For a more detailed look at the findings, the survey can be downloaded here, free of charge.

1. Discover all relevant communities of interest and observe the choices, challenges, impressions, and wants of the people within each network.

2. Don’t just participate solely in your own domains (Facebook Fan Page, Twitter conversations related to your brand, etc.). Participate where your presence is advantageous and mandatory.

3. Determine the identity, character, and personality of the brand and match it to the persona of the individuals representing it online.

4. Establish a point of contact who is ultimately responsible for identifying, trafficking, or responding to all things that can affect brand perception.

5. As in customer service, representatives require training to learn how to proactively and reactively respond across multiple scenarios. Don’t just put the person familiar with social networking in front of the brand.

6. Embody the attributes you wish to portray and instill. Operate by a code of conduct.

7. Observe the behavioral cultures within each network and adjust your outreach accordingly.

8. Assess pain points, frustrations, and also those of contentment in order to establish meaningful connections.

9. Become a true participant in each community you wish to activate. Move beyond marketing and sales.

10. Don’t speak at audiences through canned messages. Introduce value, insight and direction with each engagement.

Click for the complete list.

1. Using a weak password Stay away from simple names and obvious choices with a number tacked onto the end. Instead, mix upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. Better still,  add a number or symbol the middle of your password.
2. Providing your full birth date Avoid showing your full birth date in your profile (day, month, year). This info can be used to obtain additional personal info, or access to your bank and credit accounts. Just show only your birth month and day, or nothing at all.
3. Ignoring useful privacy controls Take advantage of Facebooks many options for limiting what private information is seen by who-knows-who.
4. Posting a child’s name in a photo caption Just don’t do it. And, if someone else adds a tag to one of your photos with your child’s name, just delete it by clicking “remove tag”.
5. Mentioning being away from home When you do this, you’re letting everyone know that the house is empty.
6. Being found by a search engine You can stop strangers from accessing a profile by going to the Search section of Facebook’s privacy controls and select “Only Friends for Facebook” search results. Be sure the box for Public Search isn’t checked.
7. Permitting youngsters to use Facebook unsupervised. If there’s a young child or teenager in the household who uses Facebook, have an adult in the same household  become one of their online friends and use their e-mail as the contact for the account in order to receive notification and monitor activity.

Read the original Los Angeles Times article here.

Like the internet phenoms they trumpeted, Internet company names of the last decade have been, by turns, wildly inventive, deeply troubled, breathtakingly silly, serviceable (if dull)—and, occasionally, brilliant.

Having christened our share of Internet phenoms, we at Catchword decided to looked back to identify the 10 biggest dot-com naming trends—and their best and worst examples.

(Although, frankly, it was hard to choose just one “worst” in some cases. There were so many Web 2.0 disasters! It was as though the rules of language had ceased to apply.)

Here are the trends and names that rose to the top (and sank to the bottom).

1. The Hookup

But if two words don’t have a discernible relationship with each other—or the brand—it’s a Random Hookup. And we all know how short-lived those are—in this or any realm.

Win: YouTube

Intuitive, catchy, grassroots-y. The retro slang “tube” for TV evokes simpler times and ease of use: clever for a new app that could have been seen as intimidatingly high-tech.

Fail: TalkShoe

Say what? The name is a play on the use of Ed Sullivan’s pronunciation of the word “show” on his long-ago TV show. Like anyone is going to make the connection…

2. The Conjurer

Evocative words can make memorable brand names when they relate to the core of a brand’s story (like Yelp). But the line can be fine between edgy and baffling.

Win: Twitter

Whimsically conjures up users’ sharing short little bursts of information (like birds twittering in a tree)—as well as excitement (”all atwitter”). It’s extendable, too. A whole vocabulary quickly takes flight—from tweet and twitfriend to twipic.

Fail: MOO

Great for cows, milk, cheese, ice cream. Not so great for a site offering printing services.

3. The Letter-Dropper

The problem with this type of coinage is it’s so distinctive you’re almost bound to look like a copycat if you’re not the first out of the gate. And if you drop more than one letter, you’re asking for trouble. (Was Motorola’s SLVR cell phone meant to be Silver or Sliver? And what’s with Scribd?)

Win: Flickr

The image of a camera’s flicker is relevant for photo sharing and reassuringly familiar, while the dropped letter—a new naming convention—suggested cutting-edge technology.

Fail: iStalkr

Creepy.

4. The Assembly Line

Names assembled from word parts with meaningful associations can be rich and unexpected (witness Gizmodo, the gadget blog). But tone and messaging need to be just right.

Win: Wikipedia

The unusualness of the name establishes it as a fresh player, while the evocation of both encyclopedias and speed (”wiki” is Hawaiian for “quick”) is spot on.

Fail: Nupedia

The flatfooted claim of newness sounds dated from day one. Plus it’s risky to stake an identity on newness in internet-land. Before long, this premise is far from “nu.”

5. The Misspeller

This kind of brand name often spells disaster: hard to remember (Ideeli, Scrybe), confusing to pronounce and spell (Myngle, Wotnext, Gravee), and reeking of URL-search desperation (Itzbig, Profilactic, Fairtilizer).

