Since the beginning of the Internet, a wild-west mentality has prevailed with people anonymously blasting articles and blogs with caustic comments. The authors and bloggers are stunned and left shaking their heads wondering about the anger and venom they’ve suffered.

For decades the Internet hasn’t held users accountable for reckless comments. But that may be changing in two ways. First, social networking sites, such as Facebook, are requiring participants to use their real names. In addition, lawsuits are also being filed against anonymous Internet users for slanderous comments or posting vital information about crimes.

Many would (and still do) argue that online anonymity will not fade away. Just imagine the sound of keyboards declaring that Internet users deserve their first amendment rights- FREEDOM OF SPEECH. So, the question is, does the first amendment cover a person who hides behind a false name only to harm others or add fuel to the fire? The answer is NO.

Consequences: It’s widely known that unruly or harsh comments associated with a person’s real persona could cost them a prospective job, clients and reputation. Hiding behind a fictitious name does not provide real protection, as digital fingerprints are easy to track.

Take for example the non-ethical behavior of companies who have asked their employees to provide glowing third party comments to impact stock price or sales. The courts have simply called this type of corporate behavior, fraud.

Here at Buzzphoria (www.buzzphoria.com), we respect the disclosure of identity standards from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, WOMMA, which requires members to disclose their relationships or identities with consumers when they may influence a customer’s buying-decision. Our rules of the worldwide-web begin with an introduction of who we are, the name of client we represent and our purpose for responding to the blog or article. That is just the way we do business.

Telling the truth –It’s not only the right thing to do- it takes courage. For example Activision Blizzard Inc., one of the world’s largest videogame companies, boldly set guidelines for users’ online posts.

The company placed a requirement that gamers list their real names to post messages in online forums, just in time for the change to be applied to its first forums of the company’s highly anticipated “StarCraft II,” which was released in late July.  The purpose of the policy was to deflate the sometimes-nasty discussions amongst gamers.

Sadly, the policy collapsed after a widespread backlash from game users. The service is based on paid-subscriptions, and the company was concerned a revolt from consumers could mean a drop in sales.

But what is to be said about online sites that are not held at the mercy of consumers’ demand? Are they more willing to allow users to post factitious names without being held accountable for any wrong doings? A growing number of legal decisions are making it easier for lawyers to use legal proceedings to have online users’ names disclose. A move that hints the guidelines for Internet postings may shift for safety reasons, and to control unruly and malicious users.

One infamous case, the Lori Drew MySpace trial, made international headlines as the court reviewed evidence that a St. Louis suburb mom established a fake online identity to bully her daughter’s rival, who eventually committed suicide. Although the court eventually threw out the case, the judge threatened to criminalize the act of creating a fake persona online. The publicity surrounding the case echoed through the Internet community.

For now, users still have the right to their online anonymity. But based on the string of legal cases and Internet company reactions, there may soon be a major change to Internet users rights. In the meantime, users should be careful about their content, and the possible damage it may cause.

The simplest rule to follow is- use your name and stand behind your words. Why would so many users fight this?

In our last post we talked about Buzzphoria being our own best case study. Our example was blogger journalism and some of the comments received helped to also illustrate other elements of our case study such as freedom of speech and brand hijacking.

As part of our case study we decided to illustrate the mistakes companies often make in thinking they absolutely have to have a blog…

Perhaps that’s why there are estimates that there will be 110 billion blogs by 2010.

See, so often companies feel compelled that they have to have a blog just because they have to have a blog.

They never ask themselves the critical questions:

- why they have to have it,
- how are they going to maintain it,
- what do they want it to achieve - what’s the blog’s purpose,
- how are they going to build a following for it,
- what voice do they want to set with it,
- what do they want to say,
- more importantly, do they have something to say?

Instead many companies rush to set up their blogs. They post a couple times, get side-tracked by other projects, lose interest and ultimately abandon the blog.

They enter into the blogging endeavor like Kevin Costner clones in Field of Dreams thinking all they have to do is say, “Hello World”

And they wait, and they wait and they wait…a long time. Like a tree falling in a forest, did anyone hear it fall?

Waiting…Waiting…For that one person to say hello back.

For most no one ever says hello back.

In our case we waited patiently for 5 months from the time we posted that blog page for the first hello.

In our case it came through five months later through a tweet by Jim “Genuine” Turner who was first to note that we had left the original Word Press message “Hello World” sitting out there.

This led to Mr. Allen. That led to tweets and blog re-postings and link backs chastising us for what these folks perceived to be our foolishness, a novice error.

Thank you gentlemen for proving another of our points to our clients:
You don’t need a blog just for the sake of having a blog. Only do it if there’s a reason why anyone would care…

And then maybe, if they’ve developed the right strategy, done the proper planning and knew what their end game was the pollination effect will begin to take hold. 

In our last post, we talked about having the end game in mind when you enter your brand or company into the social media stratosphere.

We figured the best way to illustrate what brands and corporations often do wrong (without pointing fingers at brands and corporations that are doing it wrong) was to create a case study and example.

Congrats to journalist, blogger and social media guru Scott “Social Media” Allen for revealing typical bungles brands make and special thanks for also illustrating our point about the dangers many companies don’t realize when they embark on the social media journey. Naive mistakes, they make, but that’s what happens to the naive.

Numerous studies estimate by 2010 there will be over 1 billion blogs worldwide. 

According to Reuters, many people see blogs as alternatives to the mainstream media. Reuters goes on the say that many bloggers do so as a hobby rather than as a vocation, with 77 percent of them saying they post to express themselves creatively rather than to get noticed or paid.

Reuters pointed out these specifics:

37 percent of bloggers cited their life and experiences as their primary topic, while politics and government came in second at 11 percent.

About 34 percent see their blogging as a form of journalism.

 Just over a third of bloggers said they engage often in journalistic activities such as verifying facts and linking to source material.

 More than 40 percent of bloggers said they never quote sources or other media directly.

11 percent said they post corrections.

61 percent said they rarely or never get permission to use copyrighted material.

55 percent of bloggers write under a pseudonym.

Nearly 90 percent invite comments from other readers. 

Four out of five blogs use text, while 72 percent display photos and audio links play on 30 percent of blogs. 

82 percent of bloggers think they will still be blogging in a year. 3 percent say they have quit. 

We especially appreciate Scott Allen’s help in communicating an important message to our clients by  dissecting many  of the things we intentionally did wrong or left incomplete. (See his blog posting published March 27 @ http://scottsocialmediaallen.com/index.php/buzzphoria-social-media-reality-check/)

But Mr. Allen never called the subject of his critical story prior to publishing it.

Had Mr. Allen — who admits in his post about Buzzphoria that he had contact information (it is after all posted on our website), contacted us he would have learned the end game strategy around our public launch.

In fact, we reached out to Mr. Allen via email through his blog and received a response in less than 24 hours.

The good news is that Scott Allen is an exception to the complete point we were looking to illustrate.

After our reaching out to him and letting him in on our end game, he’s turned out to be an amazing good sport.

Mr. Allen makes the #1 point we needed our clients to realize:  many bloggers feel no responsibility to contact the subject of a critical story . . . at all!

Thank you Mr. Allen. You helped us achieve our end game…generating social publicity for us and reinforcing the many points we evangelize to our clients about the dangers of lack of proper planning and the potential irresponsibility of bloggers and journalists who do not properly fact check.  This is EXACTLY why our clients hire us and why we generate such great results for them.

Watch for posts over the coming days and weeks as we reveal more of our end game…