Not News: There’s no such thing as privacy on the web. (Google and Bing are ‘officially’ searching Twitter and Facebook, now.)

Google and Bing have been searching Facebook and Twitter for a long time, in case you hadn’t discovered this by doing routine vanity searches for yourself on Google, Bing, and 123People, etc..

But the search engines this week are announcing new deals and technology that make these searches easier. For more details on that, follow FHK’s Web 2.0 Reader.

Bottom Line

• If you’re using the social networks primarily to keep in touch with friends and family, and want to continue believing that you have some privacy on the web, stay off of Twitter, and use the “just friends” settings on Facebook. According to Facebook, it’s default settings are not supposed to be searchable…yet…I would recommend choosing your own settings.
• However, if you’re using the social networks primarily for online profile management, and WANT your posts, etc., to be viewed in the search engines, you’re in luck. This is happening automatically on Twitter, and on Facebook, you just need to adjust your settings to “everyone” under the privacy features.

 

WebWarrior: Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs

Last week, we asked for members of our FHK Facebook Group to nominate “WebWarriors,” who are politically conservative and effectively using Web 2.0. The first response we received was from Dan Schmucker, who nominated Pamela Geller, of Atlas Shrugs, saying:

“She takes needed and courageous stands consistently against national governments lacking insight and the spineless media’s complicity in Islamofacism.”

Indeed.

Pamela is in the top 2,000 blogs on Technorati (under atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com), and has a Google Page Rank of 6/10 (under atlasshrugs.com), demonstrating that she is effectively using outgoing and internal links and categories effectively, and that her content is fresh and original, so that she’s had nearly 10,000 links to her site in the last six month, from over 1,100 blogs and websites.

Creative use of RSS feeds (via FeedBlitz) lets Pamela’s readers keep updated daily through e-mail, VOIP, IM or Twitter.

A quick Google search under “Pamela Geller” also reveals that Pamela has used effective online profile management through social networking and her contacts in the mainstream media.

Thank you, to Pamela Geller, for being our WebWarrior of the Week, and to Dan Schmucker (visit Dan on Facebook) for nominating her. As Pamela says:

“Western civilization hangs in the balance. This blog is part of the solution. Get your heads out of the sand and fight the Great Fight. The Jew may be the canary in the coal mine, but you my friends will be next. Changing the World one Word at a time…Citizen Journalist, Citizen Soldier” – Pamela Geller

If you’d like to nominate a “WebWarrior” (a conservative using Web 2.0 effectively) e-mail Jenn.

 

Why You Need to Google Yourself

Daniel J. Solove, of Concurring Opinions, has been following and commenting on an interaction between a law professor and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia about internet privacy laws.

Basically Scalia is against furthering the government’s role in regulating the free exchange of ideas online. So, to challenge that idea, the law professor, Professor Joel Reidenberg of Fordham University, decided to challenge that by making Justice Scalia this semester’s object lesson in his course on Information Privacy Law. Their assignment was to dig up every bit of personal information they could locate online about Scalia (and his family) online, and then show Justice Scalia what they had found, to see how the Supreme Court Justice would respond when he saw all of the details of his and his family’s life together in one dossier that is online, (but not yet public).

Scalia responded by explaining to the professor and his class that just because something is legal to do doesn’t make it a good idea (paraphrase). To read the details of this interaction, visit Concurring Opinions, and follow the links provided there.

This brings us to an important question, however. What if someone wanted to just see what information they could dig up about you online…What would they find? Do you know? You might be surprised. For the most part, everything that you’ve ever done on the internet is public knowledge, and most of it probably isn’t interesting to anyone but yourself – or is it?

A good way to find out is to Google yourself. (Just go to Google.com, and search for your current name, any previous names, and any user ID’s or profile names that you have used. It might be a good idea to check on your family members, as well. Be sure to check using the “web,” “images,” and “videos” tabs at the top of your browser.) Also, check other search engines, especially 123People.com, and Dogpile.com.