Win: Boku

French word “beaucoup” is on the money for an online payment service—and for many Americans, the misspelling is actually more intuitive and inviting.

Fail: Cuil

Meant to be pronounced “cool,” but who’s gonna get that? Rule No. 1: Your name shouldn’t need to come with a pronunciation guide.

6. The Wordster

Another convention that ages fast. And there’s nothing more pathetic in naming than a transparent attempt to appear cool (cases in point: Dogster, Agester, Talkster).

Win: Friendster

Not exciting, we’ll grant you, but the intuitiveness of the name helped usher in the era of social networking.

Fail: Napster

In light of its ensuing legal woes, to highlight the “kidnapping” of music is probably not the best idea (to put it kindly).

7. The Double or Nothing

Doubling a letter in a real word only works when the word remains recognizable, and the addition of the second letter serves some purpose, other than to complicate spelling (as in Gawwk).

Win: Digg

Intuitive and evocative, the double “g” underscores the digging nature of research and is graphically interesting.

Fail: Diigo

A social bookmarking site, the double “i” destroys the semantic connection and confuses pronunciation. (Is it Dee-go or Dih-go?) Plus, coming on the heels of Digg, it seems hopelessly derivative.

8. The eThing, the iThing, the meThing, the myThing

“e/i” shorthand quickly becomes redundant in the internet space, although it spawns many workhorse names: serviceable, if dull. The me/my thing (as in mySpace) tends to be similarly predictable and unremarkable. (Now, myBad—that would be interesting…)

Win: iContact

For a provider of email marketing, the “i” works on three levels: “I contact,” “eye contact,” and, of course, “Internet contact.”

Fail: eSnailer, eBaum’s World, eXpresso…

9. The Empty Vessel

A word without recognizable semantic roots can be a useful umbrella name for a company that may want to branch out in different directions. But it needs to be pronounceable and have relevant sound symbolism. Otherwise, it’s not an Empty Vessel—it’s Alphabet Soup. Like Disaboom, Xoopit, Yebol, and Goozex. Cover your ears.

Win: Kazaa

Recalls huzzah or hurrah, conveying excitement. (Sample exclamation: “Kazaa! I just downloaded Season One of Six Feet Under, FOR FREE!!!”)

Fail: Eefoof

Vintage Web 2.0: hard to spell, silly—and utterly meaningless.

10. The Foreigner

Words in little-known languages can also make good empty-vessel names, especially if their meaning provides a springboard into their brand story. The trick is to find words that are easy to pronounce and pleasing to the American ear (like Kijiji, a communal website with a Swahili name meaning “village”).

Win: Hulu

Good empty vessel name for an entertainment company that wants to keep its options open. (Interestingly, the word means “empty gourd” in Mandarin.) The rhyming word is playful, and by evoking hula hoops, it suggests fun.

Fail: Jwaala

Talk about a tongue-twister.

The Coming Decade

As for Internet company naming trends of the coming decade: Companies will demand more meaningful brand names, as far from Web 2.0 flights of fancy as possible; they’ll be willing to pay a premium for real-word or lightly coined domain names; and they will be creative in the messages they explore—as long as they’re relevant to the brand.

Like Internet companies themselves, it appears, Internet naming will be coming back down to earth.

Why did Facebook do this? According to the LA Times, it’s simply good business. For them, not necessarily for you. Read the Op-ed piece here.

For a primer on all the great truck food, check out this video from the folks at WunderBlog covering their recent truck tasting tour. Their first stop is at TLofts.

LA Food Truck Tour from Terry Wunder on Vimeo.

This event runs counter to the cosmetic industry’s “gift with purchase” promotions, but the executives at Estee Lauder are viewing this as a way to bring a more contemporary image to the brand and perhaps attract a younger buyer as well. And, since the photos will have an Estee Lauder logo in the background, the company can likely expect to increase its brand presence on Facebook and other social sites.

Read more

Testimonials

According to Mary Engle, associate director of ad practices at the commission, the FTC is changing its guidelines on endorsement so that advertisers will no longer be able  to use statements like “Results may vary” as a way to justify claims that are counter to the norm of a product or services’ expected performance.

David Vladeck,  head of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said, “Disclaimers of guidelines are not working. Misuse has been especially prevalent in weight-loss products.

“In the FTC’s review of 300 ads, two-thirds used consumer testimonials. Few showed realistic claims, and disclosures of atypical results were flashed too quickly to read. ‘Results may vary’ does not adequately inform consumers that claims are outliers or extreme cases. They do not disclose results consumers should realistically expect. That is the main problem.”

The changes to the guidelines will take affect this year.

Bloggers

The Associate Press reports that under new guidelines approved the by the FTC,  bloggers will now be required to disclose any gifts or payments they receive for reviewing a company’s product. The penaly for noncompliance is a fine of up to $11,000 per violation.

According to Jason Witt, SVP and GM of MTV’s digital advertising unit, the five-second pre-roll hits viewers in the sweet spot and outperformed longer length videos.

If the ad is too disruptive, users will tune out, Witt said. You don’t have to be in their face to make an impression.

Witt discusses the study in this video originally published on Beet TV.