Staff members of the Federal Trade Commission did some undercover work to find that at least 10 data brokers could be violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which aims to protect the privacy and other rights of consumers.The FTC sent letters to these companies after a “test-shopping operation” indicated they were willing to sell consumer information without abiding by FCRA requirements.

FTC staff members posed as individuals or representatives of companies seeking information about consumers “to make decisions related to their creditworthiness, eligibility for insurance or suitability for employment,” the agency said.Data brokering companies that collect, distribute or sell this information are considered consumer reporting agencies under the FCRA.

That means the companies must “reasonably verify the identities of their customers and make sure that these customers have a legitimate purpose for receiving the information,” the FTC said. This requirement ensures that the privacy of sensitive consumer report information is protected, such as credit histories and creditors.

Of the 45 companies contacted by FTC staff in the test-shopper operation, 10 appear to violate the FCRA, the agency said. The FTC issued the letters this week in conjunction with an international “privacy practice transparency” sweep by the Global Privacy Enforcement Network (GPEN).

The ten companies receiving the warning letters from the FTC include:

• Two companies that appeared to offer “pre-screened” lists of consumers for use in making firm offers of credit:ConsumerBase and one additional company;
• Two companies that appeared to offer consumer information for use in making insurance decisions: Brokers Data and US Data Corporation; and
• Six companies that appeared to offer consumer information for employment purposes: Crimcheck.com,4Nannies, U.S. Information Search, People Search Now, Case Breakers, and USA People Search.

The FTC said the letters are “not an official notice by the Commission that any of the named companies is subject to the requirements of the FCRA, nor do the letters lay out any formal complaints against the companies.”

But they serve to remind the companies to evaluate their practices to determine whether they are consumer reporting agencies. If they are, then they must determine how to comply with that law.

Pfizer, the enormous drug company that makes the well-known spammers secret of Viagra, has decided to start selling the product on the web starting Monday. The purpose of this is to fight websites from selling counterfit versions of the drug.

The move, with a partnership with CVS Pharmacy, is to target the black-market that sells counterfeit Viagra pills, often with little or no real effect.

According to Pfizer, only 3% of websites actually sell a real version of the drug, and the rest are selling little blue pills that do little or nothing.

“We’ve seen how fake pharmacy websites can lure consumers into buying counterfeit medicines with what seems to be an easy purchasing experience, but it may be putting their health at risk,” Carmen Catizone, executive director of  National Association of Boards of Pharmacy.

Will this move hurt spammers? No idea, but probably not. One of the reason that so many people buy online is that often the drug is actually less expensive online, is a generic version and doesn’t require going to a doctor to probe your genitals.  You will still require a drug prescription to get the real stuff shipped from Pfizer, so not much is changing.

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Motive Interactive announced today that Network Products Guide, industry’s leading technology research and advisory guide, has named the Mobile and Online Game Advertising division of Motive Interactive a finalist for the 8th Annual 2013 Hot Companies and Best Products Awards in the Hot Companies Growth category. These industry and peer awards from Network Products Guide are the world’s premier information technology awards honoring achievements and recognitions in every facet of the IT industry. Winners will be honored in Las Vegas on Tuesday, May 7, 2013 during the 8th annual dinner and presentations.

Since 2003, Motive has been firmly committed to maintaining the industry’s most trusted and cutting-edge performance advertising solutions. As early adopters of mobile marketing technologies Motive is constantly adapting to meet the challenges of this ever-evolving industry. Today, Motive is recognized as one of the most advanced user acquisition platforms in the mobile and online game marketing space, operating worldwide to provide advertisers, publishers and app developers a complete global solution across all operating systems. A commitment to providing premium service and advanced technologies is a fundamental key to their success. Motive’s CEO and Founder Brendan Smith a seasoned Entrepreneur with a passion for Internet and mobile technology stated “We’ve been building Motive’s reputation for innovation since we first opened our doors in 2003, we will continue to use technology to provide a superior service for our partners and a quality experience for consumers”.

An annual achievements and recognition awards program with active participation from a broad spectrum of industry voices, the coveted annual Hot Companies and Best Products recognition program encompasses the world’s best in organizational performance, products and services, executives and management teams, successful deployments, product management and engineering, support and customer satisfaction, and public relations in every area of information technology.