What if you don’t like what you’re seeing?

• In some cases, you can request the site owners to take down the material. They may or may not comply, since they are not obligated to do so under the law, if the information is true. If it is not true, you may be able to get legal help in having it removed, particularly if the site the information is on is a for-profit site.
• Remember that most of the search engines other than Google order their search results with the most recent information appearing first in the results. So, you can proactively use social networking and other internet activity such as blogging and book reviews to help push that older, undesirable information to the “back” of the search engine results.

For more resources on Ft. Hard Knox, see:

• Online Profile Management, and “TMI”
• What Links Rank Highest on my Online Profile?
• Guide for Bloggers and Non-Profit Organizations About Writing With Libel in Mind
• Why Page Rank is Important
• Stop Big Brother from Snooping on You, Online

(Hat-Tip: TechDirt)

www.Wednesday: Online Profile Management, and “TMI”

More and more folks are searching for employment online these days, and posting their résumés online. As we have discussed previously, it is important to have a well-managed online profile, so that when potential employers and clients search for information about you online, you will like what they see.

However, is it possible to give too much information?

Yes, says, Job-Hunt.org’s Susan P. Joyce, who recommends that for a “cyber-safe” online résumé, you need to give “minimal contact information [which] makes it harder for your identity to be stolen or for your employer to discover your job search…[and a] modified employment history, particularly for the current job, minimiz[ing] potential risk to existing employment.” This includes deleting your name, address, phone number, and the name of your employer. For more information, see Your CyberSafe Résumé.

For more information about online job hunting, see The Riley Guide: Prepare Your Resume for Email and Online Posting

Also, here are some great resources available online for those who may have either been recently downsized, who may be graduating and looking for career-related work, or who may be wanting to change careers:

• Roll Call Jobs – Jobs in the D.C. Area
• ConservativesJobs.com – Run by the Leadership Institute (Also on Twitter, @TheRightJobs)
• Republicans Helping Republicans – A listing of private sector and government jobs as well as training, internship, and volunteer opportunities

 

SEO Spot-Check: What Links Rank Highest on my Online Profile?

As promised last week, we’ve completed our study of news, indexes, and social networking sites rank highest on an individual’s Google profile.

A person’s “Google Profile” is the list of links on the “SERPs” (search engine results pages) resulting from “query,” or “search,” on Google for a person’s name. In online profile building, it is preferable that the first couple of pages worth of links (the first 20 links) provide accurate, positive information about that person. To build our profiles, therefore, it is helpful to know which links are likely to show up on those first couple of pages of a Google search.

To evaluate this, we chose thirty-six names of individuals, from various industries and various levels of name recognition, and tallied the types of websites that showed up on the first two pages of Google under their names. All of the people chosen are known by the public in some way – either as artists, entertainers, writers, educators, bloggers, politicians, etc.. To prevent the possibility of anyone trying to manipulate their profiles as a result of their names showing on this published study, we have chosen not to print the names we used. If a name received multiple links from the same category, that category was counted only once.

Following is the list of the top 12 link categories, and the number of times websites in the category appeared on the first two pages of each of the thirty-six Google profiles, expressed as a percentage of XX/36. For example, if the links from the category appeared on 34 of 36, or 34/36 individuals’ SERPs, the category on the table below would show a 94% SERPs rating. Note that all of the profiles had links in numerous categories, so the percentages added up vertically will not equal 100%.

