Score one more for Facebook’s “act first, apologize later” strategy.

Last month the company announced it would make user information – including phone numbers – available to application developers. But they wouldn’t get access to the data until after they got express permission “through the usual permission dialogues,” according to the INQUIRER.

After only three days, however, Facebook suspended the program, indicating it had received feedback that users weren’t exactly clear on when they would and would not be giving up access to their information, even with the standard permissions dialogue boxes. At the time, Facebook said:

[W]e are making changes to help ensure you only share this information when you intend to do so. … We look forward to re-enabling this improved feature in the next few weeks.But how much information did the developers get in those three days? And why does Facebook want to give it to them anyway?

These are among the questions that the House of Representatives Privacy Caucus wants answered, PCWorld.com reports. Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), who co-chair the caucus, wrote a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking for “specifics”: How was the information to be shared? How was the program vetted? Why did Facebook decide to suspend the program?

Read entire article.

CyberCoders, a worldwide recruiting firm, has analyzed hiring statistics from a pool of more than 12,000 CyberCoders job listings to determine the top 10 tech jobs for 2011 — focusing on which job types offer the most open positions, career growth and compensation. CyberCoders finds that technical candidates often make more, are in higher demand, and have a better chance for career growth versus candidates who apply for marketing or health care positions.

Matt Miller, Chief Technology Officer of CyberCoders, says, “There is a resurgence of companies hiring tech candidates caused in part by industries which need to automate their business systems.” Miller says, “Automating business systems often results in an increased need for software engineers and technical specialty positions, especially among start-ups.” At the beginning of 2011, CyberCoders had more than 1,400 available positions in technology, up 196 percent from the previous year.

The slideshow highlights CyberCoders’ top 10 technical positions for 2011 ranked by salary.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW SLIDESHOW

Customers buying cheap ad packages were extremely happy and loyal (well over 90% retention).  They got a great value and bought a product that they understood.

But as the advertising become more sophisticated and expensive, advertiser churn became a major drag.

It was like running a 100 yard dash wearing MC Hammer parachute pants.  (Not that I’ve ever actually done this).

The initial sales came easy, but small business advertisers buying online media left at triple or quadruple the rate of the traditional print Yellow Pages.

There were a couple problems . . .

Gone with the Wind Poster
(Online Advertisers are often Gone with the Wind)

No Penalty for Leaving

The traditional Yellow Pages model paginates a directory based on size of ads and then seniority of advertisers.  So the largest ads are placed first in the category, and among ads of the same size, the advertiser who has been buying that size ad for the longest comes ahead of advertisers who have not been customers as long.

This is a powerful customer retention tool, because even if an advertiser is having a bad year, or doubts the value of his advertisement, he is often reluctant to reduce his spending or to sit out for a year because he will lose the preferential position he has earned from years of faithful participation.

Some directories have 50 or 100 pages of attorneys, plumbers, or roofers.  The more businesses participating, the more painful is the thought of losing the position.

No Reward for Staying

Most online advertising does not have a meaningful reward for customer retention nor a substantial penalty for early withdrawal.

On Google, if you want a better position, just increase your budget or your bid amount.  Positioning of ads changes moment to moment, so no one company owns the position.

This makes it easy for advertisers to drop out and jump back in later.  One bad day, and a major campaign can be tossed out the window.

Social media does nothing to change this, providing little stability or predictability for small advertisers.

Tips for Online Publishers

A company wishing to have sustained success selling online advertising would do well to build a model that combines substantial rewards for customer loyalty and substantial risk of loss for failing to maintain a program.

One method of doing this is to sell exclusive positions and to drive meaningful, quality traffic to the site.

The trick is to balance the consumer’s need for accurate information and the advertiser’s need for consumer attention.

This is probably best accomplished in narrow niches combined with hyper-local targeting.