“It’s an honor to be named a finalist by Network Products Guide for this esteemed industry and peer award,” said Motive CFO, John Teotico, “This further validates our position as a company that continues to develop the standard for mobile and online marketing and a company poised to successfully overcome a serious lack of innovation and inability to produce high quality products, two major issues that plague most organizations today.”

About Network Products Guide Awards
As industry’s leading technology research and advisory publication, Network Products Guide plays a vital role in keeping decision makers and end-users informed of the choices they can make in all areas of information technology. You will discover a wealth of information and tools in this guide including the best products and services, roadmaps, industry directions, technology advancements and independent product evaluations that facilitate in making the most pertinent technology decisions impacting business and personal goals. The guide follows conscientious research methodologies developed and enhanced by industry experts. To learn more, visithttp://www.networkproductsguide.com

About Motive Interactive
Motive Interactive is the leading performance-based online and mobile marketing network that represents brands across numerous verticals with a focus on user acquisition in the mobile and online game segments. A proven innovator, Motive develops and markets technologies, strategies and services that increase advertisers’ ROI’s and publishers’ profits.

Founded in Lake Tahoe, Nevada in 2003, Motive maintains its technical, marketing and sales operations in San Diego, California. They remain a privately held firm whose founders and management team have been leaders in online marketing since 1996. Motive empowers advertisers and publishers with a continuous process of technology solutions, industry expertise, and a level of customer service that matches an agency of record without the price tag. “Our dedication to our clients’ success defines our operating philosophy.” Brendan Smith, Motive CEO and Founder.http://www.motiveinteractive.com

While Twitter has famously been saying that they are not looking for an IPO and would prefer to stay a privately run company, it may be just a matter of time before it happens.

Twitter recently hired Cynthia Gaylor as the head of corporate development.  Gaylor has a background which includes an expertise in helping companies prepare for IPOs.

This background most recently was with Morgan Stanley where her focus was in the tech sector.  According to Gaylor’s LinkedIn profile she had experience and responsibility advising clients on strategic financing activities including IPOs (among other things).

After signing on with Twitter Gaylor quickly created a Twitter account for herself and announced that she will be focusing on mergers & acquisitions and strategy for the social media giant.  This is an area where Twitter has been active in the past and will likely continue to grow.

The big question is how long can they go without an IPO, and how would a potential IPO affect people who use Twitter for marketing.

Twitter has become an essential piece of most people’s marketing strategies over the past several years, and the influence is only growing as people continue to love the interaction that is possible using Twitter’s communication format.  Should there be an IPO there may be new fees and other changes in the future to attempt to make the company more profitable.

What do you think? Should Twitter go public?  Is the hiring of Gaylor a sign that their IPO is coming sooner rather than later?  Does it really matter for marketers whether Twitter stays privately owned or goes through the IPO.

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I recently read a story about a man, Henry Gribbohm, a resident of Manchester NH who lost his entire savings. While you’d want to feel sorry for him initially, when you find out that he lost it playing a game at a Carnival trying to win a Xbox Kinect, it’s unlikely you’ll feel any sort of empathy for him.

It gets worse however: he initially lost $300 trying to get the $100 gift by playing a game where you try to put a ball into a tub – but he was persistent and decided to go back home and take out $2300 more and win the game.

He lost everything.

What makes the story even sadder, or sorrier is that after blowing his savings on a stupid carnival game, he decided to contact the local media and police and blame his loses on, of all things, the carnival.  According to his brilliant observation, it wasn’t his fault that he did something so absolutely stupid, but it was the carnival’s fault because there is no way he could have lost all that money by himself. They somehow made him be a total screw-up.

Most of us read this story and think to ourselves that this guy is nothing but a complete idiot and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere in public by himself.

There is however many people in the affiliate marketing game who are no different than this guy: they are trying the same thing over and over again, refusing to think for themselves and blaming others for their lack of success.

Here are a few tips for those who are trying to be successful and really become an entrepreneur. Yes, if you are working on the Internet in the affiliate and performance marketing game, you need to think of yourself as an entrepreneur. If you don’t, you’ve failed already.

1)   Stop Wasting Time. Most of the forums and Facebook groups are a complete waste of your time when it comes to growing as an entrepreneur. You are not going to learn all that much them, and you are going to spend a great deal of your energy arguing with trolls who are in a worse position than you. It’s not that there is no value in learning from others, but don’t depend on them for your success. Take what you can and build on it.

