integratePR blog

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a House response to the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) that is under consideration in the Senate. These bills would require internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to websites that infringe on copyrights.

Simply put, anything that you re-post that is not your original content would be considered a copyright infringement. In many countries with internet access, online piracy is a massive problem for the industry, in China alone it costs $250 billion per year. However, this means potentially that anything you Re-Tumble, Re-Tweet or Re-tag could be considered piracy. These publishing laws would affect some of the most well-known and heavily trafficked sites on the web. Virtually everything on Wikipedia, Youtube, and Tumblr would be illegal to publish.

Internet giants who are fighting against the bill have made this an international day of protest by “blacking out” their websites.

Wikipedia

Google

WordPress

What you can do about it – Sign the petition and join the largest online protest in history – tell Congress to stop this bill now!

For Domino’s pizza, one video prank in 2009 left people questioning their entire brand. In less than a week, not only did Domino’s issue their formal apology; they created an entirely separate Twitter feed to address the comments. Unfortunately history repeated itself yet again, this time with the third biggest pizza chain taking a hit – one day after they hit 2 million Facebook fans. On Saturday night, @mintymin sent a tweet saying:

Within hours the tweet – which included a picture of the receipt in question- had made its way to thousands of users –even finding its way to Texas! Papa John’s had a quick response time and first reached out to Min before attempting to answer the multiple users who had heard about the incident.

As of Monday, January 9, 2012 Papa John’s sent 40 tweets to individuals who expressed concern about the event.

An article posted earlier today on eMarketer.com asked the question “Do Social Media Postings Always Require a Response?” According to the article, 49.5% of people would be “far less likely to buy anything from a company” that did not answer, but also cited that many times brands “don’t need to respond to every ounce of negative buzz in the social sphere.”

This may be true with the way Papa John’s handled their Facebook posts.

After the initial post, Papa John’s did not respond to any of the resulting 816 comments.

The question is this: Did Papa John’s handle the situation in an appropriate manner? In terms of response time, Papa John’s did fine, addressing the client both publically and privately. The apologies appear genuine and the employee’s termination was of course in order. However, it remains to be seen if the corporation will be forced to withstand any longstanding negativity. Within one week after the incident with Domino’s, public perception of the brand went from positive to negative, according to research company YouGov. With the SuperBowl – one of the five biggest pizza buying days of the year- less than a month away, and last year’s pizza sales projection being over 1 million; it will be interesting to see if this new story will affect how much “dough” the pizza chain will bring in. As with all corporations, it is important to remember that while resolving problems in the short term is necessary, the overall goal is to maintain a positive relationship with the public.

We’ve spoken before about the importance of setting up a Google Local account and having an SEO-friendly Google Places presence. We’re guessing in tandem with Google+ and all of the changes we’ve seen on Google platforms lately, on July 21, Google Places announced a rather big change to their rating and review platform.

Like any other review website, Google Places allows users to comment, rate and share information about restaurants and businesses alike. Google reviews were used, occasionally, but not nearly as frequently as some of its counterparts (for reviews). However, the use of all third-party websites has been removed completely from the site. This means that Yelp, TripAdvisor and any other third-party site that you may have relied on for their positive reviews in the past are no longer viewable on place pages. Instead, links to these review sites will be placed at the bottom of the page, and will more often than not be looked over entirely.

This is where the next change plays an important role.

Since Google Places has removed all third-party websites, they have also added a big, red “Write a Review” button to the top of every place page. This addition encourages users to share their thoughts, and has made it insanely easy to do. Many businesses are unaware that their place page even exists, and often only oversees Yelp and location-based application reviews. For small business owners, this means that it’s more crucial than ever to actively monitor your Google Place page, especially in the appearance of a bad review. We help clients with this all the time and have seen a significant shift in the past week to more reviews on Google Places.

What does this mean for the other review websites out there? We can only hope that Google avoids the monopolization of the rating & review scene, but with the recent launch of Google +, we are very aware of their compelling nature.