Post your thoughts here.  http://bit.ly/5Uvcb9

Dick Larkin
Dick Larkin
The Small Business Commando
Dick @ DickLarkin.com

———————————————————————————–

FOUR LESSONS IN IT DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING FROM AN FAA OUTAGE
http://go.techtarget.com/r/10130216/6358329
Linda Tucci, Senior News Writer

What can CIOs learn about IT disaster recovery planning from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) recent computer problems, which caused flight delays and cancellations at airports across the country? Plenty, say disaster recovery experts.

“Here we have a system that is vital to the flow of air traffic in the United States. It is hard to imagine how many dollars are riding on people getting to their destinations on time,” said Gene Ruth, who covers disaster recovery (DR) at Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group Inc. “You have a failure in the network and there is no ability to set up a disaster recovery site immediately? That is completely unacceptable.”

The root cause of the FAA outage, which lasted nearly five hours, was reportedly the failure of a circuit board inside a router at the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI) facility in Salt Lake City.

Details on why the backup router did not engage are still unavailable. The failure brought down a flight management system, forcing air traffic controllers to rely on faxes and emails to communicate flight plans.

The FAA attributed the outage to a software configuration problem, suggesting the single-component failure was compounded by a configuration management failure.

READ THE FULL TIP
http://go.techtarget.com/r/10130217/6358329

Quick Intermission: FAA is a large org and this article may be directed mostly to larger organizations, but small businesses also need to realize the importance of having a disaster recovery and business continuity plan. For large organizations, failure to have an effective BCDR plan may cause major embarassment, but for small businesses it may mean the entire life of the business. Do you have a BCDR plan?

—————————————————-

Eleven Questions
CIOs Should Ask Their IT Managers
Every business is looking for ways to be more efficient. You know information technology is critical — you can’t be in business without it. But what is your IT really costing you? Making the right choices around technology is critical to the success of your business. Finding out becomes a lot easier when you know the right questions to ask. This technology brief provides tips to get you started and how Red Hat can help.

This document is free to IT Business Edge members and it’s easy to download. Just click on the button or image of the document and follow the simple instructions.

Click link to download the whitepaper: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/offer.aspx?o=02760010em1203

Quick Intermission: As a small to medium size enterprise, you more than likely don’t have a CIO, but you may have an IT Manager or may be dealing with an IT Consulting firm. Read and see how you can find best value from your IT Team…

————————————————————————————

HOW TO DRIVE A SUCCESSFUL WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGY IMPLEMENTATION
http://go.techtarget.com/r/10169189/6358329
Niel Nickolaisen, Contributor

A few months ago, I was talking with the CIO of a midsized steel manufacturing company about his approach to implementing Web 2.0 technologies at his company. He was adamant that his company would not and could not support the use of such things by its employees. When I pressed him for reasons why this steel company would not deploy Web 2.0, he gave me two very clear reasons:

First, by implementing Web 2.0 technologies, his employees could either intentionally or unintentionally leak company trade secrets.

Second, if Web 2.0 technologies were permitted, large groups of employees would spend their time updating their Facebook pages and profiles rather than doing real work.

To be honest, these reasons have not deterred me from pursuing my own Web 2.0 technology implementation at my company. If I have an issue with employees sharing company intellectual property, I expect that happens whether I deploy Web 2.0 technologies or not. And if my employees are not getting work done because they spend their time on Facebook, I have a management problem, not a Web 2.0 problem. In my opinion, the rewards of Web 2.0 far outweigh the risks.

READ THE FULL TIP
http://go.techtarget.com/r/10169190/6358329

Final Note: Again something directed to CIOs and IT Executives, but any business owner who have to deal employees, computers and the Internet will be able to get some nuggets out of this.

Yesterday, I wanted to introduce another section of the site that I plan to do every Thursday, I call it “Geek Mail”. I subscribe to a whole bunch of mailing lists that has something to do with Technology, Security and a whole bunch of other stuff that is essentially the overall theme of this blog. Sometimes I get to read some of them, but most of the time they languish in my mailbox as “clutter”.

