One day, one of my blog posts, titled “101 Things I Learned About Street Photography”, went viral and brought 3,000 visitors to my blog in one day (I averaged about 100 visitors a day at that time). Then, a photography workshop director in Beirut, Lebanon, emailed me to ask me to teach a street photography workshop.

Needless to say, I was ecstatic and very excited about the trip. However, there was a problem. I didn’t have the $1100 at the time to afford a round-trip ticket to Beirut. The organization holding the workshop was able to fund my lodging and expenses, but not my flight.

When all hope seemed lost, my girlfriend suggested that I reach out to the community on my blog and try to fundraise for my air ticket. I thought it would be nearly impossible to fundraise the necessary funds for my trip, but I thought it would be worth a try.

Fast-forward three days. I had $1100 in my Paypal account for a round-trip ticket to Beirut to teach my street photography workshop. I ended up having the trip of a lifetime, meeting some of the most cordial and amazing people, and taking inspirational photos as well.

Now, perhaps you’re not looking to finance a trip to boost your career. Maybe you want to raise funds for a charity or cause that’s important to you. Or perhaps you want to be able to donate money to a specific appeal. Using your blog to raise funds for a cause you care about is a very fulfilling, enjoyable thing to do. Here’s how I did it.
1. Have a personal connection with your community

Well before I started fundraising for this trip, I had a very strong and personal connection with my community. On my Facebook fan page, I regularly ask for my audience’s input and opinions about certain issues, and try my best to address everybody by his or her first name. Not only that, but I also try my best to reply to every single comment I get on my blog personally.

I genuinely believe in human generosity and kindness. People want other people to achieve their dreams. When I asked people to donate, I asked them to help be a part of achieving my dream—which was to go to Beirut. Also, the fact that my mission was not selfish, but sprang from my wanting to spread my love of street photography to other places, helped tremendously.
2. Chart your progress

Whenever I got a donation, I charted my progress on my blog. I made a percentage bar in Photoshop, and would update it every time somebody donated to my cause, helping me get closer and closer to that 100% mark. This way, I relied on game mechanics to spark action; people wanted to see me reach that 100% mark and had a reason to donate. Making the experience much more visual helps out tremendously.
3. Use various social media platforms

When I was asking for donations, I accessed all of my social media platforms. This included Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and my blog. Being able to effectively leverage each platform helped me reach different audiences, all of which believed in my cause. Only utilizing one social media platform is selling yourself short, as kindness is very wide-spread on the Internet.
4. Thank your donors personally

Once somebody donated to my cause, I gave him or her a heart-felt and personal response, thanking them for their generosity. This way the person who donated to your cause feels great in helping you, and motivated to spread the word. Which goes to my next point…
5. Ask others to spread the word

It never hurts to ask other people to support your cause. Simple things such as updating their statuses on Facebook or sending out tweets truly helps out a lot. Imagine if you had 100 fans, and each of them updated their Facebook statuses, asking for their contacts to help. Now let’s also assume that the average person has around 200 friends on Facebook. That means that your message is being broadcast to at least an audience of 2000, which can continue to ripple outwards if other people believe in your cause as well.
6. Make a video

When I asked my donors to support my cause, I recorded a video, uploaded it to YouTube, and spread it far and wide. Why use a video rather than just writing? Well, when you record a video, people can truly see the face behind the computer—the person they will be donating to. Also, in hearing you ask for support in real life, people feel more secure donating to you, as they know you aren’t some random scammer on the Internet. Show your spirit, personality, and charisma. It truly goes a long way.
7. Have a “donor list”

People love to be honored, and to see their names in public places. Think about all the famous memorials you have been to, which have the names of donors embedded into the bricks that make the memorial. I did the same with my blog. Whenever somebody donated to my cause, I wrote their name in a “donors list” which was proudly displayed at the front of my homepage. Importantly, I made sure not to display how much money they each donated, as I saw that to be a bit too intrusive.
8. Have a minimum suggested donation

