Google to Korea: Show Yourself on the Web

It’s hard to believe that anybody with a Web site would not want use a global search engine to attract attention to it. But then, the South Korean government isn’t anybody.

One of the strange hangovers of the let’s-block-competitors-and-do-everything-ourselves mentality that is thankfully declining in South Korea is that when government agencies were building Web sites in the 1990s and early 2000s, they blocked access to global search engines.

Part of the thinking, no doubt, was that this would cause South Koreans to favor local search engines rather than the global players like Google and Yahoo. South Korea-based Naver and Daum do dominate the nation’s Web search market and control its online advertising market.

South Korean companies, driven by the commercial imperative of trying to snag as many eyeballs and users to their Web offerings as possible, long ago made sure their Web sites could be seen, indexed and prioritized by global search engines. And when there’s a big news story in either of the Koreas, we’ve noticed that some South Korean media organizations have become skilled at optimizing their headlines and story placement to draw attention to themselves on the news pages of Google, Yahoo and Bing.

In recent months, Google has stepped up its effort to persuade holdout South Korean Web sites to let its search robot crawl their sites, index their pages and present them to users of the Google search engine.

On Monday night, one of Google’s top engineers, Matt Cutts, gave a presentation to about 80 government officials, attorneys, webmasters and journalists to illustrate the problem. “If a country turns away from the open Web, it risks turning into an island,” Mr. Cutts said.

A South Korean newspaper last month carried a story with a list that showed near half of the government’s web sites blocked access to search engines. Among the quickest to change after that article was the presidential web site, although the Blue House web gurus still haven’t figured out how to maximize their exposure as a search for “President Lee Myung-bak” on Google, Yahoo and Bing still returns his Wikipedia biography first.

Mr. Cutts dismissed concerns that hackers might find their way to Korean Web sites via Google’s search engine. He noted that hackers tend to target Web sites by using IP address numbers rather than domain names.

And when a reporter suggested Korea’s search engines do a better job of protecting privacy than Google, Mr. Cutts replied that Google has developed many tools to help webmasters identify whether private information is appearing on their site.

One of those in the audience was Kang Min-koo, a senior judge in the Seoul High Court. When he saw the court’s Web site was on Mr. Cutts’ list of government sites that couldn’t be indexed by Google – and thus couldn’t be found on a Google search – he sent a text message by phone to the court’s webmaster ordering it to be changed.

Since the change can be made by altering just a few lines of software code, the webmaster had it done in no time. When it came time for questions, Mr. Kang asked Mr. Cutts to check if the High Court’s site showed up on Google – and it did.

“That’s amazing,” Mr. Cutts said, calling it an example of South Korea’s “balli balli,” or hurry-up, culture and promising to use the experience in future speeches.

When an attorney from one of the country’s most prominent firms asked if other countries also blocked Google from listing their Web sites, Mr. Cutts said South Korea was unique among the developed, prominent countries of the world as “one of the few that has done more blocking.”

Of course, the issue is a competitive one for Google. If it can’t deliver prominent Korean web sites in its search engine, Koreans or people who are interested in Korean content are less likely to use Google.

Mr. Cutts appealed to the vanity and pride of those in his audience in his appeal. “If Korea opens up a little bit more, more people will realize how important it is,” he said.

That’s true on so many levels of society and in so many facets of business that it’s just part of the conventional wisdom among foreigners who live and work in South Korea – and just another example of why Korea wasn’t called the Hermit Kingdom for nothing.

MediaFire: We're not pirates like Megaupload

Closing Megaupload for piracy made an impact. Some file sharing services are retreating, but MediaFire says they have nothing to worry about.

That's the news from MediaFire CEO Derek Labian in an interview in VentureBeat. "We don't have a business built on copyright infringement," says Labian. He also slammed Megaupload for "making a ridiculous amount of money with ridiculously bad service," noting the closed file sharing provider allowed people to upload free but charged for large downloads, and paid pirates for content.

[ Free download: 6 things every IT person should know ]

Yet the news of MediaFire's denouncing Megaupload for promoting piracy, while claiming themselves to be "a legitimate business targeting professionals," caught many by surprise. Also surprising to users? That Labian announced MediaFire how closely he works with the feds, including, "Homeland Security, ICE, and the FBI." This could just be part of complying with various official requests to remove content challenged by copyright holders, but many worry the cooperation goes further.

Yeah, right

I always thought Mediafire would've been the first to go, honestly.
Erik Ziedses Des Plantes on prefixmag.com

lol. Who's this guy trying kid here? While they don't have an incentive for users pirating crap, the service is clearly used for it.
StupidPeopleShouldntBreed on venturebeat.com

About a year ago I filed DMCA takedown notices to just about every one of these sites on behalf of an artist I represented. MediaFire was the *only* website to ignore that request, and the pirated files are still there.
tunelab.com on venturebeat.com

Pirates bein' pirates

thank god it looks like they'll be safe. I need to get episode downloads SOMEWHERE!
laurenhowes on livejournal.com

MegaUpload's loss is MediaFire's gain?
Dave Park on prefixmag.com

i was in the middle of getting the whole BBC shakespeare collection and then fileserve died ughhhhhhhhhhhh
xhoney_bee on livejournal.com

This is the file storage business

People use Ford trucks to haul illicit substances around - should Ford be quaking in their boots?
dave on venturebeat.com

So let me ask you, if 80% of all Ford Trucks are used destroy others property, does it makes sense to question the legitimate use of Ford Trucks?
Steven Noyes on venturebeat.com

Just because they don't see themselves in the same space as Megaupload doesn't mean the Justice Department feels the same way. Move those servers!
ani_di_franco on livejournal.com

Can any file hosting service that offers free space really be sure of their user's intentions?

MediaFire CEO: Unlike Megaupload, our business model isn’t built on piracy

As the strange case of file-sharing site Megaupload continues to unfold, many wonder if the federal government will begin to clamp down on similar sites that function like Megaupload, with easy sharing and hosting of copyrighted files.

Already, two well-known file-sharing services, Uploaded.to and Filesonic have disabled several features of their sites this weekend because of the Megaupload scandal. Others are sure to follow.

But Derek Labian, CEO of popular cloud-based file-hosting site MediaFire, told VentureBeat in an interview today that he isn’t too concerned about the government going after his company because, unlike Megaupload, MediaFire doesn’t incentivize piracy.

“We don’t have a business built on copyright infringement.” Labain said. “Like many other cloud-based sharing services like Box.net and Dropbox, we’re a legitimate business targeting professionals.”

When it comes to Megaupload, Labian described Kim Dotcom and his organization as “shady” and said the $175 million in revenues the company made should give people pause. He noted that Megaupload’s structure gave users monetary rewards for uploading pirated content. Users of the service could upload without a cap but users who want to download a large file (or download it faster) would have to pay for it. Those who uploaded the best files would be given free account upgrades or even cash.

“Megaupload was making a ridiculous amount of money with a ridiculously bad service,” Labian said. “We frankly don’t see ourselves in the same space.”

A little more background on MediaFire: The privately funded company out of Woodlands, Tex. was founded in 2006 and has steadily offered better ways to host and share large files. Because it offers an incredibly easy to way to share 200MB files for free with other people, the company has attracted employees at 86 percent of the Fortune 500 for sending files that are too large for e-mail. It offers unlimited downloads and file storage, and if you want to upload larger files with long-term storage, you can pay $9 a month for a Pro account or $49 a month for a Business account.

But the company’s free file-sharing solution can also be used easily for sharing copyrighted files, especially music, with friends, relatives or anyone on the web. A Google search for a song name, an artist name and “MediaFire,” for example, will likely bring you to a copy of that file that can easily be downloaded from a MediaFire page.

When asked about the Googling issue, Labian said that MediaFire is a “private service” and the only reason Google indexes a MediaFire page is when it has been shared by a user on a third-party site. He said MediaFire isn’t at fault for this and said Google should look into the issue.

“We try to steer clear of things that would attract scrutiny,” Labian said. “If people are pirating on our service, we don’t want those people to use it.”

Another reason Labian said he wasn’t worried about the government stepping in is because the company maintains a “good relationship” with various government bodies, including “Homeland Security, ICE, and the FBI.” Following DMCA protocols, whenever MediaFire is notified of a copyrighted file being shared inappropriately, the company immediately takes it down.

As for the future, MediaFire is optimistic about what’s to come. Labian said the company has been working for a year on its next set of products, which will emphasize collaboration and focus on business users. He teased what was coming by saying that cloud storage providers Box.net and Dropbox significantly disrupted the cloud storage space, but MediaFire would do it next.

“This is a tough market to be in, but we’re constantly looking to innovate,” Labian said. “Sharing will always be important, but it’s not the only important aspect for our customers.”

Tumblr vs Pinterest

In the left corner, the blog platform weighing in at 15 billion monthly pageviews, and in the right, the social photo sharing site with 11 million monthly pageviews. (In case you don't know, here is a good intro to Pinterest.) They seem pretty different right? Wrong.

