The internet isn't some wild west that needs taming. It's a new and different system that is sometimes used for bad purposes, but much more frequently used for very, very good purposes.

Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit. For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles.

According to a 2011 Marketing Sherpa Report, 64% of marketers have begun integrating social media into their search marketing efforts. And there is reason to do so.

In December of 2010, both Google and Bing confirmed that links shared through Facebook or Twitter have a direct effect on search engine rankings. But one word that was continually brought up through the entire interview with Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land was “Author/Social Authority,” suggesting that it’s not the quantity, but rather the quality of a tweet or share that has an impact on SEO rankings.

In another recent post by Jen Lopez at SEOmoz, she presents an accidental case study that proves the correlation between a powerful Twitter account and search rankings. After being tweeted out by @smashingmag, SEOmoz’s “Beginner’s Guide to SEO” ranked number four for “Beginner’s Guide” on Google.

But if you’re one of “those” Twitter users — one who follows all of the other marketers who follow you, who also follow your other account, which follows them — don’t expect to get anywhere. Initial results indicate that the engines can easily weed out the Internet marketers and see true influencers in social media.

Despite the fact that Google can filter out Internet marketers and spammers, there are still problems. What prevents me from buying a tweet from an influential person in the social space?

But change is coming. Dealing with technology has gone from something only for the techy geeks to something more mainstream. Younger generations get it. Computer savvyness is no longer just for the geek squad.

You no longer need a tech person at the office to man “the server room.” Responsibility for keeping the servers running has shifted away from the centralized IT department. Today you can get just about all the services that previously required local expertise from a web site somewhere

The main problem, apart from execution, was that local online advertising has remained untapped for a reason: small businesses are still not used to selling ads on anything but Yellow Pages. They need ad sales executives to provide the necessary hand-holding to pry those dollars away. An operation like TBD, which had initially hoped that its blog network would help provide the necessary outreach and venue to local advertisers, couldn’t provide enough support.

To think that content must be something that is created only by content companies that pay content people to create it is, like or not, outmoded. Content is no longer scarce, people. It is abundant. Google understands that. Twitter understands that. Huffington Post understands that. Sadly, old content people from old content companies still do not. Therein lies a lesson in this acquisition

doch für alle anderen gibt es eine kostenlose Sparversion im Netz. So lassen sich Links über Facebook, Twitter oder E-Mail verschicken, direkt aus der App heraus.

Although conserving such a large and important collection of American music is important in general, what makes it really exciting are the plans to digitize it and make it available online.

Open Band Three Tier system

Severed Fifth is a music project with three core principles, which I have labeled as the Open Band Three Tier system:

1. We give the music away freely: Like open source, this encourages redistribution and awareness, and empowers fans to harness the content, share it with friends, and ultimately bring more listeners to the band (in the same way open source has exploded in popularity due to the free availability of content for users to test and assess if it works for them).
2. We build community: I have taken my experience in community management to build a community around Severed Fifth. This helps fans feel part of a project they can contribute to. We have done this in the form of the Severed Fifth Street Team.
3. We socialize Severed Fifth Fair Pay: We encourage people to pay what is fair and reasonable to them to help support the band. This is powered by PayPal and anyone with a piece of plastic in their wallet can contribute. Thanks to the free availability of content and the community feel, people gain a closer connection to the band. In turn, they are more likely to contribute. We have already seen many financial contributions from fans.

So in a perverse way, it was Intel founder Moore‘s law that killed the Intel microprocessor.

via @agoeldi

As more and more attention was paid to the ridiculous level of secrecy concerning the ACTA negotiators last year, a bunch of ACTA supporters tried to claim that the level of secrecy (such as calling it a state secret involving national security) was perfectly normal for such agreements. A year ago, we went through a rather detailed explanation of how similar negotiations were much more open. The response we heard was that we were wrong and that this was "entirely normal." Turns out, even the diplomats involved knew this was bunk. One of the latest cable leaks from Wikileaks shows an Italian diplomat complaining to a US official about the level of secrecy involved in ACTA, noting that it's much higher than normal and that it makes it more difficult to get stuff done:

The level of confidentiality in these ACTA negotiations has been set at a higher level than is customary for non-security agreements. According to Mazza, it is impossible for member states to conduct necessary consultations with IPR stakeholders and legislatures under this level of confidentiality.

Can't wait to see defenders of ACTA secrecy try to backtrack their claims that the secrecy level was perfectly normal.

We’ve already started to see a shift, with more people than ever bringing helpful tools to work – and using them without approval and without suffering big corporate-wide roll-outs. In 2011, we’ll hear less about what corporations are doing “for their people” and more about what “people are doing for themselves and to help the teams they’re part of.” Until recently, we haven’t had the tools or corporate open-mindedness to easily shake things up. Now we do.

Of course, that makes no sense. The whole point of patents and copyright is supposed to be to create incentives for development. So development should always be at the core of the discussion.

The art of starting something new, he says, is a matter of "reminiscing about the future." That is, conjuring up a set of ideas and practices that are so extreme that established companies can't begin to make sense of them, let alone respond to them — and painting a vivid picture of what your organization can become if it delivers on its change-the-game agenda.