Seihaku’s Blogmarketing Bible

UCC is a very attractive contents, discussed in many standpoints. If we limit the UCC movies, just by itself, in methods of creating added values, ways of converging advertising into movie clips, like inserting ads, are emerging as a strong prospect.

But, trends of futuristic medias such as IPTV are in progress of separating contents and advertising, so one can predict that the future of movie contents will be ignored by the consumers. Then which UCCs will emerge as the future mainstream? First of all, you need to understand that UCCs are limited in many ways by the UCC guidelines of portal sites.

These various restrictions are becoming fixed as the limitations of UCC. And in the reality where mere ‘creative’ is the only thing you can express through UCC, a never ending beta-tests are inevitable. Eventually, UCC of today is a cultivating ground for pure amateur Internet trolls and is merely increasing the value of UCC related firms (like portals, search engines, UCC provides, digital camcorder makers and movie editing software makers), rather than the UCC itself.

In the end, if a feedback system that benefits the UCC creators cannot be established, the products, or the solidarity between firm and UCC creators will naturally loosen and merely stay at a content level of a private brand marketing, which expresses only himself.

The standpoint of the firm will likely turn away to elsewhere, coming to a conclusion that it is too early to introduce UCCs to marketing. That instant, UCC bubble will cause critical damage to the overall web industry. It hasn’t quite reached this stage yet, but you must take heed to the impatient nature of enterprises.

Then, let us look at the refusal criteria of the pandora tv.

Copyright related.
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In cases which: -
- you scrap or post a link to a unauthorized contents from other services or sites
- you promote illegal piracy such as free downloads without a genuine license
- contents leading to illegal piracy such as serial numbers or cd-key shares
- you sell pirated back-up copies
- you promote warez sites
- contents that are infingement of copyrights, trademarks or patents

There are many secondary editorials due to the property of video UCC. The limitations on the related copyrights eventually forms a restraint that only the self created ones a valid. Furthermore, practicing strict standards on various topics that deals with trademarks and patents on screen will ultimately shorten its life of UCC. Personally, I believe that establishing a new Internet related law called “Internet Contents Copyright”, other than that of the current copyright related laws, which can be applied in a broad extent, is the only quick way to secure a UCC global standard and to become a world-wide trend leader.

Corruption of public morals
In the interest of protecting the public morals, posts may be rejected that are against the public morals.

Contents that : -
- promote or beautify suicide or explain methods of suicide, or induce am accompanied suicide
- promote, praise or encourage criminal related matters
- belittle a specific group or religion
- encourage or stimulate corruption such as sexual assault or illegal drug usage
- solicit, induce or mediate a murder
- mediate activities that injure the public moral
- related to cyber stalking
- post or link to a detestable images such as execution scene, corpse, etc
- praise child or spouse violence
- arouse passion of gambling
- encourage superstition or other non-scientific lifestyle
- detestable matters such as profanity or insulting curses
- falsehood that cause social commotion
- belittle the socially left outs such as handicaps or seniors

Carefully observing the above, you can see it does not differ from saying don’t apply any topics that are on air on screen right not. It makes no sense to practice such a strict guideline but this will eventually force youtube over pandora TV. Korean Video UCC firms need to awaken from a deformed system of content creation in which does not pay contents, yet apply a strict measure or all thinkable matters. Why do UCC contents face so much false accusations? What do they want after causing all this?

Etc.
1. Promoting speculation and commercial contents
Pandora TV may refuse to post contents that promote speculation and other unauthorized commercial contents.

Contents that : -
1) promote or encourage gambling through the exchange of currency (cyber money)
2) promote or encourage illegal pyramid sales scheme
3) sale or forced sale of illegal promotional goods or lotteries
4) commercial nature with an intention to create profit for a certain firm or an individual
5) post falsehood or illegal matters such as money making sites, pyramid scam

2. Defamation Contents
Pandora TV may refuse the posting of contents that defames a certain individual, group including members of Pandora TV.