Well, kind of wrong. Tumblr is still a blogging platform - as much as you can use it as a loose collection of inspiration it still vaguely resembles a blog - while Pinterest is most definitely a photo sharing/inspiration site. They definitely do compete though - lots of people use Tumblr like Pinterest, as a place to collect hundreds of images for inspiration, categories with tags. They also "ReBlog" like crazy (duplicate another users' posts quickly and easily,) which is identical to Pinterest's "RePin" feature. They might use the more traditional blogging features occasionally - but they could deal without them. I kind of fit into this category.

Pinterest knocks Tumblr out of the park when it comes to posting an image from somewhere else online - where most people find their content. They both have bookmarklets to share content, but Tumblr's is hidden away whereas you are prompted to use Pinterest's. Tumblr's bookmarklet is powerful - and can share much more than just images - but is kind of cumbersome, as in, to make sure I am posting the right image I always have to right-click get image url, then paste that in before typing in my tag. Pinterest's bookmarklet only picks out large images so I can just click the picture I want - and I can choose what category (essentially the same as a tag) to use from a dropdown menu. It definitely makes socially sharing an image much easier.

It kind of feels like Pinterest saw what people were using Tumblr for and decided to strip it down and do it better. Tumblr will take anything you throw at it - pictures, video, quotes, text, links, photosets - Pinterest will take pictures and kind of video. Tumblr encourages user-generated content, and lots of people use Tumblrs as their portfolios or personal photoblogs; Pinterest states that it is not all a self-promotion tool. Tumblr lets you change your theme completely - until your blog is so far removed from a Tumblr blog the only thing that gives it away is the top right follow button - whereas Pinterest has a nice default grid design (reminds me of the Tumblr Archive) that you can't change.

Currently I use both, but I'm late to the game with Pinterest, and mostly use Tumblr. This is partly comfort, partly that I do enjoy the traditional blogging features, and partly that all my friends use Tumblr and I have invested a lot of time into the 6140 posts on my Tumblr. I think there is space for these sites to coexist, but they are definitely competing on some levels. I don't have the space to compare some other aspects - how Pinterest drives wishlist/purchasing and how it is apparently just for girls, and how different each site's dashboard is - but they are definitely important.

Which do you prefer?

Tumblr Jumps to 15B Page Views a Month

In five years, Tumblr has gone from a relatively unknown micro-blogging platform to a giant of the social media world.

The site now garners 120 million unique users and 15 billion page views every month, Tumblr's founder and CEO David Karp said on Monday at the Digital Life Design (DLD) Conference in Munich, according to a report from The Next Web. Four months ago, the company said it received 13 billion page views a month and had 30 million blogs.

To date, more than 560 million people have viewed content on Tumblr, Karp said. U.S. users make up most of the site's traffic, with 45 percent or 249 million visitors to its networks coming from America. Forty nine million visitors come from Brazil, while 34 million come from the United Kingdom.

Tumblr use has skyrocketed in the last year in the U.S. alone, from 6.9 million unique U.S. visitors in November 2010 to 15.9 million a year later, according to comScore. Moreover, the site's nearly 42 million microblogs are re-blogged an average of nine times, significantly expanding the site's reach across the Web.

The re-blog function, "is like the Twitter re-tweets," Karp told in an interview earlier this month. "Something goes up on my blog, you love it, you can rip it out, put it on your blog while giving me attribution."

When asked why Tumblr has exploded in the last year, Karp pointed to "the fact that we attracted this really extraordinary group of creators."

"You're not really limited to your friends network," he continued. "Not that a friends network is a bad thing, but [who] you follow on Tumblr are not the people you know in real life, necessarily. There are random people on the other side of the planet who are kind of like-minded and who are really interesting to look at the world through their eyes. Sometimes it's celebrities who are doing really cool stuff. Sometimes it's an indie band or an indie filmmaker who's just posting about their process in a way that's totally compelling."

Tumblr differs from its blogging counterparts in that it specializes not in the long-form posts that can be found on Blogger or WordPress, but in media-driven posts that often include a link to a song, a photograph, or a YouTube clip instead of lengthy commentary.

The company's success has not been without headaches, like lengthy outages, however. Karp told PCMag that Tumblr has spent the last six months making improvements to the site to avoid similar problems in 2012. The company also recently introduced Fan Mail, a private messaging system for Tumblr users.

"We've always taken this position that we want to be very different from all of these [other social media] platforms," he said. "And if not different then actually very complementary. One way to describe it is where traditionally blogging was hearing my editorial voice, Tumblr is much more looking through my eyes."

WordPress Plugin Unblocks Censored Sites, Including The Pirate Bay

A new WordPress plugin makes it dead easy to uncensor blocked websites. In just a few clicks people can setup their own proxy site with the popular blogging software. An essential tool for people whose speech is restricted by oppressive regimes, and handy for downloaders in The Netherlands, Italy, Finland and other countries where ISPs are blocking The Pirate Bay. Additionally, the plugin partially defeats the PIPA and SOPA bills in the US.

There’s been a lot of talk about censorship lately. Last week the Internet witnessed the largest protest in its history, against the Internet censorship bills PIPA and SOPA. And earlier this month ISPs in Finland and the Netherlands were ordered to censor The Pirate Bay.

Alongside the millions who protest against these increasing censorship initiatives, there’s also a group of people who come up with ways to route around it. One of these projects is the RePress plugin for WordPress.

The plugin is developed by the hosting company Greenhost and allows everyone with a WordPress blog to start a proxy for sites that are censored elsewhere in the world. As an example, Greenhost have setup a Pirate Bay and Wikileaks proxy.

“By adding this plug-in to your WordPress website it will start functioning as a proxy and uncensor any blocked website you’d like,” Greenhost explains. “The only thing you’ll need is a WordPress website and the ability to install new plug-ins. After that you can maintain a list of websites you’d like to keep open freely available on the web.”

One of the main motivations for the plugin’s developers was to provide people in the Netherlands full access to The Pirate Bay when the recent court order is enforced. However, if SOPA or PIPA pass there might also be a need for people in the US to have a tool like this.

“We hope people outside Holland use the plug-in to uncensor piratebay.org, as it is in danger of being blocked in our country after a court-ruling. In the Netherlands we could then uncensor websites for people in oppressive regimes like Iran, Syria or the US after SOPA is passed.”

“[SOPA and PIPA] are said to defend the interests of the Entertainment industry, but will mainly cause grave and undeniable damage to the Open and Free web and all of its users: from the end-consumer to the cutting edge developers and inventors. Our aim is to make this impossible,” the Greenhost team notes.

Although the plugin can’t prevent domain names from being seized, it is indeed a good solution to bypass all of the common blocking measures that are used today.

The RePress initiative is applauded by several politicians, including European Parliament member Marietje Schaake. “This is a fantastic opportunity for human rights activists and a solution for people who face technological censorship and repression,” she told Webwereld.

To those eager to start their own proxy of blocked websites, RePress can be downloaded in the WordPress repository.

Google+ Now Open for Teens With Some Safeguards

When Google launched Google+ in June, 2010, it was for adults only. Now it's open to anyone 13 or older. The reason Google kept teens off the service at first is not because the social network was ever about what we euphemistically call "adult content," but because Google wanted to take extra time to get it right before opening the doors to people under 18.

After several months of testing, Google thinks it's reached a good balance. In rolling out the teen welcome mat, Bradley Horowitz, Google's Product VP for Google+ said, "We want to help teens build meaningful connections online. We also want to provide features that foster safety alongside self-expression. Today we're doing both, for everyone who's old enough for a Google Account (13 in most countries)."

Before opening Google+ for teens, Google consulted with child safety and teen safety experts including ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization where I serve as co-director along with Anne Collier. And to help parents better understand Google+, Anne Collier and I wrote A Parents Guide to Google+ and helped Google with its new Google+ Teen Safety Guide.

For the most part, teens' experience on Google+ will be just like adults, but there are some special safeguards for users under 18. Google didn't put any major breaks on teens -- it's giving them plenty of freedom to express themselves to their friends or even to the world, but it did make some of the default settings for teens more restrictive than for adults. If teens (or adults) decide to change them, they can, but how a service sets its defaults is very important. It's a type of recommendation -- the company's way of saying "this is how we think most people should use our service," and -- besides -- most people never get around to changing defaults.

Circular logic

Everyone on Google+ is encouraged to create circles where they group their friends and other contacts. You could have a circle of just family members, another circle of schoolmates and another circle of people on your soccer team. You can have as many circles as you want and you can call the circles whatever you want to call them. People in your circles are notified, but don't know the name of the circle(s) you've put them in. And it's asynchronous. You can be one of my circles, but you don't have to put me in any of yours. In that case, you'd see what I post to circles you're in but I'd only see what you post to the public, unless you added me to one of your circles.

Circles work the same for teens as they do for adults, but there are some special safeguards consisting of warnings and different default settings.

