There is no quick fix for online privacy protection.  Unfortunately the internet is not an opt-in universe where the user has the power to check a box of whether or not to allow data tracking companies to track her clicks across the web.

What you’ll realize in reading this article that what most people don’t realize is that a visit to one article on a site like CNN actually allows dozens of companies to track your web browsing activities from that moment on.  Yes, they are doing much more than tracking you on that one website which didn’t tell you that these companies have deals with them to suck your information.

Another little known fact is that the goldmine for these companies is that they can track you because you are a friend of someone else.  For instance, if you are my Facebook friend and a data retrieval company is tracking me, they will be able to reach your information because we are connected.  This is truly the dark side of online connectivity.

Every day we go online, read news, share on social media sites, listen to music, research everything from how to cook a recipe to how the latest health fad can slim our waistlines. Each click of the mouse as we do these things leaves breadcrumb trails of our interests, needs and websites we stumble upon.

We all know that, right? But do you know about Flash cookies that leave an unlimited number of cookies on your computer? These cookies track your web browsing activity for hundreds of companies you don’t even know exist. They may have access to the information you leave about your finances, health, relationships, interests, birthdays, preferences, address, occupation, age and more. This information affects which online advertising you are served up, which credit card offers you are presented with, while also creating a profile of you with both correct and incorrect assumptions based on these connections.

I learned about Flash cookies, or Flash Local Shared Objects (LSOs), while watching a Ted Talk video of Gary Kovacs, the CEO of Mozilla, describe the new free Collusion Firefox add-on. Kovacs’ talk on Tracking the Trackers is a wakeup call to how much privacy we have unknowingly given away as the price of using the internet.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Behavioral tracking, when done with our permission, can help companies we like to connect us to deals, offers, products and services that make our lives better. But the reality today is that the majority of the companies that track us online and collect data on our activities never asked for permission and we never would give them permission if they did ask. As an industry described by Kovacs as being worth over $39 billion, it is safe to assume they will fight regulation and giving consumers the power to choose which companies they allow to track their online information.

Rules and regulations for consumer protection against the darker side of behavioral targeting have not been created. If Lori Anderson, the author of I Know Who You Are and I Know What You Did, has her way, we will eventually create a social networking constitution that may be the first positive step in rectifying this situation.

To protect yourself and your family today you can add Collusion, Better Privacy and No Script to your Firefox browser. If you are a Chrome browser user you can add Keep My Opt-Outs and Do Not Track PlusChrome browser extensions and follow these steps to manually remove Flash cookies from your computer.

This article was originally published in The Huffington Post

Technology is amazing.  We do so many things each day that were impossible just a few years ago (like talking on cell phones, streaming movies to TVs and phones, surfing the internet at 30,000 feet, and having Siri at our beck and call) without thinking about them.

At the 2012 Coachella festival no matter how great any of the dozens of bands were, what will be remembered is that a lifelike hologram of 2Pac had him entertaining tens of thousands of concert goers …and performing with Snoop Dogg from the grave.  Watch the video and have your mind blown.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m still wondering why viral video has been a recurring topic on my blog, but mine is not to ask.  This is what’s been up, so it’s what I’m posting.  I gave the cats some play last week, so now it’s time for the dogs.

OK Go’s latest video, for their new single White Knuckles, had over 1 million views in the first 24 hours.  Nice.  They took what they did with their “Here it Goes Again” video (infamously now known as “The Treadmill Video” and they stepped it up.  (Bad pun, but it fit, right?)

Check out what they shot in one take with 4 band members, 12 trainers, two furniture movers, 12 dogs, one goat, 38 buckets, and a bunch of furniture.  A deeper background story on this is on Gizmodo.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This article was originally published on Oxstein Labs.

Every company would love to be featured in a viral video that inspires an adoring public to voluntarily forward and share the video with all of their friends.  The trouble with trying to create a viral video is that you’re trying to manufacture an organic process.  This ironically smacks of everything that is the opposite of what makes social media great.

But if you look at the Top 10 Viral Advertising Videos of All Time, you’ll see that 2 out of the 10 were produced in house and therefore pretty organic, while the other 8 videos were developed by big time advertising agencies. Blendtec is #1 with a series of hilarious “Will it Blend?” videos that puts everything from an iPhone, an iPad, a Wii, a Red Bull, silly putty, diamonds, a crowbar and glow sticks to Chuck Norris in a blender.  And really, who isn’t going to 1) watch it and 2) want to tell their friends about it?

