AboutUs Weblog

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U.S. Government Seizes Websites Posted: 30 Nov 2010 11:00 AM PST What do CheapScarfShop.com, DVDCollectionSale.com, GolfWholesale18.com, Handbag9.com, LifetimeReplicas.com, TiesOnSale.com and RapGodfathers.com have in common? Are they: Terrorist organizations? Harmful to the people of the United States? Selling cheap knockoffs of brand name items on the world market? You got it right if you answered #3. The web was abuzz last weekend over the ICE takedown of 82 websites that were allegedly selling counterfeit goods. Oddly, even some Torrent search engines that sell nothing – and host nothing – were also taken down. No danger here, except perhaps to revenue opportunities for name-brand companies… After reading about this website takedown by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), I found out that last week Senator Ron Wyden became the hero of cyberspace and stopped what would have been the first blacklist on the internet. That didn’t stop ICE from taking down sites on its own blacklist, though. Two points of interest for AboutUs wiki editors: one of the website owners that was quoted in NYT article has edited AboutUs.org before (yay Waleed!), additionally several of the websites have already re-established their websites under different names, e.g. RapGodfathers.info. Maybe it would help if they all came to their AboutUs community page and let folks know where their new website is! Bonus points if you think this was possibly a diversion after the U.S. government had its ___ handed to it with the WikiLeaks release of diplomatic records.

Video Marketing: KISS Posted: 30 Nov 2010 09:00 AM PST Video marketing is big – sometimes it feels like everyone with a camera and a business is doing it. A visitor to our blog asked yesterday for some guidance on how to do video marketing, so we’ve responded with a new article in the Learn section of AboutUs.org. Our advice can be summed up quickly: Keep It Short and Simple. Lengthy videos are rarely watched all the way through, and people don’t share a video with friends unless they’ve really enjoyed it. You definitely do want people to share your video! Thanks to the person known as Fort Meyers, who asked for ahow-to on video marketing. I hope this article helps you. And to everyone else: Keep the requests coming. We want to create articles that will help you. Email me at Aliza@AboutUs.org, and tell me what you want to read about next.

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