We feel this package offers great value at a more introductory level price for individuals and SMBs interested in getting involved with just the most essential and popular social networks.  The new package is a complete one-button turnkey solution for not only reserving your name, but also completing all the profile information, images and links required to create a full presence on the top 25 social media sites.

KnowEm has identified this list of 25 essential social networks via several different metrics — page rank, compete score, alexa traffic rankings and media mentions.  All profile creation orders are still completed 100% manually by our U.S.-based in-house staff, so just like all our other plans you can rest assured your data and information is safe with us.

So from the small business owner just getting their feet wet in social media to the new parent that wants to be sure their child’s name is reserved and waiting for them when they want to start tweeting, we have the package for you.

In addition, KnowEm is currently working with a few other companies to develop custom packages for their client base.  Keep your eye out for these other new packages launching within the next few weeks!

As much as I have been hesitant in doing posts like this, because I really don’t like to help out the clones competition with cleaning up their databases, I figured I might as well for the end of the year. It is a request we get from people who visit our site and people we speak with on the twitter, so why not? Here is a little Christmas present for the hacks competitors that haven’t updated their database all year.

Recently announced and one of the largest sites to shut down in 2011 is Gowalla. Now there has been a lot of speculation and rumors that have popped up about this service shutting down, mainly in the realm of investors getting ripped off or not getting any cash yadda yadda, but we don’t care. The matter of the fact is that – BAMMMMM – Facebook just bought the only true competition of foursquare. Why they would shut it down and not keep it open, like they did with friendfeed, is kinda beyond me.  I mean it might not be that big of a service, but it did have a pretty large user base as well as traffic. Granted the traffic was slowly dropping, but hey, at least they had traffic.   So the team from Gowalla are packing their bags and moving out to Cali, where they will sit at nice new desks, sip their Java outta cool coffee cups  and work on making facebook’s location based services more kick butt then anything those New York hipsters at foursquare could ever think of.  I am actually excited how this will play out, because as Zuck has said, he never acquires a company for the “company” but more for the people.  So lets hope the gowalla team can kick some butt and make their system totally kick ass. Congrats guys.

Next site was another biggie, Mixx. Now my partner in crime used to jones on this site. “I am a top mixer! I be submitting all sortsa stuff to Mixx!” – Yeah, that stuff paid off.  Mixx was acquired by Uber Media, which went on a bit of an acquisition frenzy,  buying a bunch of Mobile apps & topped off their list with Mixx, rebranding and renaming it to “Chime.In” – again, removing the entire user base and all the content.    Why they would do this? Not sure. But now Barry’s top mixing status is gone and he will have to try and become a top “Chimer(?)” in order to have something that he can brag about.  Good luck buddy! Lets hope this one stays around a bit longer. [Editor's Note, a.k.a. Barry Wise: I am actually re-focusing my efforts on Google Wave Google Buzz Google+, since I am assured that will be around forever.]

Yet another site shut down that I initially thought had a very good chance to take a bunch of market share with the sale and/or rumors of delicious shutting down was “TagFoot”  - this site was a tagging based site where you could share content with the community and comment back and forth on links etc etc.  Think of it like delicious with some prettier web 2.0 graphics.  But their traffic was  on a STEEP decline, so (I am guessing) the owner of the site just decided to call it quits and say good bye. Again, sites like this with user data are valuable to someone and shouldn’t be just shut off.  Instead put the thing up on flippa.  There is usually someone out there that would want the site, and who knows maybe one of the users of the site would have purchased it if the price was right and he/she thought they could take over running it.

Skribit went to the dead pool back in July.  This site was self described as “Skribit aims to cure writer’s block by helping bloggers and other website owners receive suggestions and topics to write about. Bloggers customize and install a widget in their sidebar or a suggestions tab, allowing their readers to make suggestions.” So basically it was a pumped up contact form widget for your blog where your blog readers could make suggestions for what you should blog about.  They wrapped this into a social media site that would show suggestions so everyone would always have a topic to blog about! Yay! Another site that was listed as a competitor also hit the dead pool – Askablogr.com.  The only other service that seems to still be around and doing this service is SuggestionBox.com, so if you’re lacking ideas for what you should blog about take a gander over there.  Seems they actually have some pretty big clients that are using their platform, so hopefully they will be around for a bit.

So here was a selection of 4 sites that went the way of the titanic. What sites were you a member of or used that hit the dead pool this year?

Dana Thornton, 41, of Belleville, NJ who is charged with impersonating an ex-boyfriend and police officer on the social site Facebook.

