Download our SOPA and PIPA Blacklist Cheat Sheet.

The Global Intellectual Property Center reported the sale of counterfeit goods over the internet reached $135 billion last year. In response to these internet crimes, The Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act legislation have been developed. While this legislation may sound like it will something mildly positive but in reality, both regulations have serious potential to negatively change the internet as we know it.

Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill in the House of Representatives
• Designed to block access to sites containing unauthorized copyright material.
• Content owners and U.S. government would be given power to request court orders to shut down suspected sites associated with piracy
• Government and cop rotations could block any site, foreign or domestic, for just one infringing link.

Consequences
• Block access to infringing domains by suing to have links removed.
• Advertisers, payment processors, and internet service providers would be forbidden from doing business with infringers based overseas.
• Requires search engines to remove foreign infringing sites from their results.
• Email providers may be forced to censor certain links you send or receive.
• Anyone found guilty of streaming copyrighted content without permission 10 or more times within 6 months could face up to 5 years in jail.
• These acts could threaten the security and stability of the global DNS.
The White House criticizes the bill in a statement saying “Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small” and “We must avoid creating new cyber security risks or disruption the underlying architecture of the Internet”.

List of major participants of January 18th website blacked out in protest of SOPA:
• Wikipedia
• Reddit
• WordPress for Business Websites
• Political Buddies
• Good Evening
• Twitpic – censored versions
• Hacktivist group, Anonymous
• Major League Gaming
• The Economic Populist
• Blue Interactive Agency

Download our PIPA Blacklist Cheat Sheet.

Don’t miss this opportunity to stand up in protection of our free speech and the internet as we know it. Continue to follow Blue Interactive blog, Facebook page, and Twitter to stay up to date on integrated marketing advice and stay abreast of current events in the industry.  Blue Interactive Agency offers a complete range of interactive marketing services, including social media marketing, search engine optimization, search engine marketing and more. To learn more, call 954-779-2801 today.

Blue Interactive Blacks Out Website in Protest of SOPA and PIPA is a post from: Blue Interactive Agency

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Using enterprise-quality data from uberVU, a social media monitoring and engagement platform, Raven’s new real-time social monitor taps into millions of social conversations on more than 20 networks, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WordPress, Flickr and more. According to Raven’s

• Automatic sentiment. Social Monitor automatically assigns positive, neutral or negative sentiment to every mention—but it’s editable for when the algorithms miss the mark.
• Multi-language monitoring. Social Monitor supports searches in 24 languages, including Russian, Chinese, French, Italian and Arabic.
• Author and influencer tracking. Keep up with individual authors, or refine your search to monitor only authors with thousands of Twitter followers.

The new real-time social stream lets you merge your Social Monitor searches with your Twitter accounts, enabling you to interact with them in on simple place. Features include:

• Real-time social management. Post and schedule messages directly from the Social Stream, even push to more than one account. Reply, retweet and favorite message in real-time for multiple accounts. Need to focus? Easily toggle account views on and off.
• Team task management. Is there a complaint conversation you want to take offline? Easily assign a task to anyone on your team.
• Contact management. Notice a Twitter comment by an influencer or lead? Store that person’s contact info in Raven’s Contact Manger with one click.

If you have a Pro or Agency account, your base monthly rate will stay the same. For more information about the launch, refer to Raven’s blog. Blue Interactive Agency uses Raven Tools and a number of other industry-leading internet marketing tools. If you are searching for interactive marketing services in Fort Lauderdale, contact Blue today. From search engine optimization, to social media marketing and SEO copywriting, Blue has the knowledge and experience to improve your brand’s web presence.

Raven Tools Launches Real-Time Social Stream is a post from: Blue Interactive Agency

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Google Ventures, the venture capital investment arm of Google Inc., has invested in Foundation Medicine, a gene-sequencing company that develops sophisticated diagnostics for cancer treatment. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Foundation has extended a Series A round after raising it to $33.5 million last year with the help of Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. This will mark the third investment in gene-sequencing companies that aim to further the field of medicine for Google Ventures. The firm also joined in a second round of funding for DNAnexus, Inc., a platform technology for storing and analyzing genetic data that is aimed at researchers.