Link Category	Amount of time this category was utilized on the 36 sample profiles
Niche/Industry Media*	94%
Own Website, Blog, Domain	94%
Mentions on Others’ Blogs, Forums, and Websites	86%
YouTube, GoogleVideo, VodPod, other video	72%
Wikipedia, Niche Wikis, Info Directories: Answers, Infoplease, About, Woopidoo, BrainyQuotes	72%
Amazon, IMBD Google Books&Movies, Reviews, MetaCafe	56%
Social Networks: Facebook, Linked-IN, MySpace, Twitter, Newsvine, Digg	53%
MSM: Alphabet Media, Newspapers, TV, Radio websites	50%
iRadio, Podcasting Sites: BTR, Music, AOL, Last.fm, MTV, Rhapsody, Vh1, mp	39%
Registries, Indexes, and Feeds: FriendFeed, feedage, NNDB, 123People, Zoominfo, BusinessCard2, Naymz, Plaxo, Technorati, Blog Catalog, Daylife, Classmates, Adoption Reg, Geneology, Meetup	28%
Photos: Google Images, Wikimedia, flikr	25%
Blogger, Wordpress, Wix, Yahoo, Geocities, MSN, Google	25%

 

*Niche/Industry publications specialize in the profilee’s own line of work etc..
Examples of niche/industry sites are CMT.com, in country music, and
Townhall.com in political news and commentary.

Clearly, in this spot-check, the links most valuable to the thirty-six Google profiles studied were links from niche and industry blogs, and the profilee’s own domain, website and blog(s). Also valueable were links from other blogs, forums and websites, from video sites, and from wikis and other information directories.

Grab a Gravatar!

One of the important steps in developing an online profile is choosing an avatar, and using it consistently, so that your online friends and associates come to recognize you, and your work. An “avatar” is that little thumbnail-sized photo of you, or of a graphic you like that accompanies your profile on most social networking sites, blogs, discussion forums, etc..

To easily have your avatar display in the comment sections of most Wordpress and Blogger.com blogs, and in many discussion forums is to use a “Gravatar,” which is a “globally recognized avatar.”

Following is a tutorial on how to grab one of this nifty little gizmos (the tutorial will open in full-screen).

Services

Ft. Hard Knox provides consulting services in the areas of online profile management (aka “online brand management,” or “digital reputation management”), social networking for promotion, and basic blogging for political conservatives online. Training in these areas is available on an individual basis, or to groups in the form of live or web-based workshops.

We also provide administration and ghost-writing support on a monthly basis for individuals or organizations wanting to incorporate online activism into an existing campaign.

For a free initial consultation, and to receive more information about our services and rates, please email Jenn, or call (918) 200-9FHK.

 

Workshop Starts Tuesday

The WebWarriors of Ft. Hard Knox (WWF) will are re-launching our first Web 2.0 Online Workshop, called “OK, I’m online. Now what?!” on November 11-24th (the two weeks between the elections and Thanksgiving)

In the workshop we’ll cover: Read more

Sign-up Now!

 

The WebWarriors of Ft. Hard Knox (WWF) will launch our first Web 2.0 Online Workshop, called “OK, I’m online. Now what?!” on September 30 – October 13th (Two Weeks)

In the workshop we’ll cover: Read more

‘Social Networking’ – a Verb

Last week, I posted a link to a survey by synovate which indicated that globally, most adults don’t know what “online social networking” is, and the ones that do know are losing interest.

This makes sense, in the traditional sense of “social networking” online, which involves going to social networking sites to meet like-minded people. A quick Google Search, “define: Social Networking” reveals that most of the definitions online see social networking as being very “site” oriented. Adults typically don’t have time to go online just to find friends, and they are aware of the potential risks and dangers of participating in such sites, as the survey points out. The primary reason most of us might visit such sites is for the purpose of networking professionally, to promote our blogs and projects.

In the “real world” (offline), this is simply referred to as “networking,” and it happens everywhere – in restaurants, in offices, at conventions, on the golf course, in airports…wherever people gather. Since so many people are online, this is now happening online.

Online social networking involves, “Expanding one’s social network or sphere of influence by initiating mutually advantageous new relationships with people.” This can be done online through a variety of media, including blogging, commenting on blogs, linking with other bloggers, utilizing feeds, e-mailing, and participating in online groups (Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, etc), as well as visiting social news and social networking sites. Increasingly, virtual life is conforming to “real” life, and the “social network” is becoming more of an activity than a place to go.