As reported by the Daily Record; a New Jersey woman still faces charges this week in a case of first impression in an identity theft indictment.  Dana Thornton, 41, is being accused of impersonating her ex-boyfriend, Parsippany Detective Michael Lasalandra, by creating a Facebook page in his likeness.  The Facebook account, created in 2009, contained modified images of Lasalandra as well as derogatory comments seemingly made by him.  Thornton was indicted in August 2010 by a Morris County grand jury on a fourth-degree charge of identity theft, which is punishable upon conviction by up to 18 months in prison.

Thornton’s defense attorney, Richard Roberts is claiming that New Jersey’s statute does not apply to her case because, “it does not specifically address impersonation through the use of social media or the Internet.”

Superior Court Judge David Ironson has ruled that this defense “lacks merit” and will uphold the conviction.  Judge Ironson has stated that the Internet is a means of accomplishing a goal of impersonation, but just because New Jersey’s law doesn’t specifically mention it as a vehicle to impersonate doesn’t mean the statute doesn’t apply to Thornton’s alleged conduct.

So although the New Jersey statute doesn’t specifically mention “Social Media” in its wording, we must be able interpret the law accordingly.  Social Media is a form of communication and what is said and published there is comparable with impersonation in print or in person.

Prosecutors have argued that although the statue doesn’t “include or exclude electronic communications it is applicable to a broad spectrum of impersonation techniques.”  Ms. Thornton has allegedly assumed the identity of another person and acted to injure Lasalandra’s reputation and career as a police officer.  This can be done through multiple mediums and Facebook is no different in this aspect.

States like New York and California have amended their own impersonation statutes to include “Social Media” in its text.  Thornton’s defense team is arguing that these states dismissed cases like Thornton’s until those laws were amended.  New Jersey does currently have a bill in congress to adjust their original statute, but Morris County prosecutors and Judge alike agree that this is a clarification of the existing statute. They still interpret the existing law to include all mediums, including the ever-growing world of Social Media.

Recently a new site launched called gplus.to – this site has no affiliation with Google, no privacy policy, and basically no information about who owns it or how it uses your information. It is basically a URL shortener to provide vanity URLs for Google+ accounts. The problem is there is absolutely no verification in place. You can take anyone’s Google+ ID number, enter it in the box, and create a unique vanity URL for any name you choose – whether or not you have access to that Google+ account. This allows a huge potential for spammers to engage in Social Media Identity Theft.

There is an opportunity here for these site owners to start engaging in massive data mining because they offer no terms of service or privacy policy. So in addition to allowing anyone to capture anyone else’s vanity URL, they are also capturing everyone’s information for their own purposes. They can also redirect your URL wherever they want before sending you to your profile – Malware, tracking exploits, botnets, etc. You should be EXTREMELY cautious about using this service.

JULY 6 UPDATE: Someone associated with the site from Turkey got in touch with us and updated their site to include a simple About message which explains they are not trying to do anything malicious, and they are not affiliated with Google.  They also changed the appearance to make it look less like an actual Google page.  Wasn’t so hard, was it?

Let’s hear him out anyway.

1. “I’m not bipolar. I’m bi-winning. I win here and I win there.”

Like Charlie said, protecting your brand across the vast social media landscape is all about bi-winning. Or multi-winning: winning here, there, everywhere. Don’t let bitter people and low-blowing competitors misrepresent your brand as something less than it really is. Get ahead of the game and anticipate where they might show up, or squat, next.

The key here is to work with a multi-prong approach, incorporating your identity – and making your mark – on as many social networks as possible (Editor’s shameless plug – use KnowEm to do that!). Sure, Facebook and Twitter are the most popular, but it’s important to plant your flags on other social networks, too. The moment the next social media darling takes off, you’re already covered. You’re already bi-winning.

2. “I’m sorry, man, but I’ve got magic. I’ve got poetry in my fingertips.”

If you’re planning on enhancing your online reputation and making your presence felt in social media, you might as well do it Charlie’s way. With poetry in your fingertips. I don’t mean going Shakespearean on everybody – but when you sit down to type your next tweet, status update, blog entry, or snippet of content, be creative. Be original. Write in a way that you know will make you stand out, that will make you retweetable, Facebook-shareable, re-bloggable, stumble-worthy, Google-Plus-One-able, thumbs-uppable. (Anything I missed?)

After all, the more viral and visible you are in social media, the better you’ll rank in search. (Yes, Google says social signals may soon begin to influence more heavily in search.) And the better you rank in search, the smaller the opening that brand thieves have for bringing you down.

