Our research indicates that 2/3rds of US online Youth (ages 12-17) use social networks at least monthly, and 20% of teens use them daily. (Q4, 2007) There’s no indication that I’ve seen that the adoption will decrease as they enter the workforce.

David Churbuck (whose name I finally got right) is a web strategist at Lenonvo computers, and writes a compelling piece Does Your Company Have a Blogging Policy? This is a question I hear to often from the Fortune 5000 who are toe dipping, or just down right scared of employee blogs.

I often defer the conversation a step higher, to discuss how they’ve (hopefully) hired smart people that they trust, and that they are willing and to empower and trust them to make the right decisions both online, and offline. In many cases, some of these companies have over-arching ethics policies that span behavior not just on blogs and social networks, but also at corporate functions, or even when wearing he company shirt at a bar.

Sadly, more than one company has expressed to me they didn’t trust their employees, as either they were an “unruly” group (many of their employees in the field may not have much formal education) or were uncomfortable with how much of their personal lives they shared due to their age (Gen Y shares quite a bit in MySpace and Facebook).

At a more traditional and larger brand, this company wanted to attract more Generation Y and X employees, as over 40% of their workforce (Boomers) are starting to retire in the next 5 years. The fat pensions they’ve been building for the employees has made it quite affordable to retire early –taking their knowledge and networks with them. So to them, they had to be friendly to social media when it came to attracting this younger crowd, and they softened up on their corporate social media policy. Recent research by Deloitte confirms that Gen Y seeks to give back to their community, often in the form of social networking.

So how are companies stringing together these policies? Most commonly, the ethics policy is already in place, and corporations can lean and amend that one. A few have adopted a specific blogging policy, often with the help of the actual bloggers, while a majority may be too decentralized –or not have anyone focusing on it — to create such a policy.

Share with others, if your company has a public blogging or social media policy, please leave a link to it below, and tell us how your company came into agreement for this policy.

In my recent post, I write about how our industry is starting to solidify and come together. This conference, blog world expo in Vegas is more like a trade show, and we’re seeing constituents from many parties, we’re growing. It’s really important that we hold ourselves accountable, especially our leaders.

I’m hearing from people that there’s a lot of buzz that two A-list CEOs were not able to attend, one was feeling ill and the other “forgot”. (Update: Rick, the organizer comes in and explains it was his fault, yes, it’s all very confusing)

(Update: We hope Om, who hurt his back feels better).

(Update 2: Mike has responded and states he never agreed to speak, despite him being heavily touted on the brochures and websites. Mike, I’m not making personal attacks at you or Om, in fact that’s the whole point, this has nothing to do with a single person but about the industry at large, so please read this post very carefully, I’m wishing you the best.)

(Update 3: Rick Calvert, who put on Blog World Expo apologizes and says all this hoopla is his fault, go read over there. Ok, glad this is settled, let’s move on. Mike, sorry if I jumped on you without getting the full story. This is getting confusing, it’s hard to figure out where the story stops and ends, there are still a lot of conflicting stories, either way, moving on now.)

(Update 4: Not quite done moving on, I just left a comment on Mike’s blog, apologizing for any grief I lead to him. At first, when I wrote this post, I specifically wrote it to not to make it a personal attack on anyone, but I can see why he could take it very personally. We didn’t have this information from Rick until a few days later, and that really changes the perspective of things. I’m doing what’s right, correcting my mistakes, and apologizing in public, and on Mike’s blog. I wish this information from Rick surfaced a lot earlier, and we should have checked with Mike first.)

As an industry, we look up to these leaders to set a good example, they influence the behavior of others who read them, watch them, and are in their space. Some fans in the space are let down, and I can understand why.

Also, I heard that some speakers were pitching their services. We, I, you should call speakers out when they do that, and respect the time of the audience.

As our industry grows and solidifies, (as I was telling Chris) we need to be accountable to ourselves, each other, and the industry, no one person is greater than the whole –that is, after all, what the web is all about.

I’ve worked for a few companies now in my career, and each culture exemplifies it’s trust for it’s employees in different ways. For many companies, there’s a long list of do’s and don’t that are issued to them while they’re being hired. The more “donts” the less trust the company and employee may have.

In this new world, where Social Media is going to be part of many of our communication fabrics, we need to establish trust, as the lines are never going to be fully black and white. Those who embrace these tools will often be ‘pushing the membrane’ of the corporate culture and as a result, be in the gray zone. Keep in mind, those who push are often wanting to help customers, or move the company in the right direction.

As a result, trust has become more and more important, and we need to consider the following (as it’s not going away)

1) Companies: Hire the right employees that have integrity, sound business judgment, and know how to communicate both internaly and externally
2) Companies: Trust in these employees to be your ambassadors to the world, give them the benefit of the doubt, and let them self-correct amongst themselves. I also advise instituting internal communication tools to help them, and setting down basic guidelines…often created BY the employees.
3) Employees: Those out in the social sphere should act their best, demonstrate your ability, and try not to embarrass the company. If you do make a mistake, quickly apologize, correct the mistake. Always act in an ethical manner.
4) Social Sphere: That’s everyone else in the world, is to simply recognize the challenges as companies move forward in this new world.