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Beginning September 30th, the WebWarriors of FHK (WWF) are planning to launch our first Web 2.0 Online Workshop, called “OK, I’m online. Now what?!”

In the workshop we’ll cover: Read more

Exciting Changes for FHK! (Update: Taa-Daa!)

Update: Ron, our IT Guy, is so committed to this project, he’s trying to stay on deadline in the face of an approaching hurricane, so we’re beginning the construction process a little early. Feel free to look around, but remember your hardhat, and watch where you step.

(Ron – don’t blow away! We need you!)

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Original post by Jenn, 8/26/08: Last week, I mentioned that Buffoon (of the D=S blog) has been working on a new logo for FHK, and Ron has been working on installing and setting up a new “magazine theme” for our blog. If you’d like to get a sneak-peek at the new blog, go here (we’re using Revolution). Our official “Grand Re-Opening” will be the Saturday after Labor Day, September 6, 2008. Read more

…What you can Do on Digg

Last week, we discussed Ask Not what Digg can do for you… because the truth is that if you’re a political conservative online, Digg isn’t going to do anything to help you. We can’t ignore it, however, because it is still so influencial in what is percieved as the “truth” online (more).

So, you’re one of the brave conservatives who has decided to face the Digg Monster head-on. Now what? Following are some lessons we’ve learned the hard way. I hope you’ll be able to use them to improve your own Digg experience.

1. First, you’ll need a Digg ID. For security and privacy reasons, you’ll need to choose a name that is not related to your real name, your blog, your place of business, your usual online profile, or your residence. Plus, if you’ll look through the UserID’s for the other Diggers, you’ll see that catchy, weirdly-spelled online nicknames are “cool” (and we all want to be “cool”).
2. Do not immediately begin “friending” or becoming a “fan” of all of the conservatives you find on Digg. Digg has this thing called the “algorithm.” It’s basically a way for the Digg administrators to manipulate the content of the front page to please their investors, while pretending that all of the content is there because of the “democratic voting process.” This algorithm discounts votes for Diggs between friends.
3. Look at the upcoming stories, and Digg/comment on those that you like. If you see stories that are stupid or false, bury them. Become active in the comments.

Read more

How to Develop a Social-Networking Profile in Four Easy Steps

(Updated 11/11/08)

Do you have an online presence, or is your online reputation a bit hap-hazzard, with um-teen different ID’s and profiles on who-knows-how-many social networking sites out there? It’s time to get it together, and show some virtual self-respect. Developing an effective online profile takes a little planning and work, but it is not difficult, if you follow these four easy steps.

1. Choose a name.

   This is the name you’re going to use everywhere online, so choose wisely. You can use your own name, of course, but if you have safety and privacy concerns, you may want to choose a pseudonym. I recommend choosing a name that sounds like a real name (i.e., has a first and last name, like “Jenn Sierra”), so that you’ll also be able to use it on sites like Facebook and Linked-In. Alternatively, some social networkers choose a name that reflects their online interests or political stance (e.g., Foehammer, or bamapachyderm).

   Keep in mind, that if the name you choose is too overtly “anti” any group of people, including anti-jihad, it may eventually be banned by some of the more politically correct social networking sites, and/or make you a target for “burying” by the users on those sites. Your courage in choosing such a name is commendable, but you may find that it becomes more tiring than you think to have to continuously “start over” with new user ID’s and profiles.

2. Get a free e-mail account using your new name.

   This can be done through a plethora of e-mail services like g-mail, yahoo, hotmail, etc.. Don’t use your internet service provider (like AOL, or Cox), because if you change providers, you’ll lose your e-mail address. Begin developing a list of contacts and networking with those contacts by e-mail whenever possible.