Safeguards for teens

1. If teens post something directed to extended circles or the public, they'll get a warning reminding them that "when you share to your extended circles, people you haven't added to your circles will be able to view your post and may be able to comment."
2. All Google+ users can control "who can notify me." For adults, the default is "anyone," but for teens the default is people in their circles. Adults can make their settings more restrictive and teens can make theirs more open, but the default for teens is designed to limit who can contact them.
3. By default, anyone can comment on an adult's public posts, but for teens it's only people in their circles.
4. There are also some differences in the profile defaults. Your profile is where others can see a bit about who you are and who you interact with on Google+. By default, employment and Education can be seen by anyone (Public) if you're an adult, but for teens, the default is "just your circles."
5. Adults' "Relationship Status" can be seen by people in their extended circles, but only in "your circles" for teens.
6. In the hang-out feature, up to 10 people can have a video chat. For teens if someone outside any of their circles joins in, the teen is temporarily pulled out of the hangout and asked if they want to continue. It's a way of pausing the action for a second and encouraging the teen to think about whether he or she wants to remain in this hangout.

The precautions that Google put into place will help remind teens about safe and appropriate use of Google+ but, as my ConnectSafely co-director Anne Collier pointed out in a blog post, "Just as with most protections and any services on the social Web, these are not about control. Users choose to go with the defaults -- or not." And even services that have strict controls can't always enforce them. "There's always a workaround even for the strictest safeguards any parent or site might impose," said Collier, "including software that disallows social networking sites altogether."

Disclosure: Larry Magid serves as co-director of ConnectSafely.org, which receives financial support from Google, Facebook and other social media companies.

Google Changes Will Impact Your Online Privacy

Google announced on its blog that as of March 1 you will need to agree with its new privacy policies to use its services (Gmail, Calendar, YouTube, Google+ and much more) with the exception of Google Books, Google Wallet and Google Chrome. Google says these changes will unify its more than 70 privacy policies across its product line and to streamline your experiences. You do not have the option to opt out of the changes.

In many ways, this allows you to learn more about what Google “knows” about you. Google can see the content of your emails if you use Gmail, where you like to visit if you use Google Maps and if you have enabled GPS information on your Android phone your precise location throughout the day.

Many of us use Google’s many services and the price we pay is to allow our information to be analyzed so that more targeted ads can reach us. We have to admit that Google is not providing all these free tools out of the goodness of its heart, but it is a for-profit, very large and successful company.

Where this is troubling is that many of us have no choice but to use Google products. Many universities and government institutions use Gmail as their email service provider. This personally identifying data may not be shared with third parties, frankly our data is Google’s valued asset, but with a subpoena Google may provide information with local, state or federal agencies. You don’t have to be paranoid about this data collection, credit card issuers and insurance companies also track this type of data, but you should inform yourself on the policies.

I read the FAQs, the Transparency Report including U.S. data, their Policies and then I went to my Dashboard to see what Google has gleaned from my use of its products (they also have a Dashboard video on YouTube). Things I had forgotten about were there, things that I was surprised to see and things that I didn’t realize I hadn’t set stricter privacy settings. I also learned that Google was right about where I lived, that I liked books, music and technology but it had determined that I was most likely a male between the ages of 39 and 44. As a 45-year-old woman, that amused me but it showed that even Google’s massive algorithms were not always correct.

I use Facebook, I use Google, I will continue to do so even without the option of opting out. I tightened my privacy settings and I will find alternatives to the Google Calendar and Gmail. I highly recommend that you should take the time to think about these things for yourself as well.

Cop’s Facebook photo showing Obama T-shirt with bullet holes eyed by Secret Service as possible threat

The Secret Service is investigating an Arizona police sergeant who posted a photo on Facebook of seven teenagers holding-up a bullet ridden T-shirt of President Barack Obama, reports The Arizona Republic.

Sgt. Pat Shearer, a 25-year veteran of the Peoria police, took and posted the photo on his own Facebook account. The photo shows the teens standing in the desert, four brandishing weapons and one holding a T-shirt with Obama's image -- which the officer said was used for target practice.

Secret Service spokesman Max Milien said Friday that the agency is taking the matter seriously.

"Any time information is brought to our attention where an individual or a group of individuals expresses unusual direction of interest in one of our protectees, we conduct appropriate follow-up," Milien told POLITICO.

But in an interview with ABC15, Shearer downplayed the photo as merely a "political statement."

“I don't think that the shooting of that T-shirt is that big of a deal," Shearer said.

"It's not like they were going to go out and shoot the president," he continued.

If the Secret Service deems the photo as indicating a real threat against the President, serious legal repercussions could follow.

"It is a crime to knowingly and willingly make a threat against the life of the President of the United States - in order to kidnap him or make a threat of bodily harm," Dan Barr, an attorney with the First Amendment Coalition, told NBC12 News.

"The first amendment does not apply if a true threat is made against the President of the United States."

The boys, who are all reported to be students at Centennial High School, did not turn up for classes on Friday, reported NBC12 News.

Although the police officer has not been placed on leave at this time, he does face a range of violations of the department's electronic media policies.

"Employees shall not post, transmit, reproduce, and/or disseminate information (text, pictures, video, audio, etc.) to the Internet or any other forum (public or private) that would tend to discredit or reflect unfavorably upon the department or any of the department's employees," the department's policy reads.

Twitter’s censorship is a gray box of shame, but not for Twitter

Twitter’s announcement this week that it was going to enable country-specific censorship of posts is arousing fury around the Internet. Commentators, activists, protesters and netizens have said it’s “very bad news” and claim to be “#outraged”. Bianca Jagger, for one, asked how to go about boycotting Twitter, on Twitter, according to the New York Times. (Step one might be… well, never mind.) The critics have settled on #TwitterBlackout: all day on Saturday the 28th, they promised to not tweet, as a show of protest and solidarity with those who might be censored.

Here’s the thing: Like Twitter itself, it’s time for the Internet, and its chirping classes, to grow up. Twitter’s policy and its transparency pledge with the censorship watchdog Chilling Effects is the most thoughtful, honest and realistic policy to come out of a technology company in a long time. Even an unsympathetic reading of the new censorship policy bears that out.

To understand why, let’s unpack the policy a bit: First, Twitter has strongly implied it will not remove content under this policy. If that doesn’t sound like a crucial distinction from outright censorship, it is. Taking the new policy with existing ones, the only time Twitter says it will ever remove a tweet altogether is in response to a DMCA request. The DMCA may have its own flaws, but it is a form of censorship that lives separately from the process Twitter has outlined in this recent announcement. Where the DMCA process demands a deletion of copyright-infringing content, Twitter’s censorship policy promises no such takedown: it promises instead only to withhold censored content from the country where the content has been censored. Nothing else.

To be sure, that’s censorship of a kind, but compared to the industry censorship even Americans have long lived with — take the Motion Picture Association of America, which still censors films based on dubious standards of taste and morality — it’s positively enlightened. And it never permanently destroys or pre-empts content, the way the MPAA does.

Further, for a country to censor content, it has to make a “valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity” to Twitter, which will then decide what to do with the request. Twitter will also make an effort to notify users whose content is censored about what happened and why, and even give them a method to challenge the request. According to Twitter’s post, a record of the action will also be filed to the Chilling Effects website. The end result of a successful request is that the tweet or user in question is replaced by a gray box that notifies other readers inside the censoring country that the Tweet has been censored:




They’re gray boxes of shame alright, but not for the user, or for Twitter. It’s instead a bright signal to a country’s online citizens that their government is limiting their free speech. While the Egypt uprisings were powerful and in some part powered by Twitter, I can easily imagine a world where a censored tweet becomes the ultimate protest symbol; one that unfortunately deprives the protesters of content, but sends the message to protesters that their worst fears are right, and they ought not give up their fight.

The press organization Reporters Without Borders has sent a letter of protest to Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey, which is surprising considering the power of the gift that Dorsey has just given them. While some reporters get themselves on the ground to report from say, Syria, nothing can stop others in the U.S. or any other country from following the tweets of Syrian protesters, even if the Syrian government requests and is granted censorship of tweets within that country.

That’s the second important note: Twitter has made no mention of disabling users’ ability to tweet or of deleting a user because their tweets have been censored. Syria or some other country may choose to take down its communications grid or try to block access to Twitter, but short of such an action, it can’t stop tweets from reaching the outside world under this policy. In fact Twitter has strengthened its case to remain online in countries where free speech is threatened, possibly providing protesters with a valuable tool that would otherwise have been preemptively shut down.

If a government does engage in a cat-and-mouse game of blocking access, remember that nowhere else is the playing field more level between authorities and insurgents than online. Workarounds for Twitter blocks already exist, such as proxy servers that spoof the identity of users and their country of origin, and alternative access points (APIs) to reach the Twitter service.

Finally, reputation matters. Twitter has engendered much goodwill in the tech and international communities by its sterling behavior in both worlds. This is the company that put off a server upgrade to keep the tweets flowing from the Iran uprising in 2009, at the request of the U.S. State Department. It’s a company that’s managed to play by the rules while also leveling the playing field of communication as no other service has since Alexander Bell’s telephone. There’s nothing about this announcement that smacks of any change in policy or attitude; rather it seems like an honest attempt to abide by country-specific rules of law, while also exposing the power of those laws to citizens in countries where freedoms have been abridged. (Forbes as an example, mentions it is illegal to insult a French bureaucrat. One can imagine the uprising in France if the government tried to censor a Tweet insulting Sarkozy or one of his ministers, which would presumably lead to a rapid re-writing of that law.)