Click here to view the embedded video.

So your chances of making your own advertising viral video are slim, but not impossible.  The videos that organically go viral are things like cats, dogs and men getting hit in the crotch; basically the clips that made America’s Home Video’s a hit TV show.  Those elements don’t translate well into corporate branding though.

If you are inclined to see if your creativity can reach a mass audience you can find tips online, but you’ll also notice that the latest information in that area is from 2006 and 2007, which is like 20 years ago in interweb time.  Some of those tips are basic and still helpful today, but others are outdated in our ever-changing online world.

Which means that there is no perfect formula to manufacture and duplicate the natural process of people making a video viral.  The majority of ‘viral videos’ that companies set out to make, or paid others to have made, never went viral.   Just like it’s hard to manufacture funny, it’s hard to manufacture a short and entertaining advertisement guaranteed to go viral.  And that’s a good thing.

The best you can do is to develop strong relationships with your customers, find out what they love, talk with influencers in your field and study the elements that have triggered videos to go viral.  Once you use that research to make a killer video, you can do online outreach to spread it (or hire a firm to do it for greater reach).

Even then there is no guarantee that your video will go viral, but it will be seen and spread to your target audience.  Besides,  it’s worth it to work on a creative way to serve your message to people who are passionate about what your company is all about.  So make some cool videos, share them with people who will care, and realize that there is no magic bullet for automatically making videos go viral; that’s why there are so few a year that go viral.

This article was originally posted at Oxstein Labs.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here we are a short week after Old Spice enjoyed the biggest viral marketing campaign of 2010.  The Old Spice name is on the tip of millions of tongues and being read in tens of thousands of articles like this one.  And the big question is just starting to be asked, “Did that successful marketing campaign improve sales?”

The answer so far is “No.”  But to make a fuss about that at this early stage is a waste of time; not that it will stop writers across the blogoshpere and in the corporate media from pointing it out.  In fact you’ll probably read a lot about how Old Spice sales for 2010 are down 7%.  (Yes, even more PR generated from this campaign.)

Does a sales drop happening concurrently with Old Spice’s most successful marketing campaign in years mean that the commercials and viral videos drove sales down?  Of course not.  Correlation does not necessarily equal causation.

It also means that just because they didn’t generate a spike in sales, there is no way to know how well Q1 and Q2 2010 marketing efforts will help Old Spice in the coming months and years.  Especially if they develop ongoing social media marketing efforts to engage with old customers and new fans.

Short term numbers for the Old Spice Guy campaign were off the charts.  With over 5.9 million You Tube views and over 22,500 comments over the course of a few days, there is nothing to complain about.  And by the way, all of the 180 videos posted to You Tube for this campaign will now be working for Old Spice 24/7.  A tremendous marketing foundation has been built.

What the brilliant Old Spice viral videos will prove in the long run is what Scott Monty, the head of social media for Ford Motor Company, says often, “Social media marketing is a commitment, not a campaign.”

Thinking that social media marketing efforts will result in immediate sales is short-sighted and will lead to unfulfilled expectations.  No, that’s not what companies want to hear.  Yes, it’s the actual truth and wanting it to be different will not make it so.

Social media marketing done well will increase brand awareness, generate positive word of mouth and drive interest in your company.  Traditional ROI metrics used for quarterly reviews cannot measure these benefits, which inaccurately undervalues their importance to the health of a growing business.

While social media marketing may show a positive effect on short term sales, that is not where the value lies.  The benefits of social media marketing are in building strong relationships and loyalty that drive up the lifetime value of repeat customers.

I loved the Old Spice videos.  They were some of the most interesting and creative marketing that has ever hit the interwebs.  My awareness of the Old Spice brand, like yours no doubt, is higher than ever.  Does that mean that I ran out and bought their products? Nope.

Was your reaction to the videos to go out and buy their products immediately? …or was it to click on some more of their entertaining content? …or to post the videos on your Facebook page or blog?  …or to email links to the videos to your friends?

My dad still uses Old Spice and I never have.  I’ll now consider them to be a hipper brand that is doing a great job at updating their image.  I will pay more attention to them now and might possibly buy a product from them in the future, though right now I have no plans to do so.  But before this campain they weren’t even on my radar and if they keep it up I may become a new and repeat customer.

This post first appeared on the Oxstein Labs blog.