I’m sure there’s an argument suggesting that the mail clerk shouldn’t blog about the company’s product set, which is likely appropriate, but keep in mind, he’s connected to his network on MySpace or Facebook, and represents the company in a different way –even if he attempts to separate himself from the company.

What prompted this post? yesterday, the message I heard from my new employer at orientation was “We trust you, as we hire good people”. Message heard loud and clear.

I had the privilege to be a moderator for a panel where Harry was sharing his honest insights about the future of the web. He’s an extremely bright individual and has years (decades?) of experience in the technology industry.

Today, it’s sad to hear that he’s decided to leave his post at PC World, likely due to frustration from a story that he was writing that was cut, looks quite political. I’m sure we’ve all wanted to walk off a job at one point in time, it takes a lot of guts to really make someone do do this.

Here’s to Harry who will certainly land somewhere better, where his authoritative voice will be heard. Harry, if you see this, please email me, my email is on the right nav column of this blog, as I only have your PC World address, I’d love to stay in touch.

Update: May 10th, Harry has returned!

I’m not a tree hugger or earth hippie by any means, but I do want our tech industry to remain a thriving long term helpful addition to this planet for a long time to come. Yesterday, I dropped off 3 of my old tower PCs (some even had windows 97 on them) to Green Citizen in Palo Alto (there’s other locations too). The recycling fee was 10 bucks each, which I’ll write off my taxes.

Also, they won’t be reusing the computer, and the data will be properly disposed of as they crush it at a facility and then the parts are resold to be recycled into other manufactures.

Click on some of the pictures below, to read about how some PCs get sent to other countries causing massive damage to environment as they are ‘melted’ down to get semi-precious metals.

I also cleared out some room in the garage, it’s a win win win.

I’m not a parent, but Cyberbullying has been talked about very heavily this week.

Wendall Davis of Symantec (one of PodTech’s customers) has a very informative podcast on what is Cyberbullying including some important facts on what consumers, parents and event companies should do to prepare for this. They suggest you check out their family resource website.

Last time at the STIRR event, Salim Ismail had a slight incident on stage, As a recap, Salim promised to buy everyone drinks if they clapped (applause as currency for voting) for his product to receive an award. The excited crowd gave their full attention, resulting in Salim’s company Confabb to win, after receiving the award, Salim retracted the offer for drinks, in which the crowd boo’d and hissed, see video of presentation.

I gently prodded via my blog but kudos to STIRR MC Rafe Needleman of CNET’s WebWare full on gave a nice public rubbing, “Field Report Stirr wrap-up, part 1: Sun, slogans, and how to cheat your audience”. Ouch! Salim immediately left comments on our blogs telling us he will make good, as well as confirmation from his company. Yesterday, while walking up to the event, I see Salim, who’s made good on his promise. I ran into Salim as he parked his car “that wasn’t my best public speaking” and was eager to restore his reputation.

Last night, at STIRR, in good spirit, Salim made good with the drink gods.

Salim greeted each guest and presented them with a drink ticket, and enjoyed the jokes and appreciation. You may also know that Salim has recently joined Yahoo, and is heading up their skunkworks team, which will yield some exciting products. I wonder what additional innovation will come out of Yahoo, I’ve got great interest after hanging with YPN, Pipes, and MyBlogLog teams.

Who else was at STIRR? Michael Arrington, Niall Kennedy, Sarah Meyers, Kevin Burton, PodTech, Bubbilicious, Duck9, Dave McClure, Ian Kennedy, Joyent, Oren Michaels of Mashery, Jeff McManus, Oren and of course the companies presenting were Buxfer Criteo Freebase Wrike, and sponsorship by SUN.

Good show Salim, and congrats to all your new ventures.

Fully-Naked-Transparent-Open-Nudist-Disclosure: Salim bought me and a couple hundred others drinks last night, duh

John Edwards (or at least his staff pretending to be him) has recently joined Twitter, he’s one of my 91 ‘friends’. I know he’s flying to San Antonio as I write this blog post. Great transparency, even if it’s his staff.

Barack Obama on the other hand, has failed to impress Shel Israel, which Shel’s shared on his blog, and which I and thousands of others read. Now I’m sharing this with you all. Barack and team should respond to Shel quickly.

Everyone’s watching everyone and talking about it, there are no more secrets, just secrets that have not yet hit the internet. I hope political candiates are paying close attention to everything they do, since the web is how I primarily consume information, what I hear from my trusted peers makes an impact.

Update: Allen Stern reports that he is “…disappointed with Barack Obama’s spam“

Online experiences for Toys not new
Lego (one of my preferred toy) has an online Club, where those who sign up receive additional information. GIJoe has online games, and has cleverly disguised it’s advertisements as online experiences.

Children’s Physical toys to have cross online experience
A while ago I covered how Fisher Price is starting kids listening to Podcasts and taking digital pictures at an early age. Now, toy companies are seeing the benefit of having a dual experience with their toys as the Internet continues to mainstream at home, and especially with the younger generation.

