In this chart the dotted line is the predicted future search volume of each search term.  The current prediction is that searches for “Facebook marketing” will overcome searches for “Google marketing” in August of 2011.

Click to enlarge

The implications for Facebook are clear.  It will see more advertisers spending more money on its advertising platform.  If and how this will effect Google’s bottom line is less clear but one thing is certain, Facebook is now a serious competitor for the dominance of online advertising dollars.

The above is interesting, but the real questions are: Does this make Facebook a good bet for your company’s advertising dollars? And, should you spend less on Google advertising programs to spend more on Facebook?

Before you decide to jump into marketing on Facebook consider why most of us go on Facebook.  The obvious reason is to connect with our friends and family.   Have you ever met a person who goes on Facebook to look at the ads?  Not likely.   At Dew Point Productions we’ve met people who don’t even realize there are ads on Facebook because they are able to so completely ignore the right side of the page where the paid display ads appear.   Of course not everyone ignores these ads, as in many activities on the Internet people get distracted and pulled in to the content that surrounds what they’re intentionally looking at.

One reason not to completely discount display ads on Facebook is the degree to which they let advertisers target their market segment.  If you’re REI and you want to advertise to individuals who like hiking, are over 18 and are based in a city where REI is located, it is easy on Facebook to only have ads show to these folks.  For the moment, Facebook display ads are best suited to building brand awareness.  You can get in front of people who are interested in what you have to offer and show them your ad again and again.  They may not click on your ad right away, but they’ll become aware of you and perhaps think of you when they need a product or service you offer.

Of course, display ads are not the only advertising on Facebook.  Some of the most effective advertising on Facebook is via company pages which offer so much more than a display ad.  A well built page offers the opportunity to show up in people’s news feeds when they like your page leading to more people liking your page.  They offer the opportunity for visitors to interact with your page and by extension your company.  They can show up on other pages and in other ways in people’s news feeds.  For most small businesses a well done Facebook page, which are currently free, offers the best opportunity for marketing via Facebook in 2011.

At some point we believe that Facebook will make some changes to its advertising program and these may occur in 2011.  They may add display ads as sponsored listings above your news feed as Google does above its natural listings.  We also believe that they will find a way to monetize pages which could mean paid or sponsored pages.

While WordPress is calling this a “mandatory security update” it appears to be a bit more situational. There’s apparently a security hole whereby an malicious author could gain access to other areas of your site. If you are the only “author” / admin / editor/ then this is not something you likely need to worry about.

While it is always a good idea to keep your WP version up to date, the term “mandatory security upgrade” may be a bit strong.

Who has to comply with PCI DSS?

Anyone who accepts credit cards for purchases online or off  from any major credit card company including American Express, Diners Club, Discover, Card, JCB, MasterCard and Visa must comply with PCI DSS requirements.

What are the requirements for PCI DSS?

Build and Maintain a Secure Network

Requirement 1: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data
Requirement 2: Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters

Protect Cardholder Data

Requirement 3: Protect stored cardholder data
Requirement 4: Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks

Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program

Requirement 5: Use and regularly update anti-virus software
Requirement 6: Develop and maintain secure systems and applications

Implement Strong Access Control Measures

Requirement 7: Restrict access to cardholder data by business need-to-know
Requirement 8: Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access
Requirement 9: Restrict physical access to cardholder data

Regularly Monitor and Test Networks

Requirement 10: Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data
Requirement 11: Regularly test security systems and processes

Maintain an Information Security Policy

Requirement 12: Maintain a policy that addresses information security

How can you find guidance on complying with PCI DSS?

The best place to find more information about PCI DSS compliance is probably on the PCI Security Standards Council website.  Two documents, which we link to below are particularly useful.  The first gives an overview of what the standards mean while the second helps you determine if you qualify to comply via a self assessment questionnaire or if you need an audit.  And, if you do qualify for the SAQ which one do you need.

https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/pdfs/pci_dss_saq_navigating_dss.pdf

https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/pdfs/instructions_guidelines_v1-1.pdf

In addition to the above your merchant services provider may be able to assist you.

How can Dew Point Productions assist you with PCI DSS compliance?

1) We offer hosting on a PCI DSS compliant server.  Our server has been scanned by COMODO an “Approved Scanning Vendor”  and has passed the required tests to be confirmed compliant.