As long as no country can ever make a claim to censor a tweet on a worldwide basis, that tweet will exist somewhere on Twitter’s servers, and someone will be able to see it. By laying down clear rules for country-specific censorship, Twitter has implicitly stated that no government, company or individual has the power to eradicate a tweet it doesn’t like from the face the Earth. Twitter has laid down the rules by which it will hold countries accountable, and by which it will hold itself accountable, at least when it comes to censorship.

They are so fair as to be without precedent, and if they are violated, the world presumably will be able to see the hypocrisy in an instant. That’s a maturity that many — governments, corporations, and yes, sniping tweeters — have rarely shown when it comes to censorship or privacy policies. (Hello, SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, DMCA, Facebook and the rest!)

Besides, if Twitter were as evil as its critics would have us believe, would we be able to see the results of the ongoing #TwitterBlackout? If we are living in a world where corporations have more power than government, I’ll take that level of transparency from a new media company, every day.

Twitter censorship stirs up a storm

Twitter has promoted itself as a beacon of free speech, and that image was burnished when revolutionaries used the social media service to organize protests during last year’s Arab Spring uprising.

But in what many view as an about-face, Twitter now says it has the power to block tweets in a specific country if the government legally requires it to do so, triggering outrage around the world, especially in Arab countries.

Dissidents and activists there fear the new policy will stifle free speech, and thousands of users are threatening to boycott Twitter.

“Is it safe to say that Twitter is selling us out?” asked Egyptian activist Mahmoud Salem.

The flood of criticism was unusual for Twitter, which drapes itself in the First Amendment. Its chief executive, Dick Costolo, refers to it as “the free speech wing of the free speech party.”

Jack Dorsey, who created Twitter, even named one of the conference rooms at his San Francisco company “Tahrir Square” in recognition of the pivotal role that Twitter played in the uprising in Cairo.

But Twitter, like other major Internet companies, is struggling to reconcile its philosophical opposition to censorship with the economic desire to fan out around the globe.

Facebook, Google and Yahoo navigate a complex web of laws and state-imposed restrictions that can be used to suppress dissident voices and sway public opinion.

It is common practice for Internet companies to take down content that is illegal in a particular country.

Twitter insists that it remains fully committed to free speech. It used to be that if Twitter removed a tweet, it vanished from the Web. Now a tweet that violates the law in one country still will be visible in the rest of the world.

Twitter will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed, similar to what Google does.

It will share the removal requests on the Chilling Effects Web site, which advocates for Internet freedom and tracks take-down notices.

Twitter said it would not remove any tweets unless it is legally required to do so, and then only after an internal review.

Twitter’s general counsel, Alexander Macgillivray, a former Google lawyer who helped the Internet search giant craft its censorship policies, also helped create the chillingeffects.org Web site while at Harvard.

Yet when legally required, Twitter has removed tweets that infringed on copyrights or link to child pornography.

It says it has endeavored to be transparent. Twitter publicly disclosed that the U.S. government had obtained a court order requiring Twitter to hand over information about four Twitter users in the WikiLeaks investigation.

Twitter said it went public so the users could fight the request. It says it’s applying that same principle here.

“One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user’s voice,” Twitter wrote in a blog post. “We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can’t.”

Some free-speech advocates defended Twitter, saying it was handing them tools to fight censorship.

Zeynep Tufekci, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina and a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said she found herself in the unusual position of praising, not condemning, the policies of an Internet company.

“Twitter is setting the bar as high as it can,” Tufekci said. “It does not deserve the reaction it’s getting.”

Jillian York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, “Once people see how Twitter is implementing this, they will calm down.”

But other groups accused Twitter of siding with censors and demanded that it scrap the new policy.

“Twitter is depriving cyber dissidents in repressive countries of a crucial tool for information and organization,” Reporters Without Borders, a journalist organization, wrote in a letter to Dorsey, Twitter’s executive chairman.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland on Friday credited Twitter with being transparent about its approach to censorship but said it was too early to tell if policy would harm users.

Twitter’s medium for lightning-quick self-expression has powered political protests throughout the world, from the Occupy Wall Street movement in the U.S. to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia and Syria.

Nowhere was it a more important tactical tool than in the uprising that overthrew Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

“Twitter had a massive effect on the course of the revolution before, during and after,” said Ahmad Saied, an Egyptian journalist and blogger.

Its ambitions to grow from 100 million active users to more than 1 billion ultimately may bring Twitter into conflict with its ideals.

With its expansion into more countries will come increased pressure to censor tweets. If it violates the law in a country where it has employees, those employees risk arrest and prosecution. That includes democracies such as France and Germany, which have strict prohibitions on Nazi propaganda.

“They’ve said their intention is to remain supportive of free speech and to continue to enable people to use Twitter as a tool for organizing and communication,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow at the New America foundation who follows freedom of expression online. “But we shouldn’t take them at their word. We should look at what they do and hold them to their word.”

FileSonic Disables Sharing Capabilities

Filesharing website FileSonic has disabled its sharing capabilities in the wake of the enforced closure of MegaUpload.

FileSonic was one of the biggest sites of its type and, like MegaUpload, it allowed users to upload files that could then be downloaded by others.

But with MegaUpload owner Kim Dotcom having been arrested in New Zealand amid accusations the site was used for the distribution of pirated movies and other copyright-infringing content, the owners of FileSonic appear have taken steps to avoid a potentially similar fate.

Users who use FileSonic are now shown the message: "All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.

"If this file belongs to you, please login to download it directly from your file manager."

The site's blog does not explain the action in greater detail. Last December, however, it said it was to check all uploaded files for copyrighted material and said it was keen to battle piracy.

It vowed to use Vobile, a content identification and management service, to scan all files included those that are compressed for copyright infringement.

Like MegaUpload, FileSonic is one of the world’s most popular file sharing sites.

Users can download and send attachments that are too large to send via email such as video, multiple photographs and music files.

Action against the site came in the same week that scores of major websites held a 24-hour protest against new anti-piracy laws making its way through the American legislature.

FileServe shutters in light of file-sharing site crackdown

Summary: With Megaupload now defunct and shut down by U.S. authorities, more file-sharing sites, including FileSonic and now FileServe, are shutting down their services to limit potential fallout.

FileServe is the latest high profile file-sharing site to effectively pull the plug on its own service, by disallowing all downloads except those “that you have uploaded personally”.

The company has not made any official comment. It comes less than 24 hours since similar file-sharing site FileSonic disabled its service, only allowing users to download content that they have uploaded themselves.

It is thought that FileServe follows FileSonic and other sites in response to the wider crackdown on file-sharing sites by U.S. authorities.

Reddit brought to light the sudden move by FileServe, which currently holds as the 132nd most popular site on the Web, according to Internet traffic analytics firm Alexa.

Many other file hosting websites have closed their affiliate programs, which allows users to generate revenue based on the number of downloads clicked per uploaded file.

Sites like FileServe can be a hotbed for hosting illegally uploaded copyrighted material, such as television shows and films, to allow users to make a quick buck or two by sharing the links with online forums.

Online forums and link-sharing sites allow users to submit not only their torrent files for peer-to-peer sharing, but operate on an open-comment system. This gives community users the ability to leave comments that include links to file-sharing sites, such as FileServe, RapidShare and the now defunct Megaupload.

As many other file-sharing sites are closing their sites and affiliate links, others are taking the drastic measure by deleting entire swathes of accounts and files stored on their servers. Others like Uploaded.to are taking to blocking IP addresses from the United States to mitigate any future potential damage.

Anonymous Denies Links to MegaUpload Clone

With MegaUpload.com now out of the picture, people claiming to be connected to the hacktivist group Anonymous are claiming that they will launch an online locker site of their own called AnonyUpload.com.

The news came just after file sharing site Filesonic has disabled its function and MegaUpload was taken down. The website, which is not fully-functional at this time, only has Paypal and social networking buttons working. When you visit the site, you will be greeted with a landing page that requests for funding. The site’s builders posted a statement, saying that they are hoping it to be online by January 25 if they have the proper funding.

AnonyUpload promises to offer users the same services as of that of MegaUpload, enabling users to share files by uploading them to the site.

Anonymous, the hack-attack group famous for its distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on corporate websites and its activism regarding freedom of speech, posted a tweet denying any link to the website.

“FYI – We have NO affiliation with this site, and by the looks of it, this is a SCAM – anonyupload.com,” tweeted @YourAnonNews.

Computer security experts said that whether or not Anonymous truly created the AnonyUpload website, it should be avoided. “My advice would be to avoid the AnonyUpload site, and certainly not donate any money,” writes Sophos’ Graham Cluley. “You don’t know whose pockets you might be lining, and as AnonyUpload’s own blurb makes clear there are ‘many reasons’ why their service is ‘not good.’”

Top 100+ Revenue Sharing Sites

How would you like to make money from what you already do online? We’ve compiled a list of over 100 sites where you can earn revenue from any content that you create.

Most of the sites on this list are based on sharing revenue from Google Adsense. If you have any concerns about a particular site then we would recommend not including your Adsense information on those sites.

We haven’t tried all of these sites out, so if you know of any problems with payments not being made, then please leave a comment below and we’ll update the list.

Also, if you know of any other sites that you think should be included on the list then please leave your suggestions in the comments section below.