3. “Fame is empowering. My mistake was that I thought I would instinctively know how to handle it. But there’s no manual, no training course.“

Well, unlike Charlie, who lives a kind of whirlwind, soap-opera life, you actually have the benefit of foresight. So don’t say there’s no manual or training course. If there really isn’t, make one. It’s useful to prepare yourself for online communications crises, misrepresentations, and worst-case scenarios.

Regardless of whether the crisis is of your own doing (hey, everyone makes mistakes once in a while) or a result of some freak on the Internet having too much time on his hands, you have to be able to know how to handle things. Come up with a policy. Assign ownership. Respond, if you do have to respond, in a timely manner. And, no matter how many social networks you’re in, make sure you don’t confuse your fans, friends, and followers by flinging out varying “official words on the matter”.

4. “Uncertainty is a sign of humility, and humility is just the ability or the willingness to learn.”

Nope, that’s not Mother Teresa talking. I swear that’s a Charlie Sheen quote. And he’s right. If you do make a mistake – a mistake that’s broadcasted and made overblown in social media, via blog comments, @mentions, unpleasant #hashtags, YouTube vlog rants, whatever – then be humble enough to own up to it. Say sorry. Address the issue straight on, explain what happened, and make amends. Most important of all, learn something from your mistake.

By acknowledging and apologizing, you’re demonstrating to the public that your brand is actually a brand that cares. Sure, some people may not be sympathetic to your crisis, but at least you’ve shown you’re not detached, or apathetic, or oblivious to whatever’s going on across your social networks. At least you’ve shown the ability to listen and learn.

5. “I’m dealing with fools and trolls and soft targets…. I don’t have time for these clowns.”

By “clowns”, Charlie means the haters. And there will be haters, especially if your brand is so awesome that other people get jealous of it. My advice? Ignore non-issues. Don’t apologize, don’t even acknowledge. Avoid blowing it up with a knee-jerk reaction.

Indeed, there will be times when a little bit of negativity might swirl around your brand on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks – even if you’ve done nothing bad. But if you’re confident enough about the honesty of the work you’ve put in, let the haters hate. And let yourself waste no time on dealing with them.

6. “Marry a tree. My other marriages didn’t work out so I’m going to marry a tree.”

I like to think that Charlie isn’t giving advice on love here. This is more like advice on domaining. And what he’s saying is, look out for opportunities to branch out. Grow that tree. Add new pages. Create sub-domains. Post fresh content. Grow many trees. Sign up for new social media profiles. Write your own Wiki at Wikispaces or Wetpaint. Secure domain variations of your brand name and website URL. Make your online identity – search and social – flourish.

Actively checking, identifying, and extending your domains is not only a great way of protecting the goodwill of your trademarks and intellectual property. It’s a neat SEO trick, too. The more branches you have under your tree, the more likely it is that search engines will trace and produce unique search results for you. And while sub-domains typically fall under the root domain, they still count as search results under your control – and not under someone else’s.

7. “But you can’t focus on things that matter if all you’ve been is asleep for forty years. Funny how sleep rhymes with sheep. You know.“

Take control. That’s what Charlie’s saying (I think). If brand thieves and social media rascals think it’s easy to misrepresent or bring down your brand, it’s probably because you haven’t been energetic enough to show that you care. Don’t let them take control. Show you’re made of Tiger Blood. Believe in the power of social. Engage actively with the people in your online community. Win over more fans and followers. Dedicate an hour or more a day doing just that. Certainly, a multi-prong stream of social activity across all your networks will discourage those who may think that they can ride on your brand and do whatever they want with it.

About the author: Chris Campbell is the Director of Online Marketing at Lakeshore Branding, a Chicago Internet marketing company that specializes in link building, content creation, reputation management, and social media consulting. You can follow him on Twitter @chrisrcampbell.

The Twitter profile included the teachers name, photo, and town along with the derogatory comments. People all over the world started contacting local officials demanding her be ousted after they saw what “she” was writing.

When this came to the attention of the school they immediately brought her in for questioning to determine if she was the author. Their initial questioning led them to believe she was not the author; however they made her bring in her laptop and examined her hard drive for further investigation.

As I’ve said before, identity theft is the only crime I can think of where you are guilty until proven innocent.  Once something like this happens it can quickly and easily damage your reputation.