2)   Stop Following Others. I get tons of emails from people who want to learn about affiliate marketing, and want to find someone to teach them. It’s a simple game: you make more money than you spend. If you are looking to duplicate what others are doing, you may as well work at McDonalds. Those who really make money, not just a “living” are thinking outside the box, developing new traffic sources and growing their business.

3)   Stop Blaming Others. Simply, when you fail its no ones fault but your own. Yes, there are frauds and scams, but if you did a little due diligence you probably would have not trusted that the 16-year-old virgin would have paid you. Learn from your mistakes and focus on succeeding in the future, not on past failures.

It sounds simple, right?

You’d think so, but so many people just copy what others do, do not try to innovate and see that if they don’t succeed the first time, it must the fault of others.  Here’s something you probably don’t want to hear: maybe if you are one of those people you need to accept the honest truth: you aren’t really made to be an entrepreneur, and you are better off taking a job working at McDonalds.

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While placing focus on its mobile app, LinkedIn reports falling short by nearly $10 million of its forecast revenue.

Networking website LinkedIn has recently shifted focus to its mobile app, however with an apparent cost in revenue. The company’s projected income for this period was $359.7 million, however the actual revenue is going to fall somewhere in between $342-$347 million instead. One of the reasons for this may be the fact that LinkedIn does not have as established mobile advertising as it does standard desktop advertising. The remainder of the year is also forecasted to bring in less revenue than expected. This dip may be reversed with increased mobile advertising, however. Last month, LinkedIn redesigned its app for mobile devices. Taking a cue from Facebook (which is making revenue from mobile advertising), advertising on mobile applications will have to become a stronger point of focus for the company in order to make up for lost revenue.

Even though focusing on the mobile aspect of LinkedIn has cost the company money, it is still in a period of growth. Founded 10 years ago, LinkedIn has nearly 3,500 employees and 200 million active users. It makes its primary revenue from recruiters who utilize the service to find employees to fill positions. This talent-solutions department grew 80% within the first quarter. Last year, the company’s income quadrupled, with shares jumping from 4 cents to 20 cents. This blunts the fact that shares have dropped 10% recently, but LinkedIn’s future looks more positive with plans to boost its mobile advertising.

Affiliate Summit decided to change things up a bit, so they’ve moved Affiliate Summit East from New York City to Philadelphia. While some people may not agree with this choice, it gives many of the attendees a reason to visit this colonial city and not only do business, but vacation in a city that they may have never been to.

Because of this, tickets to Affiliate Summit will most likely sell out for those who are certain to make this a “must go” destination in 2013. Much of the industry goes to NYC every year, and with LeadsCon near Affiliate Summit, also in NYC, expect that people will take advantage any reason to visit Philly.

Good news is that tickets are as little at $99 and that includes the Exhibit Hall, Meet Market and Keynotes. Click here to buy tickets

Shawn Collins recently mentioned in a blog post that after you book the tickets, you need to make sure you have a room! The nearest hotel is the Marriott which is connected to the convention center, giving easy access even when you’ve had a few too many drinks.

The Affiliate Summit room rate will be available until July 19, 2013 or until the group block is sold-out, whichever comes first.

To book your reservation, go to http://www.AffiliateSummit.com and click on “Book the Hotel” under Affiliate Summit East 2013 or call 877-212-5752 and ask for the Affiliate Summit rate and provide Group Code 17754424.

Affiliate Summit, founded by Missy Ward and Shawn Collins in 2003, was created for the purpose of providing educational sessions on the latest industry issues and fostering a productive networking environment for affiliate marketers.

As part of the ongoing education initiative of the conference, Affiliate Summit will be providing scholarships to U.S. college students.

These Affiliate Marketing Scholarships are only open to currently enrolled students at a college or university in the United States.

There will be as many as 10 scholarships awarded of $1,000 each.

In order to submit for a chance to receive the scholarship, qualified entrants must submit an essay of 250-500 words below answering the question, “What is your biggest frustration with online shopping and how would you suggest fixing it?” by June 1, 2013.

Scholarship entries must be submitted at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/affiliate-marketing-scholarship.

Winners will be contacted by August 1, 2013.

Over the 10 years and dozens of events in the Affiliate Summit portfolio, each successive year has been bigger than the last, despite years of challenging economic times.

This trend shows no signs of changing with the upcoming Affiliate Summit East 2013, taking place August 18-20 in Philadelphia.

The top sponsorships are sold out for Affiliate Summit East 2013, and many of the smaller sponsorships are already gone.