Contents that : -
1) infringe personal rights
2) defame or provide any false claims to an individual or group
3) contain verbal abuse or profanities that desecrates a certain individual’s character or arouse aversion or discomfort.
4) infringe the rights of an individual or groups and their good name

3. Criminal related, or promoted contents
We may refuse the posting of contents that encourage or promote illegal criminal activities.

Contents that : -
1) induce similar crimes by providing a detailed depiction
2) are if detestable nature, mentioning its process in detail
3) encourage illegal activities or to take part in it
4) posts illegal contents such as id-number generator, card generator, item generators
5) sell or introduce illegal imitation products
6) aims to provide other information that are against other laws
7) posts violent, illegal contents that cause a social issue

4. Etc

Contents that : -
1) intentionally cause harm the Pandora TV’s service
2) are objectively determined that are crime related
3) violates the conditional use and the regulations set by the company including this agreement
4) violates other related laws
5) imitating the administrator or manager

Just looking at 4.1, makes it difficult for a business to approach it. Pandora TV may stop losses of businesses due to UCCs by making a legal boundary. But such video UCC sites will eventually face estrangement, as many passionate UCC creators emerge.

As we have seen from above, pure domestic UCC creators who receive no feedback other than its storage and exposure to search engines will eventually turn to foreign video UCC sites in no time. Foreign video sites don’t exercise such strict measures of regulations and related laws. And in a sense that their UCCs are globally exposed will make the domestic small to med-sized UCC sites to lose its incentives more and more.

And the current UCC guidelines are no more or less of an aversion in which it is merely observed of its procedure. Who should take the big lot? Businesses? Video UCC sites? Portal? or UCC creators?

The site that will create such practical, reasonable structure will rule the UCC of the whole world.

Generally, in most cases website is already set up and at the same time, shopping mall is opened to develop Internet marketing, occasionally adding advertising banners in search engines and portal sites during events or promotions. Corporates are in necessity of introducing blogs into marketing today. Why? Aren’t the two tools, website and shopping mall, enough?

Management, who believed that they just had to open websites in order to get many netizen visitors to click are experiencing utter failure of their expectations. What is the reason? In Web 1.0, contents of websites provided adequate value, but in Web 2.0, unilateral contents of homepages fail to establish a value, even worse, unreliable.

Customers who wanted to find objective information on the product fast learned that the information on websites weren’t any different form that of the catalogs, and have experienced activity restrictions by the site managers so these customers have grown to express their strong opinions on other outside public bulletin boards such as dcinside

Eventually, a corporate focused contents on websites have been maintained without any readers and corporates have somewhat given up on fundamentally drawing more people to collect customer interests by spending enormous budget to bring about a change. Events and promotions can stir temporary interests but it alone cannot realistically resolve the fundamental problem the lies beneath.

In the end, management strongly feels a need for an alternative to a homepage which is limited. Would like to see the same contents everyday? Why do you think the news contents of portal sites are placed in the most important location?

Going right to the conclusion, websites cannot overcome its current extent due to the limitation of being used as a official medium of the corporate. Consequently, it must used as an official channel like existence, symbol and just cause the reason marketing is omitted here is that in the process of advertising website contents through events and promotions, it must utilize banner ads or overture ads in portals to be exposed to netizens.

In order words, search engine results can be optimized as the marketing expense is reduced by continuously creating and posting contents with various ads and marketing materials on individual blogs. Of course, it would be best if banner ads of portal sites and blog contents advertising go hand in hand.

In conclusion, the corporate on-line system must form a triangle system of website, blog and shopping mall as the final destination, and in this process draw continuous customer interest equipped with independent utilities if a competing firm’s product is exposed in a Internet search result, now is the time to move. Customers are bound to be interested in a carefully created contents, in a sense that they can’t experience the product they are comparing. Remember that the importance of contents is incomparable to anything.

Let’s take a look at the Naver’s user agreement (as of June 16th, 2007).

Section 8 (User postings)

1. All postings uploaded by users including: articles, photos, various files and links replies to other people’s blog, and articles posted on blog management bulletin boards.
2. All damages and problems cause due to the information uploaded by users are sole reliability of users themselves and company is not liable, unless done on purpose.
3. User may not post any contents that violates public discipline, good morals or manners; copyright laws or are a violation of privacy. Any consequences thereof due to such violation is solely liability of the user.
4. Company may delete, move or deny any posting or data without prior consent if deemed in violation of blog service administration.