Most people love donating to causes, but aren’t sure how much to donate (which prevents them from donating altogether). For my campaign, I asked for a minimum donation of $5. I did end up getting many donations worth $5, but surprisingly enough, the majority of people who donated either gave $20 or $25. If you set a minimum suggested donation, people will know what the standard will be, and will even donate more if they truly believe in your cause.
9. Go big

During my fundraising campaign, I was able to net $300 in donations in the first two days via Paypal. However, what really got me over to Lebanon was a $800 donation from a Swedish street photographer named Thomas Leuthard. He heard about my cause through Twitter, and after seeing my passion and how badly I wanted this trip, he offered to sponsor the remainder of my trip. He also told me that he was looking for some adventure as well, and asked me if he could accompany me to the workshop.

He actually ended up being the guest speaker for my street photography workshop, and after meeting in person overseas, we made a strong friendship and relationship.
10. Share your experiences

People who donated to your cause love to see the fruits of their labor. When you come back from your trip, share your experiences! I took many photos of the people of Beirut, Lebanon, and shared them in this post. Not only that, but I also shared the slides from the workshop that I did for free—for those who wanted to attend but couldn’t.

Douglas Purdy, director of developer relations, just posted on the Facebook developer blog to explain that Facebook agrees with its critics that the feature could be better implemented and the company will be pulling it until changes are made.

“Over the weekend, we got some useful feedback that we could make people more clearly aware of when they are granting access to this data. We agree, and we are making changes to help ensure you only share this information when you intend to do so. We’ll be working to launch these updates as soon as possible, and will be temporarily disabling this feature until those changes are ready. We look forward to re-enabling this improved feature in the next few weeks.”

Purdy was just hired last November to “improve Facebook’s relationship with the community.” This move will not only help with Facebook’s developer community, but potentially its user community too.

A primary complaint of many commenters, developers and members of the data portability community was that the permissions dialog design did little to convey to users that they were now sharing information that had previously been kept for use on Facebook, not third-party applications. Take a look at the permission dialog:

While the request for new information seems apparent here, when it becomes part of a much longer list of permissions, it may easily slip past without users noticing. Purdy was not specific in what changes would be made, but we hope that it has to do with at very least the design of the dialog, if not even allowing users to have granular control over what they share with who at the time of sharing, not in a separate settings page.

According to a breaking news report from Reuters, Paul Fishman, the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, and the FBI plan to hold a press conference this afternoon to discuss the charges.
Remember this Attack?

If this story sounds familiar to you, it should. This summer, the news spread like wildfire around the Web, not just because of the hack attempt itself, but also because of the name of the so-called “security firm” itself, which refers to a decidedly NSFW (not safe for work) Web prank. The news story was broken by Gawker originally. For a refresher, you can read all the details here.

The security firm, really just a group of hackers calling itself a firm, exploited a security flaw on AT&T’s Web servers which allowed them to obtain email addresses from the SIM cards of iPad 3G users. This hack did not affect users of Wi-Fi only iPads.

At the time of the original report, the number of comprised accounts was said to be around 114,000. Today, it seems that number was just a bit higher: 120,000.
How the Attack Worked

The hackers had used a specially formatted HTTP request, which would return a user’s ICC-ID, that is, their iPad 3G SIM card address. This number, which stands for “integrated circuit card identifier” is used to identify SIM cards by associating a mobile subscriber with their device. A script on AT&T’s website allowed anyone to submit an ICC-ID and it would then return the subscriber’s email address.

The hackers found the ICC-ID’s thanks to many public photos hosted on the photo-sharing website Flickr and other similar sites. They were also able to guess a large number of ICC-ID’s just by looking at known IDs and making educated guesses.

To harvest the data from the AT&T servers, the hackers wrote an automated PHP script which would send a request to the website that made it appear as if the request came from a specific iPad user’s device.

Goatse Security said it notified AT&T of the breach, but only after sharing the script with an unknown number of third-parties. AT&T closed the security hole shortly after being notified.
Who Was Affected?

Among the users affected were many high-profile government officials and military personnel. Based on the email addresses gathered, the hackers had managed to snoop out accounts from the major service branches of the military, NASA, the FCC, DARPA, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Institute of Health.