Also, the exhibit hall and Meet Market are quickly filling up, and both are expected to sell out again.

This three day conference will include an exhibit hall with affiliates, merchants, vendors, and networks, as well as multiple tracks of educational sessions covering the latest trends and information from affiliate marketing experts.

The keynotes for Affiliate Summit East 2013 will be Rae Hoffman, CEO of PushFire; Dr. Randal Pinkett, Chairman and CEO of BCT Partners, as well as a philanthropist, author, and season 4 Winner of NBC’s The Apprentice; and Wil Reynolds, Founder of SEER Interactive.

More details on Affiliate Summit at http://www.affiliatesummit.com.

Despite being considered the top alternative source for traffic, it seems that Pulse360 is on the verge of shutting its doors. Until 2013, it was one of the top sources for media buyers and despite FTC crack-downs all last year, was a source where anyone with a Flog went to buy traffic.

Perhaps that why it eventually died: Flogs disappeared, and even though some people still skirted the laws and made offshore flogs, Pulse360 came under enormous pressure from the media to justify why they were allowing advertising on major news sites … that were  advertising nothing but fake news sites. In fact, even MSNBC’s own writers brought them to task, questioning why these ads were appearing on their own site.

I even wrote on Technorati about this two years ago, questioning why this was being allowed, and why the FTC was ignoring pulse360, a company intimately involved in helping make these ads “work.”

According to AdExchanger:

Ad network Pulse 360, a subsidiary of Seevast, is on the brink of shutting down and may have closed its doors already, AdExchanger has learned. Pulse 360 issued a company-wide layoff in April and began looking for a buyer or new investor, according to a former employee who asked to remain anonymous. Pulse 360 founder and CEO Kent Keating has not responded to requests for comment.

Prior to the latest round of layoffs, the company had approximately 75 employees and 100 to 200 publisher partners, including MSNBC.com, CNN.com, ABCNews.com, Cox Media and USAToday. The company has an estimated 300 to 500 customers.

Traffic to Pulse360.com’s network has dropped precipitously from 124.7 million views in January of this year to 19.2 million in March, according to Quantcast. Calls to the company’s main line are directed to voicemail, and the site’s “client services” and “inquiries” pages have been deactivated.

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Mark Zuckerberg and his team announced their 2013 first quarter earnings, and despite the rocky start after the IPO, things are looking pretty good.  The overall revenue was nearly $1.46 Billion which is an improvement of 38% compared with the same quarter in 2012 and above the financial analysts’ predictions.  The net income was below estimates, however, at only $219 million.

Over the past several months there has been talk of concern from investors, users and advertisers that the engagement of Facebook users was going to drop, but quite the opposite is actually taking place.  Facebook reports a 26% growth in the number of users who log in daily (now up to 665 million).  Those who login at least once per month also jumped by a significant 23% to 1.1 billion users.  The number of mobile users is continuing to climb rapidly as well with an increase from 680 million in the 4^th quarter of 2012 to 751 million this quarter.

It is clear that advertisers are continuing to see value in using Facebook to promote their products, including using some of the social media giant’s new ‘in feed’ ads.  Facebook brought in $1.25 billion in ad revenue during the first quarter which is a 43% increase from the same quarter last year.  Mobile ads also showed major growth, up 23% from the last quarter of 2012.  Mobile ads now make up 30% of the total ad revenue for Facebook.

Overall it was a very positive report for Facebook and helped to confirm the fact that they are successfully transitioning their business model to a more mobile focused user base which is expected to continue to grow as more people continue to move to smart phones.  The earnings call largely glossed over the generally poor reception of “Facebook Home” saying that it is an excellent product which still needs to be tweaked and improved.  Zuckerberg also discussed the rapid growth of Instiagram which was purchased by Facebook in 2012 commenting on the fact its growth can only benefit the ongoing success of Facebook because of their complimentary functions.

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised at how well things are going with Facebook.  Maybe I got caught up in all the negative publicity it received after the IPO but I was not expecting them to have as strong of growth across just about every area.  The one area I was expecting to see success was the mobile ads because just in my own experience I have found that I’m seeing ads published right in my news feed in a way which I don’t even notice until I take a second glance.  I expect many people who are less experienced with Facebook and computers in general find themselves tapping on these ads without even realizing they are paid posts.

What do you think?  Does Facebook still represent a great place to invest advertising dollars?  What do you expect from Facebook in the second quarter of 2013?