Don’t forget to sign-up for the Social Media Trader RSS feed before you go making all that money…

Written Content

http://www.about.com
The basis of Guide compensation is year-over-year page view growth. As of 1/1/07, if your page views grow you will never make less than $725 per month and it’s likely you’ll make much more than that over time (in some cases we have Guides who earn in excess of$100,000 per year).

http://thisisby.us
50% of revenue goes to writers. 10% goes to commenters.

http://hubpages.com/
Take advantage of royalty-generating tools. HubPages provides you with easy access to the Internet’s top income generating tools: Google ads and eBay and Amazon offers. The opportunity to earn more and more royalties over time simply by writing about your favorite topic is the icing on the cake!

http://www.squidoo.com/
Since Squidoo is free to use, we have to run a few ads on your lens in order to keep paying the server bills. But, since you’re the brains behind the lens, you should get a cut! And better than a cut: you get HALF. That’s right. Any time someone stops by your lens and buys a product you recommended or clicks on a Google ad, you get 50% of the royalties. We keep 45% for the company and send 5% to charity.

http://www.flixya.com/ (Banned Don'y Use This Site)
A social network that puts 100% ad revenue in your pocket. We’ve built the tools for you to share your videos, photos, and blogs. Your place to make friends, earn money, network and more.

http://www.xomba.com/
Xomba uses Google Adsense on every page of the site. Any posts made by the user will display targeted ads on their Xombyte/Xomblurb. Xomba automatically rotates ownership of the ads between users and the website. You are paid by Google when someone clicks on these ads.

http://www.triond.com
Each month you will earn 50% of the revenue generated by your content in the previous month. And you’ll keep on earning - because your published content will continue to generate royalties every month thereafter.

http://www.helium.com/
What’s more, our best writers earn! Helium shares a portion of its revenue with those who share the most and the best with us.

http://www.oondi.com/
Why should anyone else reap the benefits of your labor? When you submit your work to oondi, you get 100% of the advertisement profits.

http://bloggerparty.com
Welcome. Join the party, where people from around the world join together to share their thoughts, ideas, rants, daily journals, reviews, and lives with each other each and every day. Write about what you want, when you want, meet people, and have fun. Plus, make some money doing it, too.

http://www.launchtags.com/
Build a mini-page about your expertise, interests and know-how. Use text, pictures, video, links and blog feeds. Earn revenue brought in by your mini-pages

http://www.digitaljournal.com/
Sign up today and join one of the most active news sites on the Internet! Share your thoughts, vote on newsworthy articles, engage in debates and even get paid to report news as a citizen journalist.

http://www.senserely.com/
Our mission at Senserely.com is to provide a place for honest Google AdSense publishers to legitimately increase their daily earnings. As soon as you register, this basically becomes your website, with your AdSense blocks displayed next to your content, and you’ll be able to write articles, reviews, and stories about your knowledge and experience with AdSense or any topic you feel confortable with, as well as read, ask questions, and exchange information with other AdSense publishers.

http://www.mytripledub.com/
MyTripleDub is all about sharing. You post, we share. For every post you create, you get the benefit of 70% of the ads displaying using your AdSense account. If you send people here using your referral link, and they sign up, you get an additional 10% on any of the posts they make, and they still get 70%!

http://www.soulcast.com/
Still using MySpace, LiveJournal or Xanga? If you’re going to blog, why not get paid? When you sign up, you can make money through ads on your blog that generate revenue every time a reader clicks on an ad. It’s free and easy!

http://www.vdox.com/
VDOX.com also offers an opportunity for freelance writers who would like to make profits with Google AdSense with no cost by adding Google AdSense on their articles. This is the opportunity for freelance writers who prefer working at home. The Freelance writer ( freelance writhing ) will get 100% profits from Google.com This is an 100% AdSense revenue sharing

http://www.5050articles.com/
5050Articles provides you with the ability to become an author and publish your articles to drive traffic to your website or blog. Sounds simple enough, but we’ve taken it a step further. We split the AdSense revenue generated from 5050Articles.com with you, the author of the articles and blog posts. So not only can you drive traffic to your website, but you could make some (or a lot) more money in the process!

http://www.greendoc.net/
GreenDOC associated with Google AdSense offers you an opportunity to link ads provided by Google AdSense on your published documents page.

http://www.daytipper.com/
Daytipper is your online daily resource for useful advice, tips, tricks, techniques and hints…Got a great tip? We’ll pay you $3.

http://www.meshplex.org
Adsense Revenue Sharing - Make Money from every tutorial that you submit to us

http://blogevolve.com/
BlogEvolve.com is a writing community where authors can create their own personal blog. Each blog article shows up on the site’s home page and on each author’s personal blog. Blog Authors can make a significant amount of money from Adsense Ads that are displayed on the same page as their blog articles.

http://www.journalhome.com/
You can include your own Google Adsense® publisher ID.
Once you have created your own free blog account you will be able to select the color, channel and much more.

http://www.softwarejudge.com
If you have strong opinions about software, whether positive or negative, and want to get paid for your reviews, you are in the right place. We pay up to 50 dollars for tell-it-like-it-is, no marketing BS, straight talking software reviews.

http://www.valueinvestingnews.com/
Value Investing News is a community driven value investing news site. You can submit links to news items, bid up stories to the front page, bid down stories, and make comments. Members are rewarded for the success of Value Investing News by sharing in the Adsense revenue.

http://www.writingcampus.com/
Express yourself, make friends, improve English, and earn money. You will get 60% advertisement revenue that your blog generates.

http://www.yourblog.in/
A Your Blog In account gives you access to several features including multiple themes and Google AdSense revenue sharing, detailed statistics, and the SpamKarma installed on every blog.
Revenue sharing ratio is now 70%

http://www.screendig.com/
On this site, we share the revenue with you 75/25 (you get 75%, we get 25%). By inserting your Adsense information below, we’ll show your ads 75% of the time on every page of every site that you create on ScreenDig. The more sites you make, the more traffic you get, the more money you’ll make.

http://www.scratchprojects.com
[For] programmers and developers of all skill levels Currently our up front rate is $50 per article. This amount will be paid through PayPal before publishing on Scratch Projects.

http://www.qassia.com
Qassia is not a knowledge base, but we rely on the same user contribution principle, since our bread and butter is the accumulation and amalgamation of intel. And sites that rely on user contributions are expected to compensate their contributors. While our primary way of rewarding content is with backlinks and exposure for users’ websites, we also share advertising revenues with our users.

http://www.music-nerds.com
So dig in, tell us what you think of your favorite songs, and if you want to express yourself and earn some money doing it, sign up to write an album guide yourself!

Video

http://revver.com/
.. the viral video network that pays. We connect video makers and sharers with sponsors in a free and open marketplace that rewards them for doing what they do best.

http://www.yourmelody.tv
YourMelodyTV Beta is the 1st Music Video Sharing Content Community that allows musicians and others to connect, converse and share their music content and Get Played & Get Paid for it.

http://www.matrixmovies.net/
MATRIXMovies rewards all users who upload media with Google revenue share!!! 100% of all revenue generated from your videos is yours!!! The more you upload, the more adsense driven pages you get.

http://www.atomfilms.com
If our members and acquistions execs like what they see, you’ll be offered an AtomFilms distribution deal that pays real money, and can pave the way to distribution through MTV Networks, our parent company.

http://current.com
VCAM submissions are paid a flat rate of £500 per VCAM chosen for Current TV. If your VCAM does air on Current and the sponsor of your VCAM wants to show it in other places beyond Current TV, you’ll get anywhere between £2,500 and £10,000, depending on where they show it.

http://www.channelme.tv
Video site where you can earn share of revenue. You have to own a .tv site in order to use the tools

http://www.expertvillage.com
As an ExpertVillage Filmmaker, you can; work on your own schedule, from anywhere in the world, fill in gaps between your larger paying gigs, receive worldwide exposure for your work, work on the assignments that you choose, make an average of $300 per assignment, get paid every Friday, …all while helping us grow the largest how-to video library in the world.

http://www.break.com
Get paid up to $2,000 if your original video is posted on our homepage

http://www.vume.com
Welcome to VuMe, a media sharing site that rewards users for content they create. Our mission is to pass the wealth on to the people who deserve it - the creators of the content. You.

http://www.lulu.tv
80% of the site’s ad revenue gets put in a cash pool. You create audio or video content and upload it. It gets played… you get paid, based on your share of the traffic. Even if your share is one click.

http://www.ulinkx.com
First provide your google adsense client information, then start collecting videos and creating playlist. We will start showing ads on your videos and playlist using your adsense information. If anyone clicks on those ads, money goes directly to your account.

http://www.blip.tv
You’re spending tons of time and effort - and money - creating your show. Isn’t it only right that you should get rewarded for it? At blip.tv our advertising program is designed to put you in complete control of monetizing your content by providing you with a variety of advertising choices.

https://www.cruxy.com
Once you register, you’ll be able to upload digital content. You will set a price for the item and we’ll show you all of the transaction fees up front. You can add a description and tags or keywords to be associated with your content. Once you have confirmed the price and description and uploaded the digital file, it will be stored in our system and ready for sale.