In other industries, the affected individuals included top executives from The New York Times Company, Dow Jones, Condé Nast, Viacom, Time Warner, News Corporation, HBO, Hearst as well as others from Google, Amazon, AOL, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley.

AT&T said it would inform customers whose email address had been obtained through this attack, but generally downplayed the breach saying “the only information that can be derived from the ICC-ID’s is the email address attached to that device.”

From Reuters’ report, it sounds as if there is other personal data involved, too. However, we may not know if that’s an accurate statement until this afternoon’s press conference.

Soon after the attack occurred, the FBI announced it would open an investigation into the iPad breach. Today’s charges are the result of that investigation. We imagine that with a name like “Goatse,” this hacker group wasn’t too hard to track down.

According to Retuers, the defendants Daniel Spitler and Andrew Auernheimer were each charged with one count of fraud and one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization. Spitler will appear in federal court in Newark, New Jersey on Tuesday and Aurenheimer will appear in an Arkansas federal court.

A luxury brand may have 2 million fans on Facebook, but it is unclear whether these are also the people that can afford and regularly shop for the brand’s products.

To get a better handle on these issues it is necessary to categorize luxury brands’ clients among four groups:
Image – Luxury goods brands are trading on high multiplies riding investor enthusiasm for luxury goods companies in Asia.

A. Patricians, who are wealthy and “…pay a premium for inconspicuously branded products that serve as a horizontal signal to other patricians.”

B. Parvenus (from the Latin perveni?, meaning arrive or reach), are affluent people who also crave status, and use Vuitton’s distinctive ‘LV’ monogram, since the more subtle details of a Hermès bag’s price tag may not be easily recognized.

C. ‘Poseurs’ (French for a person who pretends to be what he or she is not) are motivated to consume for reasons of status, but lack the means to do so, and often turn to cheap substitutes.

D. Proletarians do not concern themselves with signaling by consuming status goods.

Get more information about the above, including the research paper, in our post on Christmas and luxury brands.

Unlike brands that attract parvenus clients (e.g. Louis Vuitton), a brand wanting to attract patrician clients is probably not that engaged on Facebook, choosing instead to take a more subtle approach to social media.

2. Your Facebook page is just a flash in the pan

Image – Oct. 2010, p. 4: ‘we asked consumers if they were more likely to purchase from a brand after becoming a FAN on Facebook, and only 17 percent of US consumers reported that they’re more likely to buy as a result of LIKING a brand. So do these findings support or debunk the myth that a FAN is worth US$136.38?’

Because social media is pull and not push, it is critical to determine what added value can be offered to targeted clients using social media (i.e., a blog or Twitter).

Yoox Group runs about 23 online destinations for as many brands, including Dolce & Gabbana, Emporio Armani (see below), Valentino, Roberto Cavalli and Zegna, all of which indicate that they are still being designed like brochures or TV ads: everything tries to grab a viewer’s attention.

But great designs are not that visible and focus instead on users’ needs – the tasks they want to complete while visiting you (e.g., finding a product or blog post, getting answers to solve a problem).

For example, if your system administrator has deactivated scripts in your web browser for security purposes (click image below), visiting these pages results in the following message:

In order to view this page you need JavaScript and Flash Player 8+ support!

It is unclear what customer group Armani is trying to attract with its website, or why consumers should return, besides wanting to participate in a sweepstakes.

Alert – our Trendwatch webinar: Luxury brands and social media marketing on Thursday 2011-01-13 further addresses these issues.

If you missed it, click on the link to watch the videos, listen to the podcast and view the slides – you will be surprised.

3. Why your website sucks

Besides a website’s or blog’s usefulness, usability is critical. A luxury brand’s webpage is useful if it manages to provide content and services of real value to the targeted audience. But what about user-friendliness when it comes to performing the most critical tasks one wants visitors to complete? For instance, do we want visitors to purchase a product? Or do we want to psych them up for a Spring fashion collection coming to a store near them?

Image – Armani online store in China – Yoox Group does it again – produces a hard to view website that requires flash – probably forgot to ask clients what they want to find on such an e-commerce site.

