Social networking sites make possible to find your old pals in the internet. People from different parts of the globe are using those sites to keep relation with old fellows from their childhood. New friends are also obtainable in the social websites. Some of the Social networking sites are to be found among the top 100 Websites in the world. MySpace is one of the biggest storage of data regarding friends’ information, powered by Cisco. It was initiated in 2003, by two American friends, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Andersen. In 2005, it became a US$580 million company and owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

MySpace is all-in-one for Social networking. Here, you can share all kind of Medias like image, video, and voice everything, with your friends using the same account, in MySpace. Only knowing copy and pasting of HTML code, anyone can easily edit his profile. You can easily make you own friend list including a default friend, Tom Andersen. MySpace TV helps you to share your home made video with your old friends. If your video is a hot one in a particular category like sport, entertainment or travel then it’ll gets a good publicity. MySpace is also available in different language like Chinese, Japanese and French.

Love it or hate it, Orkut is India’s most popular Social network. Apart form India; Brazilians are most affectionate with Orkut to get their buddies. The name Orkut is coming from a Turkish Technologist’s name. He is Orkut Buyukkokten and he is employed by Google in 2004. With the help of the bulk Asian and Brazilian fans, Orkut is now a big player in Social networking market. It is now a nearest competitor of MySpace and Facebook. Orkut’s technical environment is very friendly for the beginners. The Orkut’s members get a good number of fans, who want to be famous as a bloggers. The youngsters are using their laptops to open an account in Gmail.com and getting the Orkut membership very easily for quick popularity.

To find your college friend, the best Social networking site is Facebook. A valid college or University email ID is necessary to get a Facebook account. In this way, the site obtain more than 28 millions membership from different higher educational instituted around the world. After this achievement, the site also invites high schools and junior colleges in their institution list. In India, the students from the top educational instituted, like IIMs and IITs are members of Facebook. So, overall good brains are sharing their thoughts and views. Exploring the site is also informative for the gust visitors, who are not a member of Facebook.

In all cases, the basic Idea is same and it is the sharing the memories and living in touch of friendship. Highlighting yourself is not the only cause to become a member of a social networking website. Exchanging the views and thoughts, we can ensure a better communication. Next time, when someone sends you an invitation in your inbox to become a member of his Facebook or MySpace group, don’t delete the massage. After all, man is a social animal and he wants his friend in the space also.

Source: mikes-marketing-tools.com
In this article I discuss seven illegal, or almost illegal, search engine optimization and related techniques.

1. Trademarked Keywords In Domain Names

If you’re thinking of registering a domain name that includes a trademarked keyword, think again.

Using someone else’s trademark to attract customers is illegal. It violates federal trademark law, which prohibits the use of someone else’s trademark, if it causes a “likelihood of confusion” among consumers.

Take Yahoo for example. They objected to 37 registered domains, including AtlantaYahoo.com, DCYahoo.com, Jahu.com and Yhu.com. Read the full story.

2. Trademarked Keywords In META Tags

It’s not necessarily illegal to use trademarked keywords in your META tags. But you could get sued, and people have.

It all depends on why and how you are using the trademarked keywords. If you used the keywords in what is deemed a deceptive manner, then you’re likely to lose your case.

However, there has been one instance of a defendant who proved to the judge that she had a legitimate reason to use the trademarked keyword. Read the full story.

Here’s a short story to illustrate the seriousness of using trademarked keywords in META tags.

I had a client who included the trademarked brand name of a competing product in one of his web pages.

One day, he received a letter from the lawyer acting on behalf of the trademark owner in question.

The letter stated:

“Use of [trademarked term] constitutes federal false advertising, trademark infringements, state unfair competition and is deliberately designed to trade on [trademarked term] reputation and goodwill. Placing the term, [trademarked term], in the keywords and META tags of your site inappropriately and unlawfully draws Internet users to your site.”

They threatened to sue, unless my client removed the trademarked terms from the META tags. Naturally, we obliged! ;o)

What was surprising was that we could use the trademarked terms in the visible page body. So we kept the trademarked keywords in the page body.

3. Pagejacking

Pagejacking is copying someone else’s web page and submitting it to the search engines as your own, in hopes of getting high rankings. Quite often pagejacking also involves page cloaking.

Pagejacking is no more than stealing copyrighted content. It beats me why people would be so dumb as to try this technique. Don’t try it. You will be caught sooner or later.

4. Deep Linking

Deep linking is the practice of providing a link directly to specific content on a web site’s sub-page, instead of linking to its home page.

On July 5, 2002, the Bailiff’s Court of Copenhagen ruled in favor of the Danish Newspaper Publishers Association, which claimed that Danish company Newsbooster violated copyright laws by “deep linking” to newspaper articles on some Danish newspapers’ web sites.

The argument is that in bypassing the newspapers’ home pages, Newsbooster links deprive them of advertising revenue. Further, they asserted that Newsbooster is in direct competition with newspapers. Read the full story.

7. Deep Linking Without Permission

If a site you are linking to has stated that linking is prohibited, or requires permission first, then don’t link to them. If you do, you’re asking for trouble.

6. Trademarked Keyword Advertising

Thinking of bidding for competing trademarked keywords in search engines? Think again!

In January 1999, Estee Lauder sued iBeauty and Excite@Home, saying its trademarks were violated when iBeauty’s ads were presented during searches for Estee Lauder trademarked keywords.

When a person searched Excite@Home’s search engine for “Clinique,” they were presented with a banner ad for iBeauty. In addition, the search returned a list of related web sites, including iBeauty.com.

In August, 2000, iBeauty decided to voluntarily remove the trademarked keywords from its list. Read the full story.

7. Deep Linking Within A Frame

If you link to another site’s content by displaying it within a FRAME on your site, and your ad in another FRAME, you’re walking on thin ice.

What you’re basically doing is “stealing” other people’s content to generate advertising revenue. I would recommend staying clear of this practice.

Conclusion

Take care with the marketing techniques you use. If you think a technique can be construed as illegal, search the internet for possible legal cases on the technique. If you can’t find any, then it’s a good chance that the technique in question is worth pursuing.

You may also like to read my article, “Ten Controversial Search Engine Optimization Techniques.” In this article I discuss ten controversial search engine optimization techniques that should be used with caution, or even avoided altogether.

About The Author: Michael Wong is the editor of GoDefy.com - the world’s first online marketing comparison shopping search engine and Mike’s Marketing Tools. Michael is also the author of the leading Search Engine Optimization Guide and numerous marketing tips.