“Google Ventures–which has referred to genetic sequencing as a “foundational technology” with massive potential to disrupt diagnostics and treatment of various diseases–now has investments in gene-sequencing tools aimed at research institutions, practicing doctors and curious consumers,” reports WSJ. The company believes that as gene sequencing becomes faster and more affordable, it will graduate from research centers to actual hospitals, starting with cancer care.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – no billion-dollar company is perfect, but Google proves once again that they’re sticking to their “Do No Evil” motto. Whether it’s a billion-dollar company or a small business, giving back to your community is important. Blue Interactive Agency has participated in numerous local charity events, and makes continued efforts to support area nonprofits. If you are interested in interactive marketing services, contact Blue today. From Facebook marketing and Twitter marketing, to search engine optimization and SEO copywriting, Blue can transform your online marketing campaign to help drive ROI. Call 954-779-2801 today for more information.

Google Ventures Invests in Personalized Medicine is a post from: Blue Interactive Agency

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So how can we trust Kuo? In April, the industry insider told AppleInsider that Intel was ramping up Sandy bridge boards and Thunderbolt ports for the MacBook Air deployment later in the year, which turned out to be true. Kuo claims that the so-called “iPhone 5” will feature an improved antennae design, but that there will be “little change to its shape, and users will not see a discernable difference in its appearance.” Although the newest generation of the iPhone won’t look much different, addressing the issues with the antennae is a marked improvement, considering that it was discovered that covering the bottom left corner of the iPhone 4 could reduce reception.

Dubbed “N94,” the new iPhone will be available in both black and white at the time of launch, and will reportedly use the same Gorilla glass for its back panel. Photos of the prototype have already leaked to MacPost (above). Tech bloggers and iPhone users alike have been anticipating a higher resolution, 8 megapixel camera, but all we know for now is that the camera modules will be made by Sony and Omnivision, and will be almost the same height as the iPhone 4 camera.

It still isn’t certain when Apple will release the fifth-generation iPhone, but industry analysts believe it will be either the last week of September or October. Apple is rumored to be building 30 million N94 units by the end of the year, and if they meet their goal of selling all handsets in the holiday quarter, it would easily beat the record of 20.34 million iPhones sold in June 2011. The iPhone, and smartphones in general, are expected to be in the hands of 43 percent of the American population by 2015. Now is the ideal time to consider mobile marketing solutions and mobile application development. Blue Interactive Agency now offers these services, as well as custom software development and video production and animation services. Contact Blue today to enhance your mobile campaign.

iPhone 5: Insiders Reports Underwhelming Changes, October Launch is a post from: Blue Interactive Agency

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The struggle between enjoying an uncensored online social presence while maintaining the appearance of a responsible, mature professional worthy of employment might be officially over. Users will finally be able to pre-approve photos before they’re tagged, a feature many Facebookers have longed for since the network was first established. If you’re not concerned with censoring your pictures, you can make it so that friends can tag you without approval, but tags from non-friends must be approved – which leads to another major change to Facebook profiles: You can now tag anyone (with approval) in a post or photo, whether they’re a friend or not. Facebook is nowmore clear about what untagging means as well, letting you simply untag yourself, asking the photo uploader to remove the picture or blocking that person all together.

In addition, the Publisher bar now allows you to control who can see your location: “the Places icon in the iOS and Android apps have been removed. In its place is a “Nearby” icon that displays recent checkins in your area,” reports Mashable. You can check in to a location via the status update box. Another addition to the Publisher bar is a control mechanism that allows you to go beyond the lock icon that currently lets you hide individual updates from anyone you want; now, the icon will change based on whether it’s a public update, one for friends or a custom status for a friend list or group.

