There’s a very simple business reason why Google cares if they have your real name. It means it’s possible to cross-relate your account with your buying behavior with their partners, who might be banks, retailers, supermarkets, hospitals, airlines. To connect with your use of cell phones that might be running their mobile operating system. To provide identity in a commerce-ready way. And to give them information about what you do on the Internet, without obfuscation of pseudonyms.

Simply put, a real name is worth more than a fake one.

I contacted The Script Kiddies through Twitter and asked if they would consent to an interview, which they responded that they would, provided it was carried out through Twitter. I posed 8 questions to the group. The unabridged and unedited Q&A is posted below.

1. What is the mission of The Script Kiddies?
Our current mission is to aid in #antisec with exposing government and corporate corruption all over the world.

2. How did the things you accuse Pfizer of come to your attention?
You know what they say; the medium is the message…through media.

3. Can you tell us how you hacked the page?
Paul Dyer. The ignorance of an individual can lead to a security breach of alot more then one may think.

4. Do you see social media as more vulnerable to attack than other forms of digital media?
Social media gets more attention, and tends to be less secure since companies trust individuals to protect and control them.

5. Did you feel you got the results you were looking for?
The results we were hoping for is the public awareness of what Pfizer has done, and the punish the company itself. so yes.

6. Were you concerned at all that you may not have had all the facts before beginning your efforts against Pfizer?
We know just as much now about their corruption as we did before.

7. Given that most drug development risks human life, and not developing certain drugs also carries risks to human life, how can pharma companies better manage in order to avoid coming under future scrutiny from groups like yours?
The ingredients that make up these drugs are nothing knew. The risk could easily be calculated before testing on humans.

8. What would you say to those who feel your methods may be as harmful as those you look to expose?
It isn’t up to me if the media or the people approve of what we do. the result is something we can all approve of (cont.) were not trying to be hero’s. We are well aware hacking is criminal and can be unjustified in most cases (cont.) with groups such as ourselves, lulzsec, and Anonymous; everyday we get closer to a society without corruption and with fair rule.

It should be noted that in my previous post, I assumed that the group hacked into the page through some vulnerability within Facebook. That assumption was incorrect. Instead, it seems access was attained by clues and publicly available data found on the internet left by one of the page administrators.

Last night, sometime around 8:30pm last night, Pfizer had its Facebook account hacked by a group called ‘The Script Kiddies.’ The group, much like LulzSec and Anonymous before it, is made up of hackers who inflict their own form of retribution (or what they would term as justice) on organizations they disapprove of by breaking through various layers of online security to post images and messages on cooperate owned sites. In this case, Pfizer’s Facebook page.

In an interview with the website studentactivistdiary.co.uk, the group claims that “[Pfizer is] guilty of killing people through harmful drugs and clinical tests. […] We plan to achieve awareness mostly; awareness that the security online is an allusion and also that Pfizer’s crimes are intolerable and we will not deal with them. We will stand up and say, hey, this isn’t right. We will take a stand. Some say that our methods are extreme, but they have to be to achieve our goals. Pfizer is a corrupt giant, so we attacked them. Simple as that.”

Despite several claims of “not being an expert” the representative from ‘The Script Kiddies” felt their actions justified and the results went live for all to see. Pfizer removed the posts and locked it’s Facebook page down shortly after the attack.

Whether or not you believe this kind of armchair activism is justified or not is a debate I will leave for another day. From the vantage point of communications, an attack like this does raise several important questions. Were Pfizer’s security protocols to blame or was Facebook the problem? Will this attack set Pharma’s efforts in social media back? Should Pfizer respond? And if so, how?

If the people managing the Pfizer page were using strong passwords or continuously updating the log-in credentials I can’t say, but one very important issue should not be glossed over here…

Pfizer wan’t hacked, Facebook was.

Yes, these hackers took over the Pfizer page, but that page is housed on Facebook’s servers, and Pfizer can only make the page as secure as Facebook’s user interface will allow. Unfortunate as it was for Pfizer, I’m not sure how much more security could have been applied. The hackers in question may crow all they like about how they supposedly beat Pfizer, but Facebook needs to step up here. Also interesting to note, if these hackers really wanted to put on a show, why not hack the Pfizer.com site instead of the Facebook page? It probably gets far more traffic and therefore would garner far more attention.

This wasn’t a social media problem, it was a technological one, and is one that’s potentially fixable. If a group like this wants to hack your sites, they will find a way to do so, if not on Facebook than somewhere else for sure.

