And no matter what the real amount is, it is even more interesting given that the overall annual sales of Microsoft products in Russia generate approximately the same estimated $1-1.2 billion dollars. The thing is that in 2008 the share of pirated Microsoft products was more than a half of the entire consumption - 68%. And while this is 7% lower than in 2007, it is still more than a half.

Microsoft estimations are based partly on their mystery shopping inspections of computer retailers. Such inspections are intended to identify those outlets that preinstall pirated versions of Windows on the computers they sell. The results of the inspections this year are interesting. Out of 3 thousand inspected outlets in 53 towns across the country, 14% actually sell pirated versions of Microsoft operating systems pre-installed while the majority (64%) of outlets only sells license software with their equipment. Also 4% sell their computers without any pre-installed operating system.

At that there’s no denying to the fact that it is hardly enough for Microsoft to simply fight with pirates in courts and in stores hiding behind such mystery shoppers - another appropriate measure would be reconsidering their own pricing policy here. The main problem is that many of Microsoft products are simply too expensive for the local customers and I don’t really know many people here who would pay to buy a license for Microsoft Office package for a price of $200 where they can easily download it from torrents for free. And easy access to pirated software combined with pretty moderate average revenue in the country result in the situation Microsoft has here - and the huge losses.

Via (in Russian)

Last week we saw a new (and a very passionate) discussion of this topic on The Next Web blog started by Boris and continued with a reply in a guest post by Sarah Stokely - and it is no wonder that the posts received tons of comments and retweets as everyone seems to be eager to participate in the discussion on this never-ending topic every time it is brought to the public attention.

But my question is this: why do we pay attention to women in tech at all? How does it come that female presence on the web seems to be a focus for so many people and women do expect to receive some special treatment in tech?

Let me get it straight: I work in tech, I am a woman and I am a blonde - but I have never felt any of the two latter factors to have any impact on the first factor at all. Or rather, I have often felt it was beneficial to me to be a woman (and blonde) - simply because many of the decision-makers are more inclined to begin listening to you because you are a woman. And it depends on what you have to say if you will manage to keep their attention on your words or not.

I write a tech blog, I run a small startup, I consult startups on their launch and marketing strategies and now that I think about it, I have never encountered any single problem or obstacle because I am a woman.

Well, it may be challenging when you are the only woman working in a room full of programmers (male) but when you understand their language and don’t demand any special manners from them because you are a woman - you will be able to work together just fine. But of course if you expect them not to use F*** word only because you are in the room and you are woman - and they happen to use it all the time when talking work - you will hardly be a good team member because they will not feel comfortable. And is it so difficult to survive an occasional F*** word?

In fact, I have always thought that in many industries discrimination is something that women make a problem by focusing on it only - and it does not really exist at all. And the web industry is no exception - no one cares if you are blonde or not and if you are a woman at all when you create an actually useful startup. And again, in many situations men (including male bloggers and press people if you are promoting a startup) are more willing to listen to your pitch BECAUSE you are a woman. Is not it an advantage that we should not really complain about?

But still being a woman I have signed up for a few girls-only online communities that are intended to facilitate, enhance or improve our feminine activities online - and help us achieve more where we tend to miss opportunities a lot now. I can actually remember that when I signed up for one of such communities I had to tick the checkbox to confirm that I am actually a woman - and it did not let me in without stating that much. Now is not it ridiculous?

And how we love to attract special attention to the fact that we are WOMEN and we are IN TECH! Watching a woman on Twitter sharing her experience from a Moscow software conference, I was very much amused by her update saying “Sitting at ‘girls in software’ roundtable. Everyone (but one) is a blonde.” Now can you imagine a roundtable named “Men in tech (software, gaming industry, blogging, etc.)” at all? And even if someone had a crazy idea of arranging for such a roundtable, I can hardly imagine anyone paying attention to the hair color of the participants.

So while I am flattered to make it to various female tech bloggers lists when such lists are created, I have to say that I still feel somewhat uncomfortable about them because I have never seen a list for “best male tech bloggers” - and this is disturbing.

I still think that this is exactly where discrimination is: trying to stand out from the overall crowd of tech people and expecting some special treatment and some special welcome by the industry where everyone actually has equal opportunities. How can we be different in an industry that does not involve any extra physical strength or unusual skills that women don’t possess?