http://www.vuze.com
Monetize Your Content the Way You Want: Ad supported, Electronic Sell Through at the price you choos. Or, you can offer it to viewers for free with no ads

http://www.expotv.com
Upload a product review and you could earn up to $10.00

Podcasting / Audio/ Music

http://www.talkshoe.com
TalkShoe is a service that enables anyone to easily create, join, or listen to Live Interactive Discussions, Conversations, Podcasts and Audioblogs.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/
BlogTalkRadio fuses social networking with Internet radio. The web-based service allows you to host a live Internet radio show and take callers from the phone. Hosts can copy and paste a Flash player on their site or blog so listeners can click to listen. The shows are also made available as a podcast via RSS and iTunes. Your audience can listen online or on any mp3-friendly device. Listeners have tens of thousands of shows to choose from, far more than on terrestrial or satellite radio.

http://www.odiogo.com/
Not only is Odiogo free, it may be able to generate advertising revenues. Once your listenership reaches a significant level, you may qualify for a share of ad income!

http://www.we7.com
We7 shares the money that is made from the ads that are embedded with downloaded music. Unlike P2P piracy sites, we respect you as an artist and respect your contribution to the world of entertainment. For free music which is downloaded from our site, the split is typically 50/50 between you and the rights owner, after costs.

http://www.beat9.com/
Through a simple process, content owners log on to www.Beat9.com and upload their audio or video file; within a few seconds, their file is converted to a fully trackable and e-commerce enabled ViraCast, ready to launch and start generating revenue immediately. The ad supported ViraCast can easily be embedded in and played off any website; delivered as podcasts on iTunes; distributed by P2P sites; and emailed, while still retaining its e-commerce and tracking functionality.

http://www.podango.com
Hosting their programs at Podango for free, station owners earn income by sharing advertising revenue from the aggregate of Podango-hosted stations.

http://www.jamendo.com
Jamendo enables all the users to make a donation to the Artists with a minimum of 5 Eur (or Dollars). In any case, jamendo retains as little as 50 cents for financial fees, the remaining sum is directly given to the Artists. Please note that the only Artists eligible for receiving money are those who have opted for the Program ‘Donation’. But there is more, jamendo shares 50% of its advertising revenues to the Artists who opted for the Program ‘Revenue Sharing’.

http://www.reverbnation.com
Yes. Artists will be paid a portion of the advertising revenue in proportion to their popularity on the site (once we launch officially and lineup some advertisers). And of course, artists are paid if a user buys music or merchandise from them on our site (a feature that is coming soon).

http://www.divvycast.com/
Divvycast is an inclusive web service where you can produce, upload, and distribute your music. Bands, solo artists, producers, and DJ’s can get closer to their core audience, reach new fans, and get paid while they’re doing it.

http://www.gochongo.com
Earn money on your contests and submission

http://www.si-mi.com/
Upload, share and sell your videos, music, podcasts, animations, ebooks and games. You set your own price and receive 70% of the profits.

http://blastpodcast.com
Are you a content producer or provider? A broadcast producer, distributor or someone who stays up ’til 3:00am producing your own show? Well, we believe your content is valuable, in real monetary terms, which is why we have developed the most aggressive revenue share model in the Podcasting industry.

http://www.podtrac.com
As your advertising partner, we match up your unique content with equally unique advertising for your audience. We also provide third-party podcast measurement - of particular value for attracting advertisers - free to any podcast. Check out Podtrac’s complete suite of advertising and sponsorship services for your podcast, and register with Podtrac today.

http://www.grooveshark.com
Licensing your music on Grooveshark is a breeze. Head over to our label registration page, fill out the contact form, download and complete the metadata spreadsheet, and await an email from our payment management team.

Photography

http://www.shareapic.net
Shareapic is a free service that allows its users to upload and host images on our servers. What makes us different from the rest? Shareapic has a unique revenue sharing model that compensates users for directing their friends and family to see their hosted images. When a member hosts a gallery, they can then show this gallery to others. Each time this is done, the member is paid.

http://www.citizenimage.com
Get your images published! Buy and sell news and creative photographs

http://submit.shutterstock.com
Submit your photos to Shutterstock and get paid every time one of your photos is downloaded.

http://scoopt.com
This is our job. We’ll do our utmost to sell your photos to newspapers, magazines, news organisations and other publishers. Each time we make a sale, we pay you a 40% royalty. If we don’t think we can market your photos, we’ll tell you quickly.

http://www.picable.com
Start sharing your photos… and start getting paid for them.

http://www.britepic.com
Upload pictures - you still get the ad revenue, even if your pic is embedded elsewhere

http://www.freerangestock.com
Photographers submitting photos to Freerange Stock can now participate in our revenue sharing system. This is implemented through Google AdSense, and will allow you to keep 80% of the advertising revenue generated by your download pages and your profile pages

http://tubeimage.com
We setup a share system that allows you to earn from your image uploads, you get 100% revenues.

http://www.photoworks.com
My Storefront is a new PhotoWorks feature that enables members to sell photos online for a profit. PhotoWorks will take care of the e-commerce, production, shipping and customer service for each transaction. As a seller, you just need to provide your photographs in digital form, create photo projects, then determine which items you want to sell and how much you want your markup to be!

Social Networks

http://www.newsvine.com
The Newsvine community loves investigative reporting, opinion pieces, and just about everything else considered newsworthy and in good taste. Newsvine also sells advertising around all content on the site and returns 90% of the advertising revenue from your content right back to you (based on page views).

http://lazzeo.com
Place ads on your profile, Upload Videos, and Images! Create and build a profile to earn cash!

http://dada.net/
Dada friend$ is a free program based on Google AdSense, through which you can make money by allowing Google to publish ads on your personal space and your blog, and by inviting new friends to Dada.net and the friend$ program.

http://www.rateitall.com
The idea is pretty simple - if you contribute to the RateItAll community - whether it be by writing a review, creating Weblists, creating new listings for existing ratings lists, creating a user profile with a picture, or referring friends, we want you to share in the advertising revenue associated with those contributions.

http://www.valuepay2.com
earn money every time you create and share your stuff… be it homepages, videos, audio, photos - with your friends!

http://www.mylot.com
It’s easy, sign up and start discussions, post responses or comments to current discussions, news or blogs, or refer friends!

http://www.mytripbook.com
Share your experiences from your own travel diary- reviews, blogs, photos and videos- and map your past and future trips. Members who sign up as a travel guide can share in the advertising revenues generated from their guide page by inserting a Google AdSense ID into their profile as directed.

http://www.giblink.com
The gibLink Network’s mission is to build a global community of entrepreneurs, small business owners and home-based business owners to advertise and promote their businesses, share ideas and strategies to benefit together from the growth and revenue generated by the entire community by sharing it back to the advertisers.

http://ww3.yuwie.com
Yuwie.com is a social networking service that allows Members to create unique personal profiles online in order to find and communicate with old and new friends. The revenue sharing rate is determined each month by the amount of revenue Yuwie.com generated from advertisements.

http://www.gizter.com
an ad-revenue sharing social network built around gadgets and gizmos. It shares advertisement revenue with its members using a 2-tier Affinity Program.

http://www.myviewin.com
It is like any other social networking website, but the difference is WE are here to share with our members the advertising revenue. We want to be the first social website that pays its members, since all the ¨hard¨ work is done by the users.

http://www.narple.com
We got tired of spending countless hours uploading and creating content for MySpace and not making any money doing it. So now, we can all do it here on NaRpLe and get paid!

http://www.meyouworld.net
At MeYouWorld.net, it is not just about ME it’s also about YOU. And that begins with advertising. At MeYouWorld.net contributors can get 100% of the income from AdSense on their POST pages.

http://yagatta.com
2000 members will be a part of our profit sharing program…

http://www.cybersist.com
Your Google ads will be displayed in 7 different locations on your public blog and photo pages. Those ads are specifically optimized to allow better penetration of the ads. Any click on those ads will generate a revenue for you through AdSense.
http://www.mylifeoftravel.com

Use your Google AdSenseTM Account & make money for sharing stories

http://www.sharerevmedia.com/
Sharerevmeida.com is the first Social network website in the internet which pays its users for all of their activites like sharing profile, videos, blogs, pictures, making friends and more.

http://spotonce.com
Share revenue from Google Adsense

Search

http://greenhouse.mahalo.com
Greenhouse Guides are paid for each search result page accepted for inclusion on Mahalo.com

http://www.slashmysearch.com
Get paid to search

http://www.rummage4money.com
By creating detailed pages that link to your site, you will be creating content pages that will display revenue generating ads. Rummage4Money.com uses Google AdSense to automatically serve relevant ads for the content that members create.

http://www.eurekster.com
If You participate in the Swicki Preferred Placement program to publish paid advertising on your Swicki, You will be paid via PayPal approximately 30 days

Social News

http://plugim.com
Add Google Adsense to your profile page.

http://www.adsensigg.com
AdSensigg was influenced by the extremely popular technology news site DIGG and the idea of splitting revenue from displaying ads on the site via Google Adsense.

http://ximmy.com
We are the first company to reward you for your contributions to our community through points that you can redeem for cash.