According to the Associated Press this cross medium experience will continue to heat up:

“…’Toy companies are looking at where kids are playing and targeting product against it. Younger and younger kids are becoming more comfortable with the Internet,’ said New York-based toy consultant Chris Byrne…”

The article links to Bandai, which has an interesting interactive experience where kids can enter in secret codes for additional experience.

Could tie to Social Networking for Kids
A while back I covered Club Penguin, (before it got big) and it’s continuing to take off and be the MySpace of children. Club Penguin is in a real position of power, I know several parents who tell me their kids do chores to earn money so they can spend it in Club Penguin to ‘improve their igloo’ and do other events. There’s tremendous cross-marketing opportunities for Club Penguin and other toy manufactures.

The Future: Toys will be connected to the Internet, Children to continue to network amongst themselves
I would expect future toys to have a USB connector, and then WiFi, so a website can make the experience interactive. Imagine, those kids toys will come to life and start teaching children their ABCs or other dynamic content that a website and parents can control. There’s already some very basic toys with USB connections such as this Hello Kitty toy. Why not extend the mimicking of this laptop with supplemental information that can get your kid ahead in school?

Concerns
Of course, protective parents (that’s repetitive isn’t it?) will raise concerns with privacy, and demand that websites don’t harvest information or expose children to dangers, and of course, I agree. OnGuard provides these ethical guidelines and watchgroups that review online spaces for parents. Microsoft created this guideline as a resource for parents.

Generation Next: Digital Native
For many companies this all makes sense, why should a company limit the experience of their toys to only the physical world, with the internet, and maybe (and carefully) connect with other kids. They’re going to be online from an early age, and will be very comfortable interacting with each other online.

My Technorati rank has plummeted (the lower the number is the more desirable). I’ll be breaking into the 2k range next week, and before this mess started I was somewhere in the 5k range.

I don’t deserve it though, as there’s this silly ‘2000 pictures and links collage‘ of bloggers that’s being spread all over the network.

If you’re new to blogging, a Technorati rank is just ONE way of determining authority, although it gives some interesting information. Anyone who registers to Technorati receives a ranking, as of yesterday it started at 2.5 million. It’s based upon who’s linking to you, how many times, and the authority of that person linking to you. Like Alexa, it’s overhyped, but still the only tool that’s been widely adopted.

For those lucky enough to be on the 2000 bloggers collage, it’s artificially driving down your incoming links from unique blogs. For those that are NOT on that list, you’re Technorati rank will artificially be damaged while I go by you.

Links are currency, and this collage is a counterfeit factory. I hope that Technorati folks, Dave Sifry, Tantek and the other good folks over there negate this mess. I want to earn every link because of the stupid/brilliant (more stupid than brilliant) things I write, not just from mass pyramid linking structure.

I don’t want any part of this, you may take my picture off the collage.

Update Feb 5th AM: I’m not alone, Zoli agrees with me.

Update Feb 5th PM: Technorati is listening to me.

Update Feb 6th:
This is an important update, please read.

I just called Tino in Canada, he’s a good guy. I told him that my post was nothing personal towards him and I think that what he did was a good thing. It’s just that the network went crazy with it.

I encourage him to put the 2000 bloggers page back up, and then bloggers could link to that page, without having to spawn it and replicate it all over the blogosphere. I left several comments on others blogs saying the same thing.

I want to personally promote Tino as an innocent here, I hope that no one thinks ill of him, nor he or his website is penalized by Technorati or Google.

Again, Let me repeat it (esp for those who left somewhat annoyed comments on this post) I like Tino, I think what he did was done innocently and I think what he did was a great example of community. Let’s put this non-issue to bed.

Update Feb 6th PM:
Sigh, I’m hesitant to post this, as I want this to be over, but a little bird sent this to me.

(Left: I took this picture of Shel Israel using my color selector feature my Canon SD600)

Last night during coffee after dinner, Blogging Jedi Master Shel expressed to us of his concerns with some situations of bloggers taking advantage of their power, or organizations fearing bloggers. When he talks, there’s usually great wisdom or a lesson to be learned, this was no exception.

These four instances of abuse of power by bloggers and those that were watching bloggers. I suspect this trend will continue, just as it does for politicians, journalists, and anyone who obtains power.

Blogger ethics call for being 1) Honest and fair, 2) Minimize Harm, and to 3) Be Accountable.

I would add that any blogger should try to add to the community, and give credit when appropriate. And yes, that means that A-list bloggers need to start linking out, interesting thoughts from Chris.

As we gain more power by having a louder voice, we need to maintain credibility, I remember last Monday at the Frost and Sullivan conference where one attendee told me “Blogs are just a bitch session”.

Today over lunch, I told my friends I’m careful not to blog about folks that might not already be on the web. What I say about them can quickly find it’s way up search results, impacting their personal brand. The same goes to companies that do wrong, a blogger with incredible page rank can quickly destroy a search marketing program. I blogged about him using his first and last name a while ago, and it’s the top search result in Google. Since employers are known for doing Google searches for new employees, this is power I must yield carefully.

I just created a new category called ‘ethics’, and this is my first post tagged to it, probably something I should have done a long time ago.