So I think that the main problem for women who do work in tech is not really in men discriminating us or making us feel unwelcome in any of the particular fields we venture into. The main problem is that women somehow expect to be different in the industry - only because we are women and this industry does not have too many female participants (for whatever reasons it may be). But do we deserve any special attention here or do we really want to work in an industry with equal opportunities where everyone will have the recognition HE or SHE actually deserves?

Image credit Lumaxart

The theatre was unusually crowded and we spent about half an hour in line only to get the tickets - though this discomfort was compensated to me by the overall experience and by seeing my current Sony Vaio laptop being in use by all the heads of all countries in 2012 - which was a pleasure for a geek.

If you are already wondering why I am bragging about a movie on this normally tech blog, I have an explanation to you - and this is definitely something I’d want every blogger watching the movie in the coming weeks think about. The reason is the character of Woody Harrelson, the crazy podcaster and visionary Charlie Frost.

I don’t want to spoil the experience for everyone who is yet to watch the movie, so I will only tell that Charlie is the character explaining that the end of the world is near to the lead protagonist after he researches everything and covers over the years on his website that he also fully designs himself to provide some visual representation to the pending disaster (and the very childish-looking animation is an additional reason to be proud for him).

But unfortunately everyone thought he was insane - until his predictions actually came true. To me watching him talk and demonstrate his knowledge was fascinating because he seemed to be an incarnation for everything that people laugh about in the citizen journalists: no one wanted to believe everything he was bragging about, he was badly seeking attention and everyone around him thought he was insane - and this picture was solidified by his virtual presence and his real-life behavior.

The worst part was when he was crying out in the middle of the deadly eruption standing on a hill turning volcano and reminding people remember that they first heard about this all from Charlie - even despite of the fact that there will soon be no one on Earth to remember his predictions at all and he himself won’t be able to enjoy the fame. And at that moment I could not help but think: do I really look anything similar from outside?

What I am trying to say is that many of us in the blogosphere probably feel pretty comfortable working from our home offices (oftentimes in our pajamas), some of us never going outside for days in a row and only communicating to people online - unless we are lucky to have a dog that needs to be walked or live with a family we can talk to at least in the mornings and in the evenings.

But anyway when you spend the vast majority of your time online communicating to people in the same tech blogging (or entrepreneurial) crowd, you tend to begin thinking that everyone in this world behaves very similar to the way you do. You know, my husband once jokingly compared me to a beet-root because I am hidden from the world all the time under the ground (in my home office) with only the leaves sticking out in the form of my blog on Profy. And while it is definitely not the most pleasing of comparisons, it definitely rings true to a certain extent.

I know that many of the traditional news outlets venturing online with their own blogs have made blogs themselves look more professional (as they are written by professional journalists) but it does not change the image of a normal blogger or citizen journalists who is considered to be an attention-seeking mentally-disordered person dressed in some crazy clothes no one in their right mind would have even thought about wearing and doing all their work from behind their computer in a very strange room that could definitely take some cleaning. Now if this is the public opinion of a blogger, I’d really want to look more civilized - though I have no idea how I myself could achieve it.

This year’s event is unusual at least for one aspect: it has been prepared in collaboration with thousands of Russian internet users. The draft speech was initially published online as a lengthy article by the president and he invited all the citizens to voice their opinions out via the Kremlin official website - and people were definitely very willing to participate given more than 18 thousand comments received.

Since the resulting speech focused a lot on various IT issues, I wanted to point them out because these issues obviously matter a lot for me as a citizen of Russia - and if the intentions declared actually turn into reality, they will matter a lot for the entire world as well so they are probably worth keeping an eye on from the very beginning.

So the entire speech was focused on modernization of the overall Russian economy and making sure the country evolves from the current orientation towards natural resources exploration to more advanced industries, including information technology and science.

And in the process of this modernization the main measure is creating in Russia our own version of Silicon Valley - a research and development center where all the scientists, programmers, and innovators will find favorable conditions to live and work in, developing and implementing the latest technologies in order to build an economy that will be more technology-oriented than it currently is.

Foreign scientists and specialists will also be welcome in this new Silicon Valley as it will be easier to come and work here than ever - and the conditions offered to such specialists will be competitive enough to encourage them to work in Russia and implement their achievements here if local human resources are not enough.

