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Google has again shaken the Internet tree in a way that will raise more than a few eyebrows. In a nutshell, Google is reassessing its working relationship with the world’s largest potential market, China, as a result of recent security breaches. How this plays out over time could have significant impact on how China and the world get along economically. Google’s official blog gives an overview in the first paragraph of the post that is both informative and scary. Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different. How it was different is that the targets of much of security breach were Chinese activists (read: people who prefer freedom over censorship) who had Gmail accounts. A quick summary of the main points of this new approach to China from Google is summed up like this. It wasn’t just Google who was targeted and hit. There were 20 other US companies and they are apparently in the process of sorting this out themselves. Google states: “We have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves. “ There was routine third party access of Gmail accounts of human rights activists related to China who are based in China, US and Europe. This access is likely due to malware and phishing scams. Google then recommends for folks to be up to date on their security for their computers and is careful to “play nice” with China by saying In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today. They also point out that when they entered the Chinese market in 2006 they were doing it with a watchful eye. So what’s the result of this? These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China. The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised. So Google makes a stand that says they are not going to censor their results and if there is no way to reconcile then they may need to move on. While the Chinese people are clearly in favor of Baidu as their engine of choice , if Google were to say that they will not do business in China what kind of pressure does that place on other companies to possibly isolate the biggest and fastest developing market in the world? This could get interesting.

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Google and China: Maybe They Can’t Get Along

Define Your Purpose Before you go changing anything around on your twitter profile to make it more professional you must decide what the purpose of the account is. Is your purpose to connect with friends and family? Is your purpose to share important updates to customers of your store or online business? Is your purpose to attract potential clients and to give them an understanding of why they should choose your product or service? If your purpose is only to connect with friends and family then you don’t really need to have a professional presence in my opinion. But if your purpose is business related then the following steps will help you create a professional presence on twitter. Sometimes people will have a personal and a business-related purpose for using twitter. In those cases I recommend having a personal twitter account and a separate business related account on twitter. 1. Get a custom background To create a professional presence on twitter you want to have your own unique background. The default background is used by millions of people and you want to set yourself apart. There are many websites that will help you create a customized background for your twitter account. And the best part is that most of them are free. To create a custom background for my twitter account I used Twitbacks.com. 2. Use a picture of yourself Twitter allows you to have a small avatar picture associated with your account and I recommend using a personal photograph for this. It doesn’t have to be a professional headshot where your hair and makeup is perfect; it just needs to be a picture of you. This allows your followers to connect your tweets and messages with a real person. This personal touch adds credence to what you say. 3. Your phone number I like to post my phone number on my twitter account for all of my followers to see. When followers see a phone number listed with a twitter account it gives them confidence that if they had a problem or question there is someone they could call. I know some of you will be uncomfortable doing this and it’s completely understandable. But if you run a small business or work in any line of sales then you really need to have your phone number listed on your twitter account. To my knowledge twitter does not allow you to actually list the phone number as part of your account. But you can have it be part of your background. In the example below you can see my phone number is on the far left side: 4. List your email address You will also want to list your e-mail address on your twitter account. Just as with phone numbers, you can’t actually list your e-mail on your account but you can include it as part of your background. I know some of you will be concerned about posting your e-mail and receiving spam. To deal with this I created a second e-mail address that I used specifically for my business. And this is the e-mail address that I post on my twitter account. Luckily Gmail has a very good spam filter and so I actually get very few spam messages in my inbox each week. 5. Be professional in your tweets People follow you for a reason. Whether it’s to hear about new products your store is offering or updates about the cause you represent, people are listening to what you say. And the minute you deviate from that you will lose followers. So before you post a tweet ask yourself, “Why are people following me? And is this new tweet something they want to hear about?” If the answer is no or if you’re not sure then do not post the new tweet. 6. Tweet regularly but don’t overdo it I will usually tweet something in the morning and then sometimes in the evening. 1 to 3 tweets today is optimal. You want to your followers to see something from you each day but you don’t want to overdo it. The last thing you want is for one of your followers to see that the last 20 tweets are all from you. When this happens to me I immediately unfollow the person. 7. Only follow people that you’re interested in A popular way to get followers is to follow a whole bunch of people and hope that many of them follow you back. This results in you having 3,000 followers and you are following 3,000 people yourself. When people see this it looks less professional. They know there is no way you can be listening to what all 3000 people are tweeting about. On the other hand it is much more impressive if you follow just a few people and yet have hundreds of followers yourself. When people see this they are more likely to follow you in my opinion here. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . 7 Ways To Create A Professional Twitter Presence

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7 Ways To Create A Professional Twitter Presence

Performics reports that Twitter may be the place to get your brand mentioned if you want social networkers’ attention, according to MediaPost . Nearly half (48%) of those who saw a brand mentioned on Twitter turned to a search engine to research that brand. Other social networks lagged far behind, with 34% researching. However, the study of 3000 active social networkers showed that 70% were on Facebook, and 22% were on Twitter. So of those respondents, 32 researched a brand from Twitter, while Facebook sent 714 running to their search engine of choice. 30% of those surveyed admitted they’ve learned about a product, service or brand from a social network (considerably more than the

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Consumers Sharing Brand Opinions on Social Networks