Our own blog perfectly illustrates this: regardless of gender or geographical location, there are two top tasks we want visitors to complete.

a) sign up to get news via RSS feed or email, and
b) subscribe to our benchmarking software for corporate blogs.

This illustrates that we must identify the most important tasks. In order to see if we have succeeded, we then need to address three metrics. The percentage or number of visitors that:

A. Completed the task (e.g., signing up for email) = success rate.
B. Think they completed the task, but actually did not = failure rate.
C. Spend more time than they should to complete the top task(s) = completion time.

Best practice then requires focusing on reducing customers’ time requirements for completion of these tasks. If the time can be reduced, one can make money (You Tube – Why people usually drop off after 50 seconds – unless…).

So how is your website doing? Here is a poll for you:

So I’ve spent some time thinking about what characterizes so many of Virgin’s successful ventures and, importantly, what went wrong when we did not get it right. Reflecting across 40 years I have come up with five “secrets.”

No. 1: Enjoy What You Are Doing.
Because starting a business is a huge amount of hard work, requiring a great deal of time, you had better enjoy it. When I started Virgin from a basement flat in West London, I did not set out to build a business empire. I set out to create something I enjoyed that would pay the bills.

There was no great plan or strategy. The name itself was thought up on the hoof. One night some friends and I were chatting over a few drinks and decided to call our group Virgin, as we were all new to business. The name stuck and had a certain ring to it.

For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

A businesswoman or a businessman is not unlike an artist. What you have when you start a company is a blank canvas; you have to fill it. Just as a good artist has to get every single detail right on that canvas, a businessman or businesswoman has to get every single little thing right when first setting up in business in order to succeed. However, unlike a work of art, the business is never finished. It constantly evolves.

If a businessperson sets out to make a real difference to other people’s lives, and achieves that, he or she will be able to pay the bills and have a successful business to boot.

No. 2: Create Something That Stands Out.
Whether you have a product, a service or a brand, it is not easy to start a company and to survive and thrive in the modern world. In fact, you’ve got to do something radically different to make a mark today.

Look at the most successful businesses of the past 20 years. Microsoft, Google or Apple, for example, shook up a sector by doing something that hadn’t ever been done and by continually innovating. They are now among the dominant forces.

No. 3: Create Something That Everybody Who Works for You is Really Proud of.
Businesses generally consist of a group of people, and they are your biggest assets.

No. 4: Be a Good Leader.
As a leader you have to be a really good listener. You need to know your own mind but there is no point in imposing your views on others without some debate. No one has a monopoly on good ideas or good advice.

Get out there, listen to people, draw people out and learn from them. As a leader you’ve also got to be extremely good at praising people. Never openly criticize people; never lose your temper, and always lavish praise on your colleagues for a job well done.

People flourish if they’re praised. Usually they don’t need to be told when they’ve done wrong because most of the time they know it. If somebody is not working out, don’t automatically throw him or her out of the company. A company should genuinely be a family. So see if there’s another job within the company that suits them better. On most occasions you’ll find something for every single kind of personality.

No. 5: Be Visible.
A good leader does not get stuck behind a desk. I’ve never worked in an office – I’ve always worked from home – but I get out and about, meeting people. It seems I am traveling all the time but I always have a notebook in my back pocket to jot down questions, concerns or good ideas.

If I’m on a Virgin Atlantic plane, I make certain to get out and meet all the staff and many of the passengers. If you meet a group of Virgin Atlantic crew members, you are going to have at least 10 suggestions or ideas. If I don’t write them down, I may remember only one the next day. By writing them down, I remember all 10. Get out and shake hands with all the passengers on the plane, and again, there are going to be people who had a problem or have a suggestion. Write it down, make sure that you get their names, get their e-mail addresses, and make sure the next day that you respond to them.

Of course, I try to make sure that we appoint managing directors who have the same philosophy. That way we can run a large group of companies in the same way a small business owner runs a family business – keeping it responsive and friendly.

When you’re building a business from scratch, the key word for many years is “survival.” It’s tough to survive. In the beginning you haven’t got the time or energy to worry about saving the world. You’ve just got to fight to make sure you can look after your bank manager and be able to pay the bills. Literally, your full concentration has to be on surviving.