There are certain measures that have already been announced that are intended to take Russia to become the next Silicon Valley. The main thing is IT infrastructure: the entire country should be covered by broadband internet access by 2015 - and you should realize that it is for a country where you can’t even get to many places by car and the only transport that exists is a helicopter that will get you anywhere even if there are no roads at all (and yes, such places are abundant in Russia).

At that internet access and other digital services provided via the new fiber-optic infrastructure should actually be affordable to all the population, including people paying unrealistic amounts for creepy slow access now.

I don’t know how realistic all of this actually is but Mr. Medvedev is the first country leader who pays such attention to information technologies and everything related to them - supporting them everywhere he can and publicly demonstrating his affection to the internet. Now if his ideas (some of them suggested by Russian internet users, remember?) actually turn into reality, Russia could definitely play a more visible role in the world IT landscape - and I’m not quite sure about how pleased the current leaders will be.

Via (in Russian)

Both the traditional methods are absolutely legitimate and natural and can be used by normal Twitter users same as they can be by spammers - the difference is only in scale here. The first method is simple: you find someone, you follow someone, the person gets a new follower notification and may follow you back if he or she knows you or finds your tweets interesting (or probably automatically follows everyone back).

The difference between a legitimate user and a spammer here is that you will hardly want to follow thousands of Twitter users and unfollow them eventually to be able to follow more users - that is if you don’t want to build a list of dozens of thousands of followers to spam them with your updates or DMs. Also sometimes spammers unfollow people and follow them again to make sure the person actually notices them and hopefully follows them back (though lately I’ve been choosing to report people as spammers if I get 3 or 4 following notifications about their accounts).

The second method mainly relates to promotion of a Twitter account off Twitter itself: you basically push a link to your Twitter account everywhere you think people could see it - and wait for them to actually see it, click it and follow you on Twitter if they have an account. So you will hardly see a blog without the ‘Follow us on Twitter’ button, a profile on a social network that won’t feature the Twitter account of its owner and sometimes we all probably get emails from people with their Twitter accounts in their signatures in addition to their corporate URLs.

This method can also be used legitimately or in a very spammy fashion - and it is used by spammers who post the links to the Twitter accounts they promote everywhere they can, including comments on blog posts of bloggers that don’t suspect anything wrong from a commentator or wherever their imagination tells them people will click the link.

But today I have found out that yet another method of promoting Twitter account has been invented - and this one is 100% spammy because it actually involves using databases of email addresses that are heavily used by normal spammers that send you all those lottery winning notifications.

What is the method? Basically today I have received invitations to join Twitter from someone named Jenny (or pretending to be named Jenny). The emails introduced me to Twitter and invited me to click a link to learn more about Twitter. The only thing that was suspicious about the emails were the addressees: one of the emails was sent to info@profy.com (the general email address that is used to send news my way) while the second one was intended for advertising@profy.com (the address that I invite people who want to advertise on Profy to use).

I could have thought it was some mistake if not for the fact that I received the very same invitations to the two emails that are very impersonal and are not used for actual communications on my side at all. But what I know perfectly well is that both addresses are on tons of spam databases as they are easily available on various pages of Profy and can be easily added to any database to be used for spam delivery. So it was obvious to me that the invitations were sent using some of the spamming database - and not by some legitimate user.

So I decided that it could be some phishing attack where spammers pretended to send me legitimate invitations only aiming to drag me to some website to grab myself some malware or maybe by some meds. But I have checked the link and it was a legitimate Twitter link - and brought me to the account pretending to be Jenny.

So that was it: their goal was actual promotion of the Twitter account by inviting multiple people using some random email addresses - and hoping some of the email account holders are actually registered on Twitter as well and will be willing to follow them back. To do so they have acquired some email database and invited everyone they could to follow - hence the two invitations in my inbox.

To achieve the same results manually you have to go to the Find People section on Twitter and select the Invite by email tab where you’ll see a text field to paste the addresses of all the people you want to invite to Twitter - comma separated as you would expect. For spammers it is not even that much needed to automate the entire process as the invitation field makes it possible to paste multiple email accounts so a few copy and paste operations will do the trick perfectly well if you have a list of email accounts and a few hours you can dedicate to this dubious activity.

