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This week, the New York Federal Reserve Bank announced its plans to begin a social media monitoring project to gauge online sentiment about the Fed’s actions and general economic policy. Some people (i.e. civil libertarians and activists against big government) are irate and are likening the Fed’s actions to those of Big Brother. But can you really fault the Fed for wanted to know what people are saying about them online? The private sector has been doing it for years.

As an ORM company, we were interested in finding out just what monitoring tactics the Fed was interested in using. Going beyond basic article gathering to gage public sentiment, the Fed wants to know what individuals are saying, and was intelligent enough to target Facebook and Twitter as the perfect realm for learning the truth. Of course they’ll also track their repute as judged by news sources like the Wall Street Journal, CNN and the Associated press (all named in the request for proposal), but it shows that the corporation cares about more than economists or financial bloggers. And most interestingly, they also requested that vendors offer a monitoring system that allows people monitoring the project for the Fed can login to and track results (hey, that sounds kind of familiar…).

We commend the decision of the New York Federal Reserve Bank to be active in the monitoring of their online reputation. While they’ll likely find that many people aren’t happy with the economy and the actions of large financial corporations, hopefully the Fed will find ways to interact with individuals online to alter their tactics and hopefully eliminate some of the angrier sentiments floating around online. Fast Company has a great look at the Fed’s program as well.

As mentioned in a previous blog post, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will begin accepting applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) on January 12, 2012. By most estimates, the domain space will increase as never before and some groups fear that cyber squatting abuse will rise with this expansion.

The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) has recently drafted a letter asking for the U.S. Congress to reexamine existing cyber-squatting legislation, and the Anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) from 1999. In the words of the organization:

“In order for the ACPA to be effective today and in the future, it needs to be revised to make cyber-squatting unprofitable and too risky to undertake. CADNA’s campaign aims to spur Congress to sufficiently improve ACPA before domains in new gTLDs become available for registration – this way, cyber-squatters in .COM and other popular extensions will be forced to return or delete infringing domains and abandon the practice before they have the opportunity to expand into the new gTLD space. CADNA believes that resetting the bar in this way will lessen the burden on trademark owners because there will be less urgency to register their trademarks defensively in new gTLDs like .NYC, .MUSIC and .ANYTHING else that comes to light.”

What are your views on this most recent move by ICANN? Do you support CADNA? Do you see this new opening will become a new outlet for nefarious internet activity?

A recent report from Hitwise has come out with a Facebook Like valuation. For retailers, each new fan is worth 20 visits to your website over the course of a year. Hitwise also estimates that 1 in every 6 page views from UK Internet users goes to a Facebook page and 20 million hours are spent on Facebook daily in the UK alone. The numbers alone support the underlying market value of not only Facebook, but overall financial impact of the social web on the whole.

How long will Facebook hold this type of market share on the social web? It’s the question Google is asking and answering – with the release of their own social network called Google+ that is just now undergoing what the company calls a ‘field trial.’ Currently, Google+ is by invitation only and not yet available to the public but already has been receiving a fair amount of buzz – and we don’t mean the ill-fated social network released in late 2009.

Google+ has several interesting features including: Circles, Hangouts, Instant Upload, Sparks, and Huddle all of which will allow users to share information with smaller groups and benefit from access to Google’s search capabilities too. Only time will tell whether the social network can or will catch Facebook’s 700 million user level.

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has approved a plan for the release of a variety of new domain names. Currently, there are 22 generic top-level domains (gTLDs), however after today, domains will be available in almost any word in any language. Branded domains will also be available for the creative marketers out there, but at a hefty price. Applicants will have to pay a $185,000 evaluation fee, with $5,000 upfront.

According the Verisign, 4.5 million domain names were added to the Internet in the first quarter of 2011. How many more domains will be added to the Internet in the months and years to come? ICANN expects to begin publicizing the coming change in the domain name system shortly and to accept applications starting January 12, 2012.

Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. have increased 23 percent over the same period in 2010, according to new information released by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Officially, Revenue hit $7.3 billion in this past quarter. The survey includes data concerning online advertising revenues from websites, commercial online services, free e-mail providers, and all other companies selling online advertising.

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