Isaiah, the new Old Spice pitch man, makes the men laugh and the ladies swoon.  His commercials generated so much heat that television could not contain him.  Now Isaiah and Old Spice are social media darlings spreading viral smiles across the globe.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Isaiah is now in the pantheon of commercial celebrities like the “What’s the Beef?” Wendy’s Lady and the Burger King King who most recently showed up on chat roulette giving away coupons in a smart social media play. While Isaiah is at his peak, and after the World Cup domination of Twitter has ended, Old Spice rolled out this campaign that everybody’s talking about.

In a brilliant PR move,  Isaiah has spent the last couple of days responding directly to bloggers, journalists, celebrities and random Twitter followers through well crafted, funny and sensual You Tube videos.  He even asked a woman to marry a man who requested that Isaiah deliver the proposal for him. The “Isaiah Talks to You” social media marketing campaign hits high notes few have seen.

The Old Spice You Tube channel is bursting at the seams with entertaining videos that you can’t help sharing with others.Though you won’t have enough time to watch them all at least check out the Alyssa Milano response above (which will surely get Isaiah a date) and the Justine Bateman response.

Rick Bakas gives a good overview of why this social media marketing campaign is so effective with some points that are worth repeating. The big takeaway for anyone interested in beefing up their social media marketing is to connect with influencers who care about your product or service.

Isaiah’s first videos responded to bloggers and journalists that had written about the Old Spice commercials.  They have huge audiences, and like all people, they like to hear their own name.  If Isaiah responded to you in a You Tube video how many people would you tell?

The main ingredients of the Old Spice social media marketing campaign come together to show how online and offline branding can work amazingly well together with good strategy.  What we can all learn from this, besides the fact that sex still sells (especially when the bare chested man speaks directly to the ladies by name), is that social media marketing has hit the mainstream.

Major corporations are building relationships with their audiences in more and more creative ways.  Social media has moved the needle to being a very powerful tool that any brand can use to generate awareness, interest and more sales.  So who is your Isaiah and when are you rolling out your next campaign?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A friend sent this to me on Facebook and it struck me.  We talk about how things have changed so much in our lifetimes, but we usually reference things like 8 track tapes and vinyl records switching to compact discs and bytes on an iPod. Did you realize that the patent for the compact disc was filed in 1966 and the first one wasn’t produced until 1982?

But think about how much your life has changed just in the last 10 years from advances in technology.  Can you remember life before you had an email address or a cell phone?  This video is from a newscast in 1981, almost 20 years ago.  Look how how far we’ve come with the advancement of Moore’s Law.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What made watching this even funnier to me was that I saw my friend’s email on my iPad and clicked a link to go to Facebook to read the message.  Then I clicked into YouTube and watched this on a thin crisp iPad screen.  That’s normal today.  ‘Normal’ when this was broadcast was to move the rabbit ears on a TV the size of a bank safe to get good reception and cable TV was a new phenomenon.

I was recently interviewed by social media edutainer Grandma Mary for her show.  We talked about the psychology behind why social media works and some other tips for businesses engaging in social media.  Don’t let the blue hair fool you, the lady is much smarter than she looks.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m not enough of a fanboy to already own an iPad, but most of my friends have one already and love them.  If I was a gamer or wanted it for watching Netflix movie streams maybe I would have been an early adopter.

Instead, I’ll wait 6 months and they’ll probably release one with a camera, video capabilities or more features.  For now I’ll enjoy learning about what’s fun and great about the first version by playing with my friend’s iPads.  So far it  just seems like a larger screen to enjoy apps on, but I’m sure that theory will be proved wrong.

Follow my friend Matt Emmi’s blog as he documents his experience of using the iPad to replace his crashed laptop.  He’s moved all of his data to the cloud through Mobile Me and others apps and feels confident he can pull this off.

For now, we can all enjoy a moment of zen from our friends at Blendtec who have blended everything from glow sticks to Chuck Norris.  Now, it’s the iPad’s turn…

Click here to view the embedded video.

I just got my Google Wave invitation yesterday.  I probably won’t have time to play with it to understand it until this weekend.  But after watching this video, it’s easy to see how the social web and social email will be transforming how we share and receive content.

The language is not safe for work, but the demo will show you a new way of using the internet.  Besides, it’s the best scene in Pulp Fiction and hearing Samuel L. Jackson’s soliloquy is always a treat.

Click here to view the embedded video.