Answer Services

http://bitwine.com
Using BitWine, you can find Advisors who are ready and willing to share their knowledge, expertise, and skills on a wide array of subjects. Once you find the Advisor you are looking for, you simply set up a time with them to talk, and then you meet with them online. Meeting with someone through BitWine is just like talking on the phone, except that much of the time you can actually see the person you are speaking with.

http://www.ether.com
Whether you’re an accountant, a computer expert, a blogger, or a good gossiper, you can earn money selling what you say to others over the phone or through email.

http://www.justanswer.com
Get paid to answer questions.

Shopping

http://www.mypicklist.com
Make a list of products or services that you would recommend to family and friends. Broadcast your list by adding a widget to websites, blogs and social networks. When someone likes an item from your list and buys it you get the commission.

http://www.epinions.com
Get $10 for every 10 reviews you write

http://www.reviewstream.com
This site is the only place on the Internet you can earn some cash just for writing the reviews! You could review anything around you including: any products, hi-end technics, companies, hotels, politics, cities, stores on your street, or even your neighbors pets! We’ll pay you for all of the reviews.

http://www.sharedreviews.com
We feel community sites that profit from your contributions without sharing are wrong. Join a community empowered to connect and collaborate while sharing in the profits that you help generate!

http://www.favoritethingz.com
When someone clicks on your favorite thingz and buys it - you earn money. Easy as that.

http://www.creamaid.com
Write a post relevant to the suggested Conversation topic, and paste the widget code inside your post. Your post will be syndicated to the widgets inside all other participating posts. Also, you will receive the proposed royalty payment.

Miscellaneous

http://www.kongregate.com
Kongregate shares between 25% and 50% of ad revenue generated by games with their respective developers.

http://www.listasaurus.com
Welcome to Listasaurus.com, the first classifieds website that PAYS you simply for listing ads!

http://nabbr.com
Make money every time someone views or embeds a widget from your site.

http://www.yodio.com
Your voice is unique and personal…just like your stories. Use Yodio to add your stories to your photos, and share these narrated photos with your friends and colleagues.

http://cruxy.com
Cruxy gives creators the ability to sell their work as digital downloads. Artists can sell just about any type of media file at the price they choose. Cruxy just takes a small fee (10% + $.15 per transaction) with the rest going to the creator. Fans can buy content using PayPal, Google Checkout or any major credit card.

http://www.redbubble.com
RedBubble is an online art gallery that makes it easy to sell your art, photos, designs and illustrations as high-quality framed prints, mounted prints, greeting cards, posters, designer T-Shirts and more.

The Biggest List of "Google AdSense Publishers"

Here is a list of the Internet’s biggest Google AdSense publishers. The information was compiled based on an audit by United States Department of Labor and The Official Bureau of Labor Statistics. Here is the latest 2011 list of individual site owners – people just like you and me. Big corporate AdSense publishers like AOL are excluded.

So, how many sites do you need to make money with Google Adsense? Well, obviously only ONE. Stick with it, and push it all the way.

1. Markus Frind : PlentyOfFish.com : $300,000 per month

Markus is the founder of PlentyOfFish. Currently, he is generating nearly $300,000 per month. This is a staggering report. He built his site at his apartment all by himself (sounds like Bill Gates?). The site might seem very dull and cliche, but hey he is making some serious green.


2. Kevin Rose: Digg.com : $250,000 per month

As we know, Kevin Rose is almost a celebrity figure online. This is where everything is happening. Aside from everything, he is generating stinking $250,000 per month. That is $3M per year! Of course the site worth a lot more than this, but he is rocking the Adsense.


3. Jeremy Schoemaker : $140,000 per month

Mr. Shoemaker or ShoeMoney. I remember when this guy first came on Youtube, and gave alot of buzz. Once again, just from Google Adsense alone, he is making $140,000 per month. Currently, he is building his own cash empire with Affiliate marketing, and other cash generating residuals. Unlike most of the other Google advertisers ShoeMoney makes his money from hundreds of sites and thousands of domains.


4. Jason Calacanis : Weblogs, Inc. : $120,000 per month

Next to ShoeMoney, we have Jason Calacanis. He is the creator of Weblogs. Basically, his site allows other people to network with blogging. The site has been acquired by AOL in 2008.

5. Mahmood Somani a Technology Guru from Vancouver, Canada quickly climbing to Top Adsense Earner really fast, and runs multiple classified websites sites earning him approximately $185,000.00 monthly.

Somani recently developed an online google adsense software tool which creates automated Google Adsense Webpages. The software has become one of the fastest selling online google adsense web creation software with thousands of vistors to the site daily, and over 30,000 downloads in a few days resulting in server crashes for their hosting company. You can get a copy of his e-book Adsense Money Machine at:

http://store.payloadz.com/details/904285-eBooks-Business-and-Money-ADSENSE-MONEY-MACHINE.html

6. David Miles Jr. & Kato Leonard : FreeWebLayouts.net- $100,000 per month

Rank 5 is Mr. David Miles and Kato Leonard. I do not know much about these guys, but according to WP (Washington Post), they are claiming to make $100k a month from the site alone. FreeWebLayouts.net offers free MySpace templates. Of course, this was before MySpace recession.


7. Tim Carter : AskTheBuilder.com : $30,000 per month


8. Joel Comm : e-book : $24,000 per month


9. Shawn Hogan : DigitalPoint.com : $10,000 per month

Google pays Digital Point about $10,000 a month, depending on how many people view or click on those ads, said Shawn D. Hogan, the owner and chief technology officer of Digital Point.

Mr. Hogan said he started the revenue-sharing approach in 2004 “as kind of a marketing gimmick.”

“But everyone seemed to think it was a cool idea,” he said. “I saw a lot of other sites doing the same thing maybe six months later.”


This list only comprises of people who are earning from Adsense. We will be covering the top bloggers in the world and their earnings. NOTE: These figures are the most updated and some may be outdated. We have tried to find the latest income of these people but most of them haven’t disclosed their earnings in recent years for obvious reasons.

The Big List "Google Adsense Competition Filter List" In 2012

Here a list of "Google AdSense Competitive Filter List 'In 2012:

10-bestsites.com
10-top-sites.com
101soho.com
12-bestsites.com
12-topsites.com
1click.com
1s.md
1st-home-business.net
25-bestsites.com
25-topsites.com
5-top-sites.com
7-bestsites.com
7-topsites.com
8-bestsites.com
8-topsites.com
8-topwebsites.com
8bestsites.com
8topsites.com
9topsites.com
aavalue.com
advancedwebsearch.info
agematch.com
aish.com
all-free-info.com
allcoolmusic.com
allinformationabout.com
allpspgames.com
alltheautomotive.com
alltheindustrials.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.com
aprido.com
arc99.com
arcaderockstar.com
ardice.com
articlescafe.com
ask.com
assortedinternet.com
atdmt.com
audioblog.com
best-price.com
best3websites.com
best4sites.net
best4solutions.com
best7sites.com
best8sites.org
bestcomputingsites.com
besthomegardensites.com
bestwebdiscounts.com
bestwebpix.com
bestwebpix.net
big.com
blinkbits.com
blog-software-blog.com
blog.co.uk
blogexplosion.com
blogger.com
bloggercrab.com
blogging-bonanza.com
bloggingbiz.com
bloggingequalizer.com
bloggingsecrets.com
blogharbor.com
blogidentity.com
blogigo.com
blogit.com
blogizm.com
blogjet.com
blogmysite.com
blogomonster.com
blogpulse.com
blogspot.com
blogster.com
blogstogo.com
blogstream.com
blogware.com
buymp3music.info
buzzmetrics.com
canaca.com
cerado.com
cheblogs.com
chosenresult.com
chrisabraham.com
clobo.com
cohit.com
computer-offer.com
computerweekly.com
consumerincentivepromotions.com
consumersearch.com
coolringtones.com
coolstartpages.com
creative-weblogging.com
cv2006.biz
dbmoz.biz
dbmoz.com
dbmoz.net
dealtime.co.uk
dexigner.com
didakutz.com
digg.com
digg4it.com
digitalearning.com
dirkw.com
discussit.biz
domaindirect.com
download-it-free.com
downloadrings.com
downtown-internet.com
dreamhost.com
drift-kings.com
e-isn.com
e-nternet.com
eanimationschools.com
easyeart.co.uk
ebay.co.uk
ebay.com
ebay.com.au
editme.com
egoweblog.com
emotivationalvideos.com
enewsblog.com
ephotoalbum.net
etraveldiary.com
everyclick.com
everyrule.com
ewoss.info
ewossnewsbar.com
ewossuk.com
expert-expert.com
extreme-rides.com
ez-tracks.com
ez4search.com
ezsgblog.com
faces.com
factguide.org
fastcoolrides.com
faster-results.com
feedzilla.com
fieldinfocus.co.uk
finditonline.ws
findnot.com
finest4.com
flashingblinkielights.com
flexfinder.com
forum4bloggers.com
fotothing.com
free-lyrics-online.com
free-pictures-photos.com
freedigg.com
freeenterpriseland.com
freelanceworkexchange.com
friendcircles.com
fullscalecommerce.com
futublog.com
getacoder.com
getinfoon.info
getmusicfree-jump.com
getmusicfree.com
getworldpassport.com
giantexplorer.com
go27.com
google.co.uk
google.com
gowholesale.com
gr8info.net
greatinfo.biz
growinglifestyle.com
gubaara.com
guideya.com
haohao99.com
homocon.com
hot4sites.com
idesktopwallpaper.net
igossip.com
imusicsearch.com
incentiveleader.com
incentiverewardcenter.com
indeed.com
info-on.biz
info.com
infoforyourhealth.com
infoscouts.com
infosearch4u.com
infoworld.com
inhunt.com
internet-downloads.net
isontheweb.co.uk
ittoolbox.com
ivue.com
journalhome.com
journallog.com
keepmedia.com
knowledgestorm.com
ldsplanet.com
lesbianconnect.com
links-4-you.com
linxbest.com
local.com
logo-lites.com
majorscripts.com
makepropaganda.com
mamma.com
marketingwithsafelists.com
mediataskmaster.com
megasearch.biz
miego.com
monstermarketplace.com
moretoblog.com
morpheusultra.com
movieadvanced.com
movies-all-free.com
mozsite.com
mp3musiq.com
mpfree.com
mqsearch.co.uk
myblogsite.com
myipodownloads.com
mylot.com
mylot.info
mylot.us
myluxuryyachtcharter.com
mymusicinc.com
myownblog.net
myrsscreator.com
mywebgold.com
netfirms.com
newbay.com
newsgator.com
oceleb.com
ohiomortgageblog.com
oninformation.com
ontheweb-offer.com
person.com
phpwebhosting.com
pictures88.com
picturetoplist.com
pimpingyourspace.com
pimpmyride.com
plentyoffish.com
pluck.com
popularq.com
professionaladvices.com
prosperall.com
purebusiness.com
puredirectory.com
qckjmp.com
ratedsolutions.com
ratherbecreative.com
rayslist.com
rebrandsoftware.com
reviewsbykrystal.com
ringringmobile.com
ringtonemusic.info
rocketinfo.com
rockgarden.co.uk
rsscache.com
ru2006.com
rw2006.com
schtuff.com
search-detective.net
searchemu.com
searchignite.com
searchinaflash.com
searchtorpedo.com
secretsofsuccess.com
securesafepro.com
seniorpeoplemeet.com
shopica.com
shopping.com
simpli.com
slate.com
smmsite.com
socioeconomics.com
sparkpod.com
squarespace.com
stampedesecret.com
starware.com
stylusstudio.com
successblog.biz
successuniversity.com
sureresult.com
texturadesign.com
thethingsiwant.com
thinktarget.com
tntdownloads.com
tools4myspace.com
top-10sites.com
top-3-sites.com
top4search.net
top8sites.com
topbestsites.org
toptensites.org
toseeka.com
toy-offer.com
tractionsoftware.com
traffictransit.com
travelblog.org
travelpod.com
travelpost.com
truelocal.com
typepad.com
usefulfaqs.com
userland.com
usnom.com
vertippdich.de
volanthosting.com
vortexhost.com
wareareyou.com
webfetch.com
webfinder360.com
webpromall.com
webzsearch.com
wireclub.com
wisegeek.com
wonderbranding.com
workpad.com
world-click.com
worldslastchance.com
yourfreeblog.com