So I figured, I post some of them here (at least the intro and the link to the actual article, don’t wanna get dinged on some weird copyright infringement thingamajig)… I see this as having three benefits: (1) it’ll force me to read more, since I’ll try not to post anything that don’t make any sense to me;  (2) hopefully some of you will get some valuable nuggets out of these articles; (3) If the links don’t get outdated, it’ll help create my own personal knowledgebase just in case I am researching something, which you can use as well.

A quick disclaimer: Some of the links will require you to subscribe to their newsletter or whatever else they are offering. Please read and use your common sense. I have nothing to do with these people, I am much of a browser of their sites as you are and I am not getting paid on any of this stuff (If ever I am paid for anything I write – you will know). It is for your information and if you find value on the info, it is your job and your responsibility to take the necessary steps to get and properly use the info.

So without further ado, Let’s Read Geek Mail:

IBM Smart Business — Rewriting the Rules of IT for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses
From the PC to the Internet to every piece of hardware and software in between, technology innovation has been a key factor in helping small and medium-sized businesses in their struggle to provide better customer service, improve efficiencies, respond to competitive threats, efficiently grow their business, and increase the bottom line. IBM® can help. Introducing IBM Smart Business, a new three-in-one solution that makes it easier than ever to find, run, and manage your business applications. Search for applications across multiple suppliers using the Smart Market, run those applications on the Smart Cube, and then manage them with the Smart Desk — all with one single point of contact for troubleshooting support. Read this white paper to learn more.  CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE WHITEPAPER

Improving Process Flexibility: How to Respond Quickly to Changing Market Demands by Streamlining Processes
Sponsored By:    Oracle Corporation
Midsized organizations are under increased pressure to not only freeze expenditures but to also produce more return than ever from existing assets. Read this whitepaper and learn strategies to improve process flexibility and transparency through centralizing data management. Discover how your firm can:

• Achieve elevated ROI
• Adapt more easily to changing requirements
• Identify problems easier and resolve them more quickly

Achieve ROI on a tight budget. Learn more.

Don Intermission: I thought I will be able to go through a whole bunch of e-mails, but this next set came from one e-mail and I think it should be enough geekiness for the week. I think it is pretty timely, too since it deals with Windows 7 Security… Windows? Security? For some reason everytime these two words are put together the next phrase that comes to mind is “about as many blonde jokes”…

Take a look at Windows 7 application control and remote access
by Michael S. Mimoso, Editor – mmimoso@…

Have you started looking at the built-in security features in Windows 7? Some of our best security experts and contributors sure have, and they’ve been pretty eager to share their early insights with SearchMidmarketSecurity.com readers. In case you’ve missed it, here are some links to the technical content our experts have been filing:

How to use Microsoft Windows 7 AppLocker for whitelisting applications
Windows 7 AppLocker is Microsoft’s latest tool to help organizations block the execution of unwanted applications on endpoints.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/9950432/6358329

How to automate and apply Microsoft Windows 7 AppLocker rules
Microsoft Windows 7 AppLocker enables administrators to automate rules generation, but proceed slowly to get a feel for its whitelisting capabilities.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/9950433/6358329

Understand the pros and cons of Microsoft Windows 7 DirectAccess
The upcoming Windows 7 features Microsoft Windows 7 DirectAccess, a built-in secure remote access capability.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/9950434/6358329

Tradeoffs and advantages of network access control with Microsoft NAP
Microsoft NAP’s endpoint security policy compliance checks and integration with third-party security products make it an attractive option over traditional network access control solutions.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/9950435/6358329

MORE ON SEARCHMIDMARKETSECURITY.COM:

Get more out of your security event log data
Your network has plenty to say about your organization’s threat posture. These three tips will help you get the most out of security log management tools.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/9950436/6358329

How to choose hosted Web security services
Hosted Web security services that analyze Web traffic for malware are an attractive alternative to on-premise Web security gateways.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/9950437/6358329