Given the tenuous position it has in social media, its easy to see how those who think pharma should leave social media alone will use this as an opportunity to say “see I told you so.” The truth of the matter is that, like it or not, these types of attacks will continue to happen. And, like with any other media channel, unless it is comfortable, active, and engaged in the space, pharma’s responses to issues like this will continue to be flat-footed and painfully slow.

So what should Pfizer do? I’m a firm believer that you don’t negotiate with terrorists, and that responding directly to an attack like this will bring attention to the hackers, and in all likelihood, provoke more attacks.

What Pfizer shouldn’t do is retreat.

Social media represents a powerful way to create understanding and deepen awareness of issues most likely to affect or benefit users. Pfizer has the opportunity here to lead the way, whether it’s bringing better transparency to its clinical trials and safety programs or by providing customers who are having legitimate issues or have questions about their products answers and support. Leveraging social media to provide help and support will go a long way towards improving the perception of your brand, but it must be done carefully, authentically and with your audience needs in mind.

But make no mistake. There will always be detractors. There will always be haters. Hiding from them won’t make them go away.

Enter Google+.

No sooner than it launched, the ‘in crowd’ of the internet wasted no time in calling it a Facebook killer, a blog killer, and a Twitter killer among other things. It was a game changer, a reinvention of Google, and the cure for cancer all rolled into one. The hyperbole machine was definitely in full effect.

I would consider myself a power social media user. On any given day I use Facebook, Twitter, LInkedIn, and Wordpress for various work and personal communication tasks. Given my job, I thought it prudent to get my mitts on an invite to G+ and create an account to see what all the fuss was about. I can’t say I was particularly jazzed to do so, but logged in more from a sense of occupational duty than for the promise of yet-another-social-channel-to-manage.  For G+ to be added into my daily life, it would have to offer me something seriously unique or valuable.

News flash: It does not. At all.

G+ feels like the classic engineering solution to trying to build a better Facebook. G+ focuses on creating a better Facebook-like experience rather than building upon a unique customer insight to fill a need or solve a problem. The minute you log in, you can see the resemblance to the Goliath it’s trying to slay. Some of the features are a bit more polished than their FB counterparts, but the features and tools are almost identical. G+ isn’t so much a new social network as it’s Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character in Single White Female. It shows up at Facebook’s apartment, wears Facebook’s clothes and hopes to steal its boyfriend and assume its identity.

The magic to Facebook’s growth over the past few years has come from women, baby boomers and global expansion. If you’re a forty two year old mother of three from Oregon, are you really going to change communities without a vastly better experience or value proposition?

The answer is no.

The only people Google+ seems to be helping are the people at Google, who see a huge need to keep behavioral data flowing in so that they can continue to have relevant user information to sell to advertisers. Make no mistake, Google is an ad network disguised as a search engine, and the product they sell is you.

Given that G+ is an invite only beta at the moment, I’m sure we will see a slew of new features to go along with a deluge of press releases telling us why Facebook is dead. Don’t believe it. For a company that has launched so many new tools that were supposed game changers and failed miserably (See Google’s Wave, Buzz, Latitude, Knol, Health,  Lively, Search Wiki, Audio Ads, Video, Dodgeball, Jaiku, Notebook, Catalogs, Print Ads, Answers, Sidewiki, Friend Connect, Page Creator, and Web Accelerator), I’m surprised the company gets as much benefit of the doubt as it does. My guess is that G+ will be joining that illustrious list sooner rather than later.

For the sake of clarification, this isn’t a post about privacy. That horse is being flogged repeatedly and everything about the topic has probably been covered already. I use Facebook all the time and am of the belief that you can protect your privacy well enough by simply being discreet about what kind of information you choose to supply. If you don’t put highly personal information in, people can’t ever get at it, and we’ve all heard about sites like Pleaserobme.com.  A modicum of common sense goes a long, long way.

With tragedies like the one involving Ms. Pilkington it’s easy to look to blame someone. The classmates, Facebook, the parents, all in some way, shape or form can make tantalizing victims for a blood-thirsty media outlet looking for a attention-grabbing angle. I’m a big proponent of parents having tighter relationships with their kids, schools taking a more active role in monitoring student activity and everyone making more responsible decisions to make the world a safer place. In this case, several classmates used the virtual world to torment Alexis to the point of suicide. Their crimes were so egregious that they even kept taunting the poor girl even after she was dead. Could the Pilkington tragedy have been avoided? I don’t know, but I don’t think Facebook and it’s bevy of privacy issues are the problem here. Whatever the means, some people are going to act aggressively and stupidly whether the technology is there to help them out or not.