The Biggest List "Google adsense Revenue sharing sites" In 2012

Google Adsense sharing is growing everyday online. Google has been allowing sites to share revenue with it's members and the idea was one of the greatest online. Google's Adsense revenue sharing program is the theme of 100's of sites now and the list keeps growing everyday. I have been doing my homework on this since it first came out. Many sites have came and gone but most of them are still around and are active. Getting all these sites on one list has not been such a easy task. It seems as if some sites tend to keep it on the down low. I have compiled the biggest list of Google Adsense sharing sites. If you know of any that I have missed, please leave it in a comment. All sites on my list have been proven so no need to be skeptical. Please check out each site's guidelines to know exactly what it is they want you to write about. Some of these a forums as well. Well in no particular order, here's the list. Google search the site as is to find on the web.

1.Hubpages
2. Softwarejudge
3. Linkbee
4. Bukisa
5. Comunnity-Knowledge
6. Tipbase
7. Everythingmom
8. Techchunks
9. Workfromhomeforums
10. Zizula
11. Devilsworkshop
12. Mostlyanimefun
13. Tagtooga
14. Infobarrel
15. Hotwebtools
16. Nameslot
17. Smartbloggerz
18. Shetoldme
19. Rummageformoney
20. Squidoo
21. Blogevoledotnetkicks
22. Kernaltrap
23. Cybercist
24. Senserely
25. Bloggerparty
26. Mytripledub
27. Trendhunter
28. Xomba
29. Bloggeries
30. Indiareviewchannel
31. Helium
32. Flixya (Banned, Don't Use This Site)
33. Yousaytoo
34. Dotnetspider
35. Jaanlo
36. Indiastudychannel
37. Triond
38. Qondio
39. Listaurus
40. Blogger
41. Lazzeo
42. Oondi
43. Scratchprojects
44. Digitalpoint
45. Knol
46. Digitalpointforum
47. Thatsprettydumb
48. TheInfoMine
49. Articletrade
50. Tagroll
51. Stockvault
52. Rateitall
53. Googleearthhacks
54. Checkthisup
55. Fundadvice
56. Auctioncut
57. Idnforums
58. Wordpress
59. Salespider
60. Evoire
61. KarmaLynx
62. BestReviewer
63. Shoutmeloud
64. Blogetery
65. Com-x2
66. JournalHome
67. iSell
68. InnovativePassiveIncome
69. Jevitt
70. Youtube
71. Page360
72. Blogengage
73. Seekyt
74. Webanswers
75. Freerangestock
76. techsupporthumor
77. shareyourexpertise
78. oocuz
79. savvify
80. forumatrix
81. music-nerds
82. meshplex
83. webmaster
84. webdigity
85. seomeeting
86. vdox
87. quasi
88. tubeimage
89. matrixmovies
90. meyouworld
91. Qassia
92. Rotatrixfriends
93. BizPreneur

Tips For Success

1. Write lots of article. The more The Better.
2. Set up a schedule to work as much as possible.
3. Try other sites. Do not rely on one site for traffic.
4. NEVER CLICK YOUR OWN ADS!!! Your account will be banned.

GOOD LUCK!

Google’s Ad Related Algorithm Update Analyzed

We’ve covered the topic of Google’s latest update, and tried to raise important questions regarding the implications of the update. What do the experts in the field of SEO have to say regarding this update?

There’s one specific aspect of this topic that many experts have been questioning, and it’s whether or not Google is being hypocritical in regards to their latest algorithm changes penalizing sites with too many ads above the fold.

Danny Sullivan, of Searchengineland, went in-depth into this and looked at a couple of results pages which featured a good amount of ads above the fold. I thought his analysis was very interesting,



The blue box surrounds the content, the search listings that lead you to actual merchants selling trash cans, in this example. Some may argue that the Google shopping results box is further pushing down the “real content” of listings that lead out of Google. But the shopping results themselves do lead you to external merchants, so I consider them to be content.

According to Danny, Google also released a statement in regards to the criticisms they received involving their own ads…

This is a site-based algorithm that looks at all the pages across an entire site in aggregate. Although it’s possible to find a few searches on Google that trigger many ads, it’s vastly more common to have no ads or few ads on a page.

Again, this algorithm change is designed to demote sites that make it difficult for a user to get to the content and offer a bad user experience.

Having an ad above-the-fold doesn’t imply that you’re affected by this change. It’s that excessive behavior that we’re working to avoid for our users.

Many of the users had interesting input regarding the subject.

One of our users provided this image, asking the question – So, I fully expect Google to penalize itself now. *chuckle*



Many responses have been in support of Google. Jeff Dishman, a Google employee said this of the ads presented on results pages, in a conversation involving the subject on Sullivan’s Google+ post.

when the post says “sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change”, you can consider the ads at the top of a Google search to be “content”. It all comes down to relevancy; if someone is searching for credit cards, those ads at the top are likely to be something they are interested in. Also, the fact that this change will affect less than 1% of searches means that it’s targeted at sites that blatantly throw a ton of ads (where they are not relevant at all) at you in a way that will drive people away.

I know this probably won’t do anything to change the way you feel about this, but thought it was worth saying. *Disclaimer* – these are my views, and are not necessarily the views of my employer.

Another interesting aspect of this is how Google Adsense tells users that ads above the fold tend to do better. Providing users a chart of “hotter” areas to place ads.



To be fair, they also say Adsense users should place visitors first when determining ad placement and quantity.

Another WebProWorld user had an interesting take on the battle between Google’s ad network and improving their results page:

I nearly found myself in total despair of finding the correct word that describes googles arm wresting with itself. (left hand battling the right)

The right word may possibly a derivation of the word dyslexic
(dys·lex·i·a (d s-l k s – ). n. A learning disorder marked by impairment of the ability to recognize and comprehend written words.)

I like – dysgooglic (dys-goog-lic. A self inflicted disorder marked by a total impairment of any understanding of things it already understands.

or ‘Dysglooglic’ – biting your own balls syndrome.

It seems the consensus is that Google isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong with their algorithm update, in fact it’s a benefit to users. However, the lack of details regarding the changes along with their strategies given to Adsense users certainly provides plenty of questions.