2) If you’re using WP e-Commerce as your shopping cart we can configure your checkout page to be secure.  You will of course need to purchase an SSL.

Given provisions of the Patriot Act that forced libraries to turn over records and report on who took out certain books, it seems likely that the privacy behind buying and borrowing books is dead.  Since the basis of Amazon’s argument is that to do what NC asks would violate the privacy of what it’s customers are purchasing it seems likely to fail.  Additionally, NC could ask for total sales by customer without the data of what they purchased.  Amazon certainly has this information and the certainly have the ability to sort the records this way and ultimately they can afford the staff time to do it.   The same burden on a small business is huge and while it seems likely Amazon will lose this fight, for the same of small business, we hope they’ll win.

Hmm… sounds fishy.  Herley estimates that if it takes 1 minute per day from every working adult to focus on security the cost is $15.9 billion per year.  Okay that’s a lot of moola, but what’s your actual cost of spending 1 minute per day on security.  Let’s say your  hourly rate is $60.00.  If you spend one minute a day on internet security your costing yourself $1.00.  Chances are you don’t even need to spend a minute a day to have secure passwords, more likely the total task on a yearly basis would be in the hour to two hour range and that’s if you have a lot of passwords.  This is certainly true if you use a secure password manager to automate the tasks you can.  You probably don’t spend more than 20 minutes updating your virus protection yearly.  And, in terms of avoiding phishing, you can learn all you need to know and stay up to date in 20 minutes every six months.  Total yearly time cost, two hours.   So it costs you $120.00 per year to not have your identity stolen, not have your bank account broken into, not  have your credit cards hijacked, not have your credit rating destroyed.  Want to guess how many hours any of those things are going to take to repair?

Do yourself a favor, get good anti virus protection with a firewall, get a password manager and stay up to date on the latest phishing hazards because 2 hours a year can save you endless hours of headache, no matter what Microsoft says.

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This still leaves a lot of unanswered questions about traveling with an iPad.  What was it like to watch a movie on?  Want to work on a spreadsheet for the meeting you have an hour after get off the plane, we don’t yet know how it was for that.

Today is Paul’s first day working from his home office on his iPad and what we know so far is that it is a great alarm clock as it woke him up at 4:30.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the hour he wanted to get up, but due to WiFi and the fact that iPad is set for push email that was what time the email notifier started making enough noise to get him out of bed.  Hopefully things will improve for him on this first full work day of the experiment.

After I read that passage, I knew that I would finish the book.  Miller gets my brain.  He gets that no two brains are exactly alike and that we all have opportunities and challenges.  He gets it not only because he has been there, but also because he holds a doctorate in cognitive science.   The first seventy pages of the book are dedicated to how we think, memorize and organize.  I am still in this section.  I thought about skipping it, but I don’t think I will.  I am intrigued by little tidbits like our brains organizing and remembering facts based on stories.

If you’ve already read Getting Organized in the Google Era, I’d love to hear what you thought via the comments on this post.  I’ll also update as I read it and let you know how it’s going.

Even if you’re as mobile as Paul seems to be, why the iPad over any other mobile work device?  I am pretty sure that Paul will be able to run his business from an iPad for 30 days.  Will he want to do it long-term?  I am guessing the answer will be “no.”  The reason I’ll follow and you may also want to follow his iPad experiment is that in doing this he will be putting the iPad through the paces in a unique way.  At the end of the experiment, we  should have a much better idea of what the pros and cons of using an iPad are.  In fact, you may even want to put purchasing one off until you see Paul’s conclusions.

“In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.”

As  fans of Mozilla’s FireFox browser, we know it is a pipe dream that some day the World Wide Web community will say to Microsoft that they can do whatever they want with their latest browser because “We no longer support it.”  We don’t expect that to happen anytime soon, but what is likely is that Website developers, including Dew Point Productions, will stop trying to build Websites that work in outdated versions of IE.

Идея за подарък

Dear David,

We noticed that your order for the XYZ Widget was not completed. If you buy now, you will save 3% of your order by using Discount Code XMLKT.  If you’d prefer to speak with a customer representative to complete your transaction please call us at 1-800-888-8888.

Remember, this is an individual who has in all likelihood decided to purchase this product and they already very nearly purchased from you.  With a little outreach you may well convert this customer and once converted they’re likely to become a repeat customer, so treat them well and watch your sales grow.

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