1. Contents that are a defamation, desecration to other user or third party.
2. Posting of contents that violates public discipline, good morals or manners; information leading to sexual contents, such as posting shapes, figures, sounds, or movies or links leading to it.
3. Private political opinions or religious views that are deemed unsuitable to the service offered by the company.
4. Contents that promote illegal copies or hacking.
5. Contents that are of commercial nature for profit making.
6. Contents objectively related to crime.
7. Contents violating other user or third party’s privacy or copyrights.
8. Contents that are against the set policy by the company or the bulletin nature.
9. Contents that violates other related governing laws.

Section 9 (Copyright regarding posts)

1. Copyrights and intellectual ownership of all contents created by the company belongs to the company. Any company created contents in the process of user’s usage of company services cannot be used in profit making or transferred to third party by means of copy, transfer, publication, distribution and so on.
2. Copyrights to the created posts goes to the corresponding user creator.
3. Company may copy, display, transmit or distribute user created contents within Naver service, without prior consent by the user for the purpose of managing, displaying, transmit distribution and marketing, within the boundaries of related copyright law. Minimal necessary editing can be performed for the use in quotation or marketing.
4. If a company wants to use the user created contents in any other means posted on clause 3 of the same article, companies must obtain prior user consent through telephone, fax or email.
5. If a user canceled his membership, all posts recorded in the accounts are deleted, except for postings that have been scrapped by other users.
6. When an objection is presented in conjunction with a copyright violation, defamation, or sexual obscenity; company may temporarily delete the related post and may only re-post the relating article only when the legal issues have been resolved between the related parties and the company has been submitted a petition.

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The article 3 in Section 8 seems like a very irrational clause. Freedom in expressing political and religious option is a basic right of a democratic society, yet it is a misjudgment on naver’s side to post such a clause in stating that they can delete contents of such nature.The clause to look closely is the clause 5 of article 4 in section 8. For advertising, it is an obvious agreement considering the aspect of contents quality but it can be very ambiguous as th what is a commercial usage. Eventually, Naver will sort contents into commerical and non-commerical, utterly segregating commercialism, bares its intention of absorbing any commercial contents into their advertising contents. It is predictable that other portals will likely to follow this type of strategy, and in this point of view, blog contents strategy must be that of non-commercial marketing.The clause 7 of article 4 in section 8 will be a delightful clause to contents creators. So far, the emphasis was on contents themselves, regardless of scraps. But from now on, by specifying its creator along with the contents, contents creator’s brand and blogs of original creator will rise together. Eventually, in future, they’ll be able to distinguish between scrapped contents from the original contents through filtering of search engines; and this will make the value creators shine even more.Article 2 of Section 9 notifies that the blogger owns the copyrigh but the article 3, right below it, seems quite risky. In other words, it states that Naver can make use of blogger’s contents without any limitations, including content edits, under the condition that they provide the blog space and exposure to search engines for free. If so, copyright is no more than a scarecrow, and legally stated copyright laws have no meaning.

Then how should a blog marketer respond?
Copyright law is currently progressing and there’s a room for new changes once the FTA is adopted. Even so, creating new contents is important rather than scrapping and there is a need to create a defensive network of blogs that goes beyond the boundaries of portal sites such as Naver or other search engines.

Surviving in a conflict versus a mega portal like ‘Naver’ in a realistic sense; and to avoid being deleted of entire contents in an account cancellation as mentioned in article 5 of section 9, you would need a backup blog to say the least. Making a legal reference standard at this point, where the blog copyrights have gone extreme, has no real meaning so rather than focusing on the copyrights, the branding strategy of blogs is ideal in regards to notify that copyrights belong to contents creators.

Rather than declaring a war with Naver or other portal in Korean market, seek to coexist and position yourselves in a niche market where the portals cannot infringe upon. This will secure your perpetuation to maintain your value and become a strength for you to develop.

Copyright: Now is a time to be smart, not to use it against the portals.