There are more than a dozen new features to be rolled out in the next few days, and most have been well-received. The more user-friendly the social network becomes, the more users it retains and the more new users it attracts. Contact Blue Interactive Agency to find out how you can get your company involved in Facebook marketing and other forms of interactive marketing, like search engine optimization and SEO copywriting. Call 954-779-2801 for more information.

Facebook to Roll Out Major Privacy & Control Changes is a post from: Blue Interactive Agency

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We’ve heard the stories about employees who have been fired for their activity on social networks, and most of us are aware that employers might comb Facebook to conduct a little personal investigation on applicants; but now, there is a new company devoted entirely to trolling the internet to dig up any online dirt from potential employees over the past seven years. Social Intelligence, a year-old start-up, “assembles a dossier with examples of professional honors and charitable work, along with negative information that meets specific criteria: online evidence of racist remarks; references to drugs; sexually explicit photos, text messages or videos; flagrant displays of weapons or bombs and clearly identifiable violent activity,” reports the Times.

Last fall, Social Intelligence came under fire by the Federal Trade Commission for concerns about non-compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, but were found not to be in violation. However, many privacy advocates believe that the practice “invites employers to look at information that may not be relevant to job performance.” Although there have been many instances of prospective employees losing potential job offers due to their online activity, like one woman who posed naked for pictures she posted on an image-sharing site, many experts believe that employers shouldn’t be judging people’s activity in their private lives, away from the workplace.

While less than one-third of Social Intelligence’s data comes from major social platforms like Facebook and Twitter (pulling information mainly from deep Web searches), it is certainly cause for concern for those who use social networks to, well, socialize. Many social network users have already made the choice to remove any incriminating photos, videos or personal exchanges from their accounts once they graduated college or began to apply for jobs, raising the question of whether or not it’s still safe to enjoy a casual, carefree social existence online.

If you are interested in interactive marketing, contact Blue Interactive Agency for expert advice on how to effectively improve and expand your web presence. Expose your brand to an estimated 750 million active users with Facebook marketing, or network with key industry professionals with LinkedIn marketing. No matter what approach you take to social media marketing, you’re virtually guaranteed to see a healthy return on investment.

Social Media Background Checks: The End of Casual Social Networking? is a post from: Blue Interactive Agency

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Unemployment may be rising by the month, but a rapidly growing industry is creating more jobs seemingly by the day. Social media is a flourishing industry, and companies big and small are carving out separate departments just to manage the demanding responsibilities of the newest marketing trend that never sleeps.

Whether it’s a one-man operation at a start-up or a 30+ team effort at a major corporation like Cisco, social media management requires round-the-clock moderation to protect a brand’s reputation from any negative feedback from fans and/or followers. In a recent story by B to B Magazine online, Petra Neiger, senior manager-social media marketing at Cisco Systems, said, “With other communications—white papers, case studies, etc.—you are not on the clock anymore when you complete your deliverables. With social media, even when you stop talking, people are still speaking. People often underestimate the commitment it takes to do social media.” Given the dynamic nature of social media, managers must also keep abreast of industry news daily. Facebook and Twitter may be today’s top dogs, but Google+ is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with, and it’s only a matter of time before competitors create an enhanced microblogging service to rival Twitter.

But constant moderation of social media sites is only one aspect of the job; with so many available avenues to increase web presence, social media managers spend considerable time researching and reviewing the most effective strategies. Regular educational seminars are also necessary to keep the team up to snuff on the latest features and developments within the industry. However, introducing a relatively brand new marketing channel to an established company can also be a challenge – “In my job, my main focus is what I call “enablement’—helping drive adoption internally, and educating and enabling our employees to feel comfortable participating in social media,” Neiger said.

Social media marketing is arguably today’s best tool for increasing brand awareness and managing reputation. With years of experience and countless satisfied clients, Blue Interactive Agency has the knowledge and experience to increase your page rank and convert fans and followers to customers. If you’re searching for a reputable interactive marketing agency in Fort Lauderdale, contact Blue today at 954-779-2801.

Social Media Management: The Hottest Marketing Job That Never Sleeps is a post from: Blue Interactive Agency

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