3. Choose an avatar.

   This is the little picture that will be beside your username nearly everywhere. Choose one you like…it should be a square, and save it to your harddrive or photosharing site in a few different sizes, from 50×50 pixels to about 400×400 pixels.

   Get a “Gravatar,” a globally recognized avatar which will automatically show up when you post on most blogs, and in many discussion forums. Click here, or on the image to the right to view a tutorial on how to get one of these (the tutorial will open in a full-screen).

4. Join social networking sites, using your new e-mail address, avatar, and name.

   …or as close to your name as you can get. The longer the site has been active, the more likely someone has already used that name, so you may have to add a number or a suffix to your user ID on some sites.

   Join networks as you discover them. You will be more active on some networks than others. On some, you’ll simply be reserving your username, but on a few, you’ll be actively developing online networking relationships by participating in voting on articles and especially in the discussions.

   On the more established networks like Facebook and Stumblupon, use the friend-finder feature which checks your e-mail address books for friends that are already using the social networking sites. This helps you develop a friends-list quickly.

And there you go – you have a Web 2.0 presence. Take care of it. Your reputation online is as valuable as your repuation in “real life.”

Update: See Get a Gravatar, by ChrisG of Blogging and New Media

(Also on J.O.B.)

About / Contact

…last updated 07/09/09, by Jenn Sierra

The goal of the FHK* project is to assist politically-conservative bloggers, social-networkers, and citizen journalists to navigate the wild, wild world of Web 2.0 more effectively.

In order to do this, we are striving to provide a place for conservatives to write and publish, a place for collaboration and discussion, and a means to reference news and information important to conservatives online on an as-needed basis. We are now also provide training and consultation services for politically-active conservatives wanting to expand online, and network more effectively.

The FHK Blog

The Ft. Hard Knox blog is a place for FHK authors to post and promote information and political Op-Ed articles of interest to conservative political activists, including current events, and information about Web 2.0 technology. Stories from the main blog section may be promoted in social news sites such as Digg, Reddit, and Del.icio.us.

Wordpress’ excellent search features also allow members to research, search, and sort information using a variety of methods, so that they can get information on current political issues as well as current technology updates on an as-needed basis.

We also have a Web 2.0 Wiki, which we encourage members to use and update with helpful Web 2.0 information.

FHK on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

At Ft. Hard Knox, we are active participants in social media and Web 2.0. We believe that it is important for the conservative viewpoint to be represented online, and that the only way to do this is to get involved. Be sure to visit and join us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube!

Education and Training

The Ft. Hard Knox Project has most recently expanded into the areas of training and consulting. We offer members-only workshops online, and also are available to develop training for your organization on a variety of topics including online social networking, online profile managment, and political blogging. For more information, see our Services page. To keep updated on our workshop schedule, be sure to sign up to receive our newsletter.

Contact

To contact Ft. Hard Knox, please e-mail forthardknox@gmail.com or call (918) 200-9FHK.

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Also see:

• Read what people are saying about FHK
• Open Letter to FHK Readers, from TXPoet
• Team Blogging and Multi-Author Blog Etiquette

Logo Design

Thanks to TRM of the D=S blog (that’s Democrat=Socialist) for the current FHK logo.

Fair Use Notice:

The various parts of this project contain some copyrighted material for which use has not been authorized by the copyright owners. We believe that this not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.) If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Fair Use notwithstanding, we will immediately comply with any copyright owner who wants their material removed or modified.

*Trademark Notice

“Ft. Hard Knox” and “FHK” are trademarks of the Ft. Hard Knox Project, and may not be used or reproduced without the express written consent of the Ft. Hard Knox Administrator.

Author Opinion

The opinions of our collaborators, sponsors and guest authors, expressed on FHK or elsewhere on the web, do not necessarily reflect the opinion of FHK. We appreciate, however, their contributions and widely-varying perspectives on an impressive variety of topics.