Obviously, if you don’t survive, just remember that most businesses fail and the best lessons are usually learned from failure. You must not get too dispirited. Just get back up and try again.

© 2010 Richard Branson

Sales, profits, and new software bookings for Oracle’s fiscal fourth quarter ended on May 31 exceeded Wall Street’s forecasts. That sent shares of Oracle up 2.7% in extended trading, after closing on June 23 down 10¢, or 0.5%, at $19.87. The shares have gained 8.8% in the past three months.

Profits declined 7% and revenues fell 5% in the period, though results would have been better if not for the effects of translating overseas sales into a rising U.S. currency. On Wall Street, analysts said Oracle’s recurring revenues from technical support contracts and prudent control of expenses during the quarter helped offset currency-related declines. “Oracle continues to be a high-quality investment,” says Andy Miedler, a senior technology analyst at Edward Jones who rates Oracle a “buy.”
Pickup in Software Sales

Investors are lifting the shares of tech outfits including IBM (IBM), Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), and Adobe Systems (ADBE) that reported relatively healthy results during the recession by taking advantage of companies’ need to buy products that can boost productivity, Miedler says. “Investors see tech companies posting fairly decent results in this environment, and they’re rewarding them for it,” he says. The Nasdaq composite index has risen 13.4% since Mar. 24, outpacing other indices.

Oracle executives told Wall Street analysts in a conference call that customers are beginning to buy more software, and pointed to deals closed during the quarter with Wal-Mart (WMT), American Express (AXP), Vodafone Group (VOD), and Perry Ellis (PERY). “The sense of panic and deer-in-the-headlights kind of feeling” has subsided, said Oracle President Charles Phillips.

For the fourth quarter, Oracle earned $1.9 billion, or 38¢ a share, compared with $2.03 billion, or 40¢ a year earlier. Excluding stock compensation and one-time charges, earnings were 46¢ a share, exceeding Wall Street analysts’ estimate of 44¢. Revenues were $6.9 billion, vs. $7.2 billion a year earlier. Analysts had expected sales of $6.47 billion. Sales of new software licenses, a closely watched measure of future revenues, were down 13%, to $2.7 billion, but also exceeded analysts’ expectations.
Weathering the Recession

Looking ahead, investors are still waiting for more clarity from the company about how quickly it can cut costs after its $7.4 billion acquisition of computer and software maker Sun Microsystems (JAVA) closes this summer, and whether it will keep Sun’s server and storage business.

The new operating system, announced Tuesday night on Google’s Web site, will be based on the company’s 9-month-old Web browser, Chrome. Google intends to rely on help from the community of open-source programmers to develop the Chrome operating system, which is expected to begin running computers in the second half of 2010.

Shares of Google jumped $6.92, 1.8 percent, to $403.55 in morning trading Wednesday, while Microsoft fell 15 cents to $22.38.

Google is designing the operating system primarily for “netbooks,” a lower-cost, less powerful breed of laptop computers that is becoming increasingly popular among budget-conscious consumers primarily interested in surfing the Web.

Google has already introduced an operating system for smart phones and other mobile devices, called Android, that vies against various other systems, including ones made by Microsoft and Apple Inc.

The Android system worked well enough to entice some computer makers to begin developing netbooks that will run on it. For instance, Acer Inc., the world’s third-largest PC maker, said last month it would make netbooks that run Android instead of Windows. Acer said Android would make the computers less expensive and possibly help them boot up faster.

Google, though, apparently believes a Chrome-based system will be better suited for netbooks.

That is a direct challenge to Microsoft, whose next operating system, Windows 7, is being geared for netbooks as well as larger computers. And it would be Google’s boldest confrontation yet with its biggest nemesis.

Microsoft had no immediate comment Wednesday.

A duel between the two technology powerhouses has been steadily escalating in recent years as Google’s dominance of the Internet’s lucrative search market has given it the means to threaten Microsoft in ways that few other companies can.