The disturbing thing about cyberbullying is that it’s most often done by someone you know. In cases like that, your privacy isn’t what has been violated, your identity is. We’re obviously not talking about identity theft here, but rather blatant attacks on your personal identity; how you feel about yourself, and what your outward persona is to others. What makes cyberbullying so damaging is that the teasing can be incessant and come from all angles, all in plain view of your circle of friends, 24-7. It used to be that when kids picked on other kids, they could at least look forward to escaping the pressure by getting on the bus and going home.

The internet has the ability to bring everyone into our personal space, whether we like it or not.

As I write this, Facebook has very quietly been asked by some parental groups to install more safety features to help protect kids. In England for instance, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center (CEOPC) has asked Facebook to include a “Panic Button” on all group pages. The feature would allow kids to alert someone in the event they feel threatened or unsafe. Facebook has flatly rejected including any such features its site, declining to comment as to why.

So this begs 2 relevant questions:
1. Why won’t Facebook provide more safety features on its site? And,
2. What features should they provide if they were willing to do so?

Mark Zuckerberg’s well documented abhorrence to personal privacy aside, I don’t think Facebook is deliberately obfuscating its responsibility of providing a safer community experience. I do think they worry about the precedent it sets. If you live in New York, from time to time there will be visible and formidable increases in local police and security forces in the subways. If you’re like me, the first thing you do is to feel a bit safer, but then you might begin to wonder: Why are the extra forces are needed? Is something going on? Should I be worried? It’s this very thinking that I believe Facebook is looking to avoid. If you begin to see features like panic buttons and parental alerts, I’m sure the next logical question parents will indeed ask themselves is whether Facebook is safe at all.

We all want to feel safe as long as we don’t have to think about the danger.

So what kind of tools should Facebook, or any social site for that matter, be developing? While not an exhaustive list, here are a few that I can think of.

1. A simpler privacy settings dashboard
Privacy issues for Facebook users aside, the dashboard and default settings for restricting access to personal information are a joke. Facebook should create a much simpler system for managing these features and have them all located in one place, rather than scattered throughout your profile. And, by default, they should all be off so that users would have to opt in to making information available. Their recent updates to the privacy settings system are a good start, but not remotely close to optimal.

2. An online cyber safety councilor
For anyone under the age of 18, a councilor, trained in helping people who feel they are being threatened would automatically included in the chat list of a user when they come online. Don’t want to include a panic button? This is the next best thing. A trained specialist could help guide individuals through what to do and where to go for help in the event that they feel unsafe when on Facebook. You could even take this idea one step further and have a councilor’s chat window automatically appear and offer to help should someone type a phrase like “I’m thinking of committing suicide.” Think of it as a real time 9-1-1 operator.

3. Sentiment bots to detect predatory conversations
Facebook claims that it already has tools like this in place, but if they are anything like some of the tools most social media agencies use to analyze conversations, they are most likely woefully weak. Conversation analysis tools can’t detect things like sarcasm or humor, so honing in on keywords becomes essential to determining relevancy. If these tools do exist, beef them up. Make the API open source and offer $10,000 to the person or team that could make them more accurate. Would it be perfect? No. But it would be a good start.

4. Educational programs
There already exists a page on Facebook dedicated to understanding cyberbullying, but if I hadn’t searched for the words “Facebook + cyberbullying,” I probably wouldn’t have found it. Plus, I’m not entirely sure Facebook sanctioned this. The bottom line is Facebook has the ability to drive awareness, education and support to lead the charge on this issue, and their efforts to date have been muted at best.

Privacy issues not withstanding, in my opinion, Facebook is at a crossroads. The site is already getting heat from congress about their “opt-in” privacy options, and have, to date, capitulated to a certain extent. This has made users a tad more anonymous, but not necessarily safer. Tragedies like the one that befell Ms. Pilkington are horrible, and should be met with a swift and decisive eye towards preventing a repeat occurrence. But for now, Facebook seems inert. I can only pray it doesn’t take another, higher profile incident to make them rethink a more proactive stance on the subject.

What do you think?

Strategies evolved that more or less correlated to success. People got smarter. The tools got cheaper and easier to use while the barriers to working the ‘net got smaller and easier to manage.

Inside of pharma, regulators and brand