Online Security Tips:

Right now grab your name on all the popular social media sites. Sign up for every one of them even if you don’t intend on using them. If your name is gone use a hyphen or a dash. For free search over 500 popular social networks and over 200 domain names to instantly secure your brand across the social web at Knowem.com.

Set up Google Alerts or ask about KnowEm Enterprise Alerts to determine if your name is being used online. You want to instantly know if someone is using your name for any reason.

The worst thing you can do is nothing. Sitting back and just letting someone use your name can damage your brand, YOU.

He reports that these social signals are used relatively lightly for now, but may begin to influence more heavily in the future as they gauge their effectiveness over time.  Something Google also wants to look at in terms of ranking influence is not just the number of social followers or friends a user may have, but the quality of those friends.  Obviously, just like they want to weed out spam and automated links to pages, Google also wants to weed out social accounts which are little more than bots or have artificially inflated their follower count.

So what does this mean to business and brand owners interested in leveraging social media for search engine rankings?  Really nothing, if you’ve already developed a smart and effective social media strategy. It just means Google is finally catching up to you.  If you haven’t begun to develop a social media strategy, then this should just be one more very strong reason to begin getting involved.

Since Twitter has a policy against name squatting and selling usernames, you have to wonder what Twitter thinks of this deal.  Their policy states “attempts to sell, buy, or solicit other forms of payment in exchange for usernames are also violations and may result in permanent account suspension.”  Israel Meléndez says they didn’t violate this clause because he was just relinquishing his own personal account, he didn’t create the account for the purposes of making a profit.  Other reports state Twitter actually helped facilitate the sale, but Twitter hasn’t confirmed that.

At KnowEm we have clients inquiring every day about what they can do to get their company’s brand, trademark or username back if it has already been taken on a social network.  We always advise them to use the proper channels and contact the website owner to ask about their policy in reclaiming names, which usually requires some lawyers to get involved.  The truth is, however, that it can be a very difficult and time-consuming process.  And as this story shows us, you might not get the outcome you want.

If the nation of Israel had to pay a six figure sum to reclaim their name on Twitter, what chance do you have of getting your branded username back if it’s already been taken?  This is the primary reason a professional service like KnowEm is so valuable for brand and trademark owners who want to be proactive in Social Media.  Think of it as brand insurance – no one can steal or squat on your name on the next big social network if you have already registered it.

Typosquatting on domain names is not a new practice on the internet; it was clearly identified as a threat as early as 1995 by the Federal Trademark Dilution Act and targeted directly in 1999 with the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act which “established a cause of action for registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name confusingly similar to, or dilutive of, a trademark or personal name.”  Eventually ICANN also established the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) for further protection against domain name squatting.

Like defensive domain registrations to prevent cybersquatting, trademark owners should acquire a company name, any trademarks, and any other important intellectual property brands on all social network sites.
Traverse Legal, 9/21/09

While this helps protect trademark owners from issues with misspelled domain names, there isn’t really anything in place yet which protects them on social networks.   This was evidenced as early as a year go by reports concerning name misspellings being bought and sold on Twitter, and not just as usernames, but by API names as well.  It seems wherever a user can supply content on a social network, there is the possibility of that content’s true owner being misrepresented.

So what can trademark owners do to protect their brands?  They can wait until after their name has been squatted and issue a cease and desist to each social network and try and recover it, or they can use a service like KnowEm to proactively register their mark on popular social networks.  For purposes of full disclosure I will point out that I am a co-founder of KnowEm, and I am happy to stand behind our service as the first and foremost social networking trademark protection firm on the internet.

You don’t necessarily have to rush out and use a professional service to protect misspellings of your trademark on every social network, but at the least you should consider monitoring not only the usage of your brand or mark, but several misspellings as well.  Typosquatting has been around since domains existed and there’s no reason to believe it will go away anytime soon, especially with the continuing popularity and growth of social networks.

The tongue and cheek microblog authors are posting tweets such as “If we had a dollar for every complaint about this oil spill, it wouldn’t compare to our current fortune. Oil is a lucrative industry!” Which of course alarms any followers who don’t realize this is a spoofed account.

The fact that some people think its real speaks volumes about how vulnerable any company is from this type of impostor fraud. The fraudulent account demonstrates how difficult it is for companies to maintain a controlled online presence with the proliferation of social media. It’s the wild wild web out there and any company that sits idly waiting for someone to snap up their intellectual property or variations of their brand will face an oil spill of a time slopping up their damaged reputation.

Robert Siciliano, Identity Theft Expert and CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com, discusses social media scams on Fox Boston.