Twitter tools, now with more buttons!

Marketers have recognized the great potential for spreading their messages through shared content on social media. Now Twitter is bringing out new tools for tapping into that potential alongside the new chatbots designed to increase user engagement.

On May 23, Twitter announced that “a new, customizable Direct Message Card” was available to “in limited beta to Twitter advertisers.”  Combining eye-catching pictures or videos with :fully customizable call-to-action buttons,” the card gives marketers a way to reach new customers and further engage existing ones, as well as foster shares of branded interactive experiences, particularly for brands that use chatbots.

On June 13, Twitter further expanded the options for businesses to connect with customers through Direct Messaging with new buttons. As the Twitter blog put it, “ Now, businesses can attach buttons to messages to make it easy for people to take actions outside of the Direct Message conversation – like composing a Tweet, following an account, or opening a website within the Twitter app.”

Read more in 

Cards, Buttons, and Bots (Tweet, Tweet!)

Security through sharing

On December 18, 2015, President Obama signed off on the 2,000 plus page omnibus budget bill, that amounted to spending $1.8 trillion in a combination of government allocation and tax breaks. Among the items packed into this gargantuan package is the Cybersecurity Act of 2015, also known as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA). Set to stay in effect until September 30, 2025, it's a bill that will keep on giving for a decade. But not all regard it as a gift.

The bill had some vociferous opposition, most notably from the group called Fight for the Future. As late as December 16, the organization appealed for a veto on the law. Its campaign director, Evan Greer, declared that the bill is "a disingenuous attempt to quietly expand the U.S. government's surveillance programs, and it will inevitably lead to law enforcement agencies using the data they collect from companies through this program to investigate, prosecute, and incarcerate more people, deepening injustices in our society while failing to improve security."

The part that critics of the bill are most uncomfortable with is the permission granted to monitor networks. That makes up the first of three components of the bill's effects that comes under the heading "Authorizations for Preventing, Detecting, Analyzing, and Mitigating Cybersecurity Threats," presented in the analysis of the bill by Orin Kerr, Research Professor at The George Washington University Law School. He sums it up as: "First, network operators can monitor; second, they can operate defensive measures; and third, they can share information with others."

The third part of the mitigation formula is the equation of forewarned is forearmed. The idea is that putting out updates about the latest cyber threats in real (or very near real) time would give a heads up to other organizations that can take preventative action to avert attacks. The same assumption underlies IBM X-Force Exchange (XFE), a cloud-based platform for accessing information about cyber threats.

Read more in: 

Cyber Security: Share & Share Alike

Not everyone believes the new cyver security law passed on December 18 as part of the omnibus bill will prove effective. What do you think? 

A kind of nutrition label for apps

Your mobile apps know a lot about you: what you buy, how you pay for it, what you browse, and where you are when you do it. To get some idea of just how much data is collected about you and who else gets to see it, click on Target’s privacy policy http://m.target.com/spot/terms/privacy-policy#InformationUsed. While that information on data collection is available, most customers probably never bother to check it.  The question is if a voluntary code of conduct for apps that summarize the information upfront will provide better consumer privacy protection.  The NTIA believes it can, but as it is something companies are not required to opt into, its critics regard it as a diversion from more effective legislation.

Rather like the nutrition facts label on food packages, the short notice on apps is intended to which reveal at a glance how much of what you don’t want in your diet is in it. Also like the packaged food industry, the voluntary code frees companies from a mandatory label that might rate its data collection policies according to a government standard.

Read more in Voluntary Privacy Policy Proposed for Mobile Apps

There's a parallel to the nutrition labels printed on packaged food. If there were a legal mandate, then all apps could have a point rating to reflect how privacy-friendly (or not) they are. But without that, it's up to companies to be self-regulating, as it were, and voluntarily decide to briefly show some of its data collection facts.

This week's Advertising Age includes http://adage.com/article/news/big-food-preps-50m-push-facts-front-labeling/243475/. The food manufacturer want to avoid having a legal mandate, so they are spending $50 million to promote what they call ad "Facts Up Front." The idea is that putting that nutrional summation on the front of the package will satisfy those who are critical of the way they have represented sugary cereals and such as sound nutritional choices without having to accept an offical label that is not within their own control like the grade system recommended by the Institute of Medicine. With such a label, the foods that contain more fat, sodium, or sugar than the benchmarks set for them would get no stars at all.