Social Media can be quite engaging and entertaining ... However, not all participants are equal; not all participants play by the same rules, and the concepts of rights, privacy and protection are constantly tested. Think of the following:

1. Kid using Club Penguin (now a Disney property) ...
2. Kid's Dad writing a screen-scraping routine so 'junior' can get money quicker to buy really cool igloo accessories quicker ...
3. A kid mashes up a song, then posts on YouTube ...
   
4. Bots and trawlers trying to hack through say, CAPTCHAs or access accounts ... for whatever reason ...

On the mashup in 3. above, check out the You Tube Video of Bad Day - over 2 million views ... At least they credit Daniel Powter at the end of the clip.

As long as we continue to make advancements with internet technology there will always be someone trying to figure out how to hack, crack or game the technology. The most recent victim is the CAPTCHA … Refer article entitled “Digital Deception” by The Washington Post Staff Writer, Peter Whoriskey that summarizes the state of the problem.

What is a CAPTCHA you may well ask? Refer below for an example of Carnegie Mellon’s version - ReCAPTCHA – they’ve been popping up everywhere across the web.

CAPTCHA - Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart

The primary purpose is to prevent abuse from automated programs (bots) usually written to generate spam, blogspam, pingspam, etc. It works on the basis that a computer program cannot read distorted text as well as humans – the bots cannot then traverse the web site.

This is the ‘real world’ equivalent of a bouncer at the front of every retail store, restaurant, library or little league ball park … Fill out the paperwork, sign the waiver - oops, I mean agree to the Terms of Service - and you’re in.

We’ve become numb to ‘opt-in’ … largely due to the fact that we’ve learned no click, no participation. Over time our pavlovian numbness also extended to co-opt, not opt-in techniques … No click, no data (this field required), no participation.

In short, we have direct marketers to thank for the words opt-in and opt-out. However, once turbo-charged by the Internet, they take on a whole new meaning. The one word that is noticeably absent in the interaction conversation is co-opt …

Co-Opt … to take or assume for one's own use; appropriate

Well, if someone has opted-in, they’ve agreed to give us their data (this field required), correct? It says so in the Terms of Service.

The big controversy over the past week was over the video footage posted to the Internet of six teenage girls beating up another girl while two other boys watched ... allegedly over content posted on MySpace. Refer video below from Salon.com (apologies in advance for excessive violence and potty-mouth language):

Posted August last year, here is Google's "information we collect and why it is safe" video ...

I connected with Rajesh Setty, CEO of Suggestica yesterday. We were discussing blogs and blogging … after clicking over to his blog (Life Beyond Code) I couldn’t resist riffing a little more on the New York Times article by Matt Richtel entitled In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop.

Sellers are customers, eBay.

Go with the force. The community is your power. Don’t silence market participants … empower them to manage and govern themselves with better tools than words and thumbs (up or down).

eBay plans to cut sellers out of their feedback system in the mid-May timeframe … allowing only buyers to participate in the feedback system. OK, so maybe I am missing something here. eBay is a marketplace. Buyers and sellers come together to make the market. Economics 101 … However, let’s assume the seller has no voice – what will the impact be?

For those of use who do not spend all day in the Social Media scene, there has been an interesting spat playing out over YouTube, the blogosphere and Twitter ... and frankly the blogosphere stepped in and took sides. Community 1, Shel Israel 0.

Michael Arrington and the team at TechCrunch have covered the whole affair very well ... A Case Study in Personal Brand Destruction.

An otherwise inside joke and 'jab' at Shel Isreal (of Naked Conversations fame - personal blog now renamed Global Neighborhoods - Social Media's Impact on Business and Culture) turned out to be a well publicized digital event.

Note to self ... did we ever have a Transparency 1.0?

If you're a publisher ... sure. Terms of Service. Privacy Policies. PGP. Third party attestation authorities. Trust deeds. Trust certificates. If you're a consumer, you were educated to delete cookies in your browser - (know how to DoubleClick cookie opt-out?) ... and educated to Trust certain web sites.

Refer 'grab' above from Visual Thesaurus (btw, great product!) ... Transparency ... free from deceit ... easily perceived or understood.

The Internet is a powerful medium - for marketers and participants alike. For most participants, however, digital marketing is anything but easily perceived or understood.

Benjamin Franklin – (btw, my personal fave founding father) – was the poster child for “good citizenship”. His commitment to civic duty and community was clear. He helped establish or improve institutions such as public libraries, public hospitals, mutual insurance companies, volunteer fire departments, agricultural colleges and intellectual societies … when he wasn’t busy flying kites, inventing bi-focals or the smokeless fireplace (would he have time for a Twitter account? … @bfranklin something in this lightning thing …)