The worst part about this newly invented Twitter account promotion method is that some people may not suspect anything and will actually play the game by a spammer’s rules because everything looks pretty legitimate - so the method will probably be rather efficient and will generate the results the spammers are looking to achieve.

But no matter what the results of such actions will actually be in the future, now I definitely see that email lists will enjoy an increased demand from all those social media consultants and gurus who promote their services on Twitter after building a huge followership. The only prerequisite is that the email addresses should easily be extracted into a simple text comma-separated form not to make our gurus make some unnecessary actions additionally where they don’t want to. I suspect that these invitations I’ve received are probably some initial experiments but if you have your email on multiple bulk email lists, I’d prepare to get tons of such invitations from numerous Twitter users over there. And of course it is up to you to decide if you will choose to report those who invite you as spammers or not but I will probably choose to do so - just in case.

Oh, and you can follow me (@profy) should you want to hear me bragging about Twitter spam there additionally.

I get tons of such messages myself but the most remarkable was some blogs rating website that used to bombard me with their emails about how they rated Profy at 4.9 out of 5 and now invited me to install the widget on Profy for everyone to see it (and probably be envious, not sure). Honestly, these messages caused nothing but irritation as I can’t understand why such people think that every blogger will want to brag like a 5 year old child about some questionable rating we receive?

But if a startup is focused on bloggers installing something - be it a widget, a button or anything else - the only efficient way of promoting it is actually contacting bloggers directly and inviting them to install your piece of code. And only when the widget gets enough installations from bloggers around the world, it will probably receive some boost for viral growth and will achieve massive popularity without its creators bombarding bloggers with requests for installations.

But sometimes even the wildly popular widgets or buttons are still treated like they are totally new and are promoted by direct emails to bloggers - even by the brands you’d never expect to be involved in such activities. My recent example actually involves Facebook and its popular ‘Share’ button.

You probably know that ‘Share on Facebook’ button can be installed by online publishers for their readers to be able to click the button on an article or a post (or any web page at that) and share this piece of content with all their Facebook friends - or at least those who happen to track their updates on Facebook. The button can be integrated into RSS feeds as well for readers to share content right from their feed readers in the same manner.

I would say that in this age of massive Facebook popularity the ‘Share on Facebook’ button is one of the most popular social bookmarking tools that are used by web publishers and it can be found on the vast majority of blogs that I happen to read. Now imagine my surprise when I have found out that Facebook is still engaged in the strange activities of promoting the button directly to the bloggers - after I received a promotion email myself.

So I have noticed in my inbox an email titled “Facebook share” from a representative of Facebook international growth team. The email was actually intended to me as an international publisher (as my profile clearly states that I am based in Russia - and the fact that most fans of Profy are actually in the US is probably ignored). The main goal is to introduce me “some tools that are available to online content providers” and focused on the “Share on Facebook” button in particular.

I have been complimented for making the great first step of creating a fan page on Facebook but at the same time I was advised of the powerful tools that will help me drive traffic back to my website from Facebook - the ‘Share’ button that is available for me to grab and install on my blog right away. Too bad I still don’t use it.

And to make me feel even worse I was offered two great examples of how successful the blogs that already use ‘Share on Facebook’ button are as the email referenced TechCrunch and Mashable (I actually used Mashable’s widgets for Twitter and Facebook to illustrate this post) that already use it. Now at least I know that their success is due to them installing the right widgets at the right time!

Now I have to admit that I definitely know all the advantages of actually using the right widgets and bookmarking buttons in the right places and I am quite certain that I will have both Facebook and Twitter buttons finally installed to accompany my content - right after the next Wordpress upgrade. But what I really don’t understand is why exactly Facebook would need to contact publishers in this manner and why they do it so clumsily.

The reason behind them contacting me (and probably thousands of other publishers) is probably the fact that they don’t receive enough installations and don’t reach some targets here - and they do want to get more people generating more and more content-related activities on Facebook making Facebook more content-oriented than it is now with its focus on real news from real-life friends.

So of course if they don’t meet some goals, the reasoning behind the fact of contacting publishers is totally clear but I don’t understand exactly why they would do it so clumsily. My main problem here is the impersonal nature of the email I have received - even despite of the fact that Facebook definitely has all the information the team may need to make such emails more personal.