Google already has rankled Microsoft by luring some of its top employees and developing an online package of computer programs that provide an alternative to Microsoft’s top-selling word processing, spreadsheet and calendar applications.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has been trying to thwart Google by investing billions of dollars to improve its own Internet search and advertising systems — to little avail so far.

In the past month or so, though, Microsoft has been winning positive reviews and picking up more users with the latest upgrade to its search engine, now called Bing. Microsoft is hailing the makeover with a $100 million marketing campaign.

Now Google is aiming for Microsoft’s financial jugular with Chrome its operating system.

Microsoft has drawn much of its power — and profits — from the Windows operating system that has steered most personal computers for the past two decades.

Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, and its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have not concealed their disdain for Windows.

Schmidt maintains Microsoft sometimes unfairly rigs its operating system to limit consumer choices — something that Microsoft has consistently denied doing. Google fears Microsoft could limit access to its search engine and other products if Windows is set up to favor Microsoft products.

Google made a veiled reference to Windows’ perceived shortcomings in its blog posting Tuesday.

“We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better,” wrote Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president of product management and Linus Upson, Google’s engineering director. “We believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.”

Schmidt and Brin are expected to discuss Google’s new operating system this week when they appear at a media conference hosted by Allen & Co. at the Sun Valley resort in Idaho.

Despite its own power and prominence, Google won’t have an easy time changing the status quo that has governed personal computing.

As an example of how difficult it is to topple a long-established market leader, Google estimates about 30 million people are now using its Chrome browser — a small fraction of those that rely on Microsoft’s market-leading Internet Explorer. And there have been various attempts to develop open-source software to undermine Windows on PCs, with relatively little effect.

The company that pioneered the Internet router is about to enter a new frontier, sending one into geostationary orbit on a satellite. It’s the first big step in a U.S. Defense Department-led initiative, called Internet Routers In Space (IRIS), that could eventually make it easier and less expensive to get high-speed Internet access where wires and cables don’t reach.

Satellites carry Internet data and connect to the Internet through base stations on the ground, but they are really a separate network, said Greg Pelton, general manager of IRIS at Cisco. An Earth station beams a signal up to the satellite at a certain frequency, and the craft bounces it back down to another, predefined Earth station. Users, such as service providers and government agencies, have to lease that frequency and sit on it whether they are using it or not.

Satellite links represent discrete point-to-point connections in an Internet that’s designed to route packets around the world on any peering network and any kind of physical link. That’s because there are no routers in space, according to Pelton. If communications satellites had routers, they could take in IP (Internet Protocol) packets and send them to a variety of places, via different Earth stations or other satellites, forging new links whenever needed. Rather than having to pick a particular link and lease it, users could just pay for an Internet service that uses satellites as part of its physical backbone.

Routing in space would also cut down on lag times, satellite consultant Mark Chartrand pointed out. Because routing can only be done on the ground today, data packets have to be sent to Earth and back every time they are forwarded from one satellite link to another, he said. That adds one-quarter of a second of latency per round trip. Routers could solve that.

“It makes satellites smart, and it avoids hops,” Chartrand said.

Some satellites, such as those used by Iridium, can communicate directly with each other, but not using the universal standard of IP. In fact, current satellite technology is largely made up of expensive, proprietary equipment, Chartrand said.

Two recent developments have readied the satellite industry for IP routers, according to Pelton. One is an explosion in the capacity of satellites, from a typical capability of about 2Gb per second (Gbps) to as much as 150Gbps. This became possible because of technology that let satellites tap into a set of frequencies called the Ka band, as well as a new antenna technology called “spot beams.” Rather than using one antenna to reach a whole continent, some satellites now have many antennas, each focused on a certain area. All these “spot beams” can use the same frequency at the same time, which multiplies how much data can be transmitted on that frequency, Pelton said.

The Artist’s Collective

The Los Angeles based Artist’s Collective is a small, nonprofit medical marijuana dispensary that donates some of its proceeds to opportunity grants for artists, writers, performers, and musicians. To be able to purchase marijuana from the Artist’s Collective you need to have a doctor’s note certifying that you would benefit from marijuana as a medical treatment.

