now:

Check in the Google Structured Data Testing Tool that everything is working fine:

Troubleshooting if Google Authorship is still not working

Having spent some time playing – and failing – with this process, here are the top potential issues you might face if your content is not attributed and photo is not displaying in Search.

1. Authorship is related to people, not businesses. There is a specific tag for linking Google Plus business pages and websites called the rel=publisher tag, which I’ll blog about on another day. Make sure you are linking your content with your personal profile, and not your Google Plus brand page.
2. Authorship requires a correctly proportioned image in your Google+ profile. My original image is on the left below, my new one on the right. The original one wasn’t displaying because you cannot clearly see my whole face. The one on the right once uploaded was approved and displayed within hours. There is some kind of verification process there, so make sure you have a clear headshot and aren’t using a logo.
3. When adding the html code to your profile in a guest blog, make sure that it is visible on the page and not (as may be the case in a long bio) hidden behind a ‘read more>’ link.  Edit your bio accordingly.
4. Only seeing one image of yourself on search page results, when several of your blog posts are listed?  From our observations, Google seem to only serve one author profile image with each page of results.
5. Don’t worry if the Google Structured Data Testing Tool is showing that everything is fine but you can’t see yourself in Search immediately. It can take a little while, but it will happen as long as your photo is ok (the testing tool will not flag problems with photos)

Let me know how you get on!