I don’t care about them qualifying Profy as an international publication most probably for the reason of its owner belonging to Russia. But why would Facebook need information if they can’t even use it properly? Don’t they have the information on the owner of every single fan page that they target in this manner? Is it really difficult to begin such emails with the person’s real name instead of the name of the brand that we choose to promote on Facebook? (Yes, I really hate it when I receive emails starting with “Dear Profy” - after all, Profy is not my own name, it is a brand that I am associated with but it does not make it any more of my name.)

So I really see no problem in Facebook contacting publishers to inform them about availability of various Facebook widgets - after all, chances are there are publishers that somehow are not aware of their availability and will install them when informed. But if they choose direct marketing for promotion, why don’t they make their emails more personal given that they already use our personal information to find our publications and contact us directly?

The thing is that in Russia Forbes magazine has been published since 2004 and accumulated significant experience in offline publishing over the time - and popularity among the target audience which includes more than 800 thousand people for every issue. But in terms of the web presence, it simply did not demonstrate any existence until today when Forbes has finally launched its official web presence for Russia.

The content of the newly launched business website will partly consist of the materials available in the print magazine (they will constitute 5-10% of the entire online content) and the materials that will be prepared specifically for the online version of the publication.

Unfortunately for Forbes, it has not managed to grab the forbes.ru domain that is now owned by a local travel agency and will be a subject of court proceedings soon. As a result, the online publication is launched on a pretty long domain ForbesRussia.ru which will probably confuse some of the potential users who will simply type the brand they hope to reach in their browser address bar.

Of course the newly launched Forbes online publication will compete with the existing market leaders in the online business publishing but for some reason from the very beginning they start with pretty high advertising rates - that are actually higher than those offered by their main competitors. And this obviously raises questions given that advertiser loyalty should probably be deserved first.

But advertising price is obviously the issue to be decided on by Forbes management only and it will only be impressive if they do manage to sell all their inventory at the price that is higher than that of their more established competitors - as they expect the Forbes brand is strong enough to persuade advertisers pay higher (though I can’t help but mention that in Russia the brands of their major local competitors are probably even stronger than the international Forbes).

But the most questionable aspect of the website that is launched today by Forbes is their obvious lack of interest in anything local and specific to the Russian market, in particular in the field of social media and social networking.

The good part here is that the creators of online Forbes version do pay attention to social media tools and include various bookmarking links to help promote Forbes content online virally. But the selection of the bookmarks is very limited and makes Russian reporters raise eyebrows in surprise: we have LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Twitter here. The three of them are probably the best selection for an international business publication focused on the audience from the US or Europe but unfortunately neither of the three has gained significant popularity in Russia.

At that I do not mean to suggest Forbes to offer bookmarking tools that will cater to the users of the local social networking leaders like Odnoklassniki or Vkontakte because their target audience hardly spends any time on the local social networks either but the problem is they hardly use LinkedIn and most certainly have no idea Facebook exists at all or what Twitter is intended for. In fact, Twitter has not even reached any mainstream popularity here in Russia and still has a very geeky audience so I’d only expect to see some tech news published by Forbes actually shared using the bookmarking tools offered here - but I can’t help but feel this is hardly the audience Forbes advertisers pay a lot to be able to reach.

And while of course the buttons for local social networks could not work any better here because they have a younger audience in general (and I would not expect local business people to actually know why they would share an article with their former classmates on a social network like Odnoklassniki), I am definitely at a loss why the team over at the Russian Forbes has decided to ignore the almighty LiveJournal.

I know that the words “LiveJournal” and “almighty” may sound strange in the same sentence to anyone living outside of the countries of the former Soviet Union, but here LiveJournal is really a huge power and everyone who wants to be heard definitely blogs on LiveJournal - including many business people as well. And various online business publications do use LiveJournal bookmarking buttons on their articles - and get plenty of reactions from the blogosphere as a result. Unfortunately Twitter is not in a state that could make it possible at all here in Russia.

In addition to the bookmarking buttons that accompany every article, Forbes goes one extra step and features a whole Facebook widget on the homepage of the website - along with some content added by the editorial team and the fans count. If you happen to want to become a fan of Forbes Russia online, here is the link to their fan page - it has almost 500 fans at the time of writing which is hardly impressive for an established international publishing brand launching its much-advertised and much-discussed online presence locally.