The Collective has recently launched a large digital presence with its own Web site, Facebook page, MySpace account and Twitter feed, and uses all of these online tools to connect with its members.

Twitter, however, turns out to be the Collective’s best way to reach out to the public. The Collective has only been open for a few months, but the nonprofit told Fox News that business really started hopping once it signed up for Twitter in June.

The Collective’s tweet stream mixes adverts for the latest pot strains and sales, with quirky tweets from a “day in the life of a medical marijuana delivery driver”—the Artist’s Collective offers free delivery (sorry weed only, no side trips for food).

Recent Collective tweets:

“The most frequently heard comment when crossing the threshold of a new patient’s home is Sorry about the mess.

“Place your orders now for Rice Krispie Jamboree! Made with South Bay Healing Magic! Available by July 11th.”

“The Russian mob calls. (At least that’s the accent.) ‘Vat is this strain? Are you wholesaler?’ No, we’re a creative non-profit. Don’t shoot!.”

“New for our Members: Blackberry Kush and Green Crack. Blackberry is excellent for relaxation while Green Crack will give you an energy boost.”

Why Twitter?

I guess it’s not entirely surprising that Twitter was the online game changer for increasing the Collective’s membership. And it makes sense. I mean, let’s face it, when you’re flying high on Green Crack or Blackberry Kush and dying for that Domino’s guy to show up with your pizza, the time it takes to read one tweet–140 characters or less–is about as long as you can concentrate.

Think weed is the only drug advertised on the Internet? Think again.

A bill hasn’t been introduced yet, although high-profile congressional hearings were held in mid-June. And, obviously, one cannot describe the contours of a law that hasn’t yet made it through the legislative digestive process. Still, high-profile executives expect privacy concerns will persist. “Most experts who really follow Washington would say [some regulation] is coming,” says Dave Morgan, who testified at last month’s hearings.

Morgan is the former CEO of Tacoda, an online ad network bought by AOL (TWX) in 2007. It used third-party cookies to zero in on consumers through a process called “behavioral targeting.” You see countless targeted ads as you Web-surf each day. This kind of business would face significant challenges should such regulation be enacted, and effects would ripple throughout the Net. “Most Web sites [use] a range of ad networks and offer additional behavioral targeting,” says Fernando Ruarte, co-founder of ad network Glam Media, which does some behavioral targeting. “An opt-in system could cripple the Web as users could be asked for opt-in for every [targeted] ad on a page.”

Presumably, opting in would work in a less clunky fashion than that. But an online ad world without data would lack almost everything that makes the Web interesting to advertisers. (Sighted: an upside for traditional media in a grievous ad environment!) Data-targeted ads would fade away, as would the feedback on users that advertisers are accustomed to receiving from online campaigns.

Paradoxically, some online players could benefit. Google’s search ads, which accounted for two-thirds of its $21.8 billion in revenue last year, would be unaffected: No cookies are involved when companies bid to place relevant ads next to search terms. “If you have no cookies and no data, in many ways it will make search engines more valuable and, potentially, make Google (GOOG) even more valuable,” says Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO of the Chicago marketing consultancy Denuo. Other advantages would accrue to companies that have already amassed much data on their customers and potential customers. This includes both major advertisers like Procter & Gamble (PG) and online giants along the lines of Yahoo! (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT). It would be harder for new market entrants to build, or buy, impressive databases in a cookie-restricted world.

In a bid to preempt regulation, at press time several media and ad trade groups were readying new guidelines governing the use of data, to go into effect in early 2010. But journalist Peter Kafka of All Things Digital proposed giving consumers something for letting advertisers harvest their data, perhaps “privacy points” redeemable for small rewards such as “a bag of Cheetos.”

His jest illuminates a larger point: In the offline world, collecting data from consumers goes hand in hand with giving them rewards. (For proof, look no further than a frequent-flyer statement.) There is no such benefit for targeted online ads. “No one opens up a Web page and says, ‘Wow! I love these ads!’ ” says Morgan. “We haven’t improved the consumer experience.” Had online marketers done so, they might not be facing regulation that could so swiftly and radically alter their businesses.