The reason for such low numbers? The problem is that Forbes target audience hardly knows anything of Facebook existence at all. I know that in the US and in many other countries of the world Facebook is the social network of the day and the audience is mature enough to include just about anyone but in Russia only the geeky and young people who also happen to have many international friends use Facebook - and I can’t imagine a Russian decision maker using Facebook at all and actually fanning some pages over there as well.

At that I have to mention that Forbes plans of finally launching an online presence for Russia and the problems with the domain have been heavily discussed here so it is no wonder that this peculiar approach to social media promotion raises questions from local internet industry reporters today.

Of course I perfectly understand that the team must be trying to demonstrate that Forbes is an established international brand and they want to differentiate Forbes as much as possible from the local competition - and avoiding local tools is probably yet another way to demonstrate that Forbes belongs to the international market, not the local Russian market only. But ignoring your local audience and the places where it actually exists and socializes (complicating them additionally with the icons of the services they have never heard of) hardly sounds like a good idea when you launch a website that is monetized by demonstrating ads to this very audience. Not very much business-like, ugh?

Via (in Russian)

I guess it is pretty hard to find anyone online who has somehow managed to avoid all the tips and advice regarding how unreliable Wikipedia can be if you use it for any study or work-related purposes. We’ve even heard doctors specifically claiming that Wikipedia should not be used for health-related research because it can be very harmful.

But I guess no one will dare to deny the fact that Wikipedia is actually one of the most useful things that exist online - simply because even if you can’t trust the user generated content of the human-edited encyclopedia 100%, you can at least get the basic understanding of any subject you may be interested in. And this basic understanding will be enough for further in-depth research using some of the more reliable resources.

This understanding of Wikipedia value and usefulness is probably one of the reasons for a very moderate amount of critical voices when it comes to Wikimedia fundraising efforts - people tend to agree that it is better to keep Wikipedia ad-free and independent by helping it with donations (small from private users and huge from some corporations).

Also it is probably the reason for the attention that Wikimedia fundraising efforts generate in the blogosphere every year and for the enthusiasm with which that we report every new million dollars raised. Yes, we do enjoy watching the progress bar moving forward and love this evidence of how something can actually be crowd-powered - knowledge same as the mere existence of the giant encyclopedia.

But still some people can’t help but have some doubts regarding the overall idea of fundraising and some specific actions in the process. One question that seems to be disturbing already is the scale of this year’s fundraising campaign that will feature the largest banner of all ever used for the purpose.

The thing is that I have just seen one of the Russian developers of the MediaWiki platform and administrator of the Russian Wikipedia version express his concerns (in Russian) regarding the size of the banner that will be used for the fundraising efforts this year - and the content as well. The creative as well as the designs of the pages that will be used for the fundraising campaign are available for everyone to take a look at here (the images are copyright-protected so I will refrain from using them here just in case - though you can easily click through and see everything for yourself).

The wiki page also mentions the campaign is scheduled to be launched on the 2^nd of November but since I can’t see the banner on Wikipedia now, my guess is that the campaign has been delayed for some reason but will probably go live any time soon.

So the concerns of the engineer I am referring to here are about the evolution of the fundraising banner: it began with one line, transformed to a frame, and then turned into a real pretty large and very noticeable banner. This year’s creative makes it clear that the recession has probably affected Wikimedia pretty hard given that the banner looks like it will be impossible to keep your eyes off the banner (and on the page content) at all.

But the banner size is not even the worst part about the campaign: the content of the banners is fully capitalized so to anyone who’s been online long enough it looks like Wikimedia team is shouting something at everyone visiting the site - like demanding to donate something. The company that created the content claimed that (quoting) “all caps will be fine” when asked about how reasonable this capitalization will be.

Now let me get this straight: I have no objections against Wikimedia fundraising campaigns (and I will likely donate something of my own as I think it will only be fair given how frequently I consult Wikipedia for some things). I actually think that the reasoning for Wikipedia to stay independent and ad-free is quite logical as well.

What’s more, as a long-term ad blocking antagonist I am quite comfortable with all types of banners - including the largest banners of all. But my relatively long time online has taught me not to shout at people with Caps Lock on and to dislike people shouting at me in this manner. And it somehow feels uncomfortable for me to think that Wikipedia will be shouting at users this year demanding the donations - even if their agency thinks all caps will be fine.

But the problem with our enthusiastic reports is that in the vast majority of situations the authorities (or their employees) have no idea about proper behavior online, netiquette or any guidelines they should follow not to do anything that will hurt instead of helping them provide better service. And some of the examples of their online activities are definitely more than simply clumsy.

The latest example was widely covered on Russian TV recently and the entire situation is pretty much hilarious. The story is about the Russian Bailiff Service. They have never had too much free time on their hands given that so many ex-husbands were trying to avoid paying alimony to their children. At the recession the situation got even worse with the growing number of debts for mortgages and various consumer loans so the agency now has even more work than ever.

So it is no wonder that they are looking for some new ways to collect the debts - and implement creativity in the process. One of the employees of the local service in one of the Russian towns has recently come up with an interesting idea: he suggested that the service should use one of the most popular social networks in Russia to track debtors down and make them pay.

This plan might sound just fine but up to one point: they have decided to use a photo of an attractive young girl for her to initiate friendships with the debtors when they had profiles on the social network and invite them to meet personally. Unfortunately the debtor was met by the bailiffs at the imaginary date instead of the girl they expected to meet.

And while this may sound like a pretty clever plan (and the bailiffs claim it helped them recover some debts that were very difficult to work on otherwise), the process actually involved two huge errors - and both of them will now bring the service to court as a defendant themselves.

The first and the worst problem is that the bailiffs decided that they could easily take a photo of any attractive girl right on the social network - and use the photo to build a profile they were supposed to use to persuade the debtors into imaginary relations. And they randomly selected a girl from Moscow without asking for her permission or anything - having somehow decided that the fact that she uploaded her photo online made the photo absolutely free to use for anyone without any permission.

Another error is that they did not even bother to consult the ToS of the social network Odnoklassniki.ru that served as a platform for their debt recovery campaign: unfortunately the document clearly specifies that it is not permitted to use a photo of another person without permission at all.

But the most hilarious part of the story is that the employees of the agency have actually decided that their idea deserved attention from everyone in the country so they invited TV reporters and told their story to demonstrate how wisely internet can be used by the authorities. Unfortunately for them, the girl whose photo they used (as well as her friends, family, and customers) happened to watch TV news as well - so she was very surprised to find out her photo was used in such a manner without her granting any permission at all.

Now she is planning to sue the bailiff service of the town in question and request compensation from them - and at least expects some kind of apologies from the service. Time will tell if she wins: judging by the fact that her position is supported by law chances are high she will though the problem is it must be problematic to win in court against a court-related service. But anyway the lesson is pretty clear here: internet is quite a tricky field and if you are venturing something new, at least don’t forget to consult your lawyers not to get into troubles.

Via (in Russian)

But the number of such people is definitely very limited while the number of bosses who are unhappy about their employees accessing social networks is impressive: according to the latest survey, as many as 90% of all the managers in the UK want social networks to be banned - or at least access to the websites should be restricted. Here is the distribution of opinions on what should be done with access to social networking websites on the workplace:

The survey was carried out by Bloxx, the company that specializes in web content filtering - so the interest in social networking in the office is pretty obvious. But I guess no matter who initiates a similar survey (even Facebook itself), it will be pretty difficult to prove social networking at the workplace does not influence the three major aspects that managers are concerned about: productivity, security, and company reputation. Bandwidth was another concern though it is not really too much of an issue for companies with unlimited bandwidth plans.

The interesting fact is that while IT managers realize that their employees do spend some extra time on social networking websites, not many companies actually have any procedures in place that could prevent such things. For example, 35% of all IT managers believe that employees of their companies spend more than 30 minutes daily on social networks without any proper work-related reasons. And while this may not sound like too much time, it also means that a company that does not do anything about it (over 22% of all the respondents), provides employees with extra 16 days of paid vacations annually which is pretty impressive if you think of it.

Of course it is obvious that there are some categories of users that should be granted access to social networks for some work-related purposes with dedicated policies in place for everyone to follow and observe. But all in all, I don’t really think it’s fair to socialize on your employer’s time if the employer does not expect you to work extra unpaid hours on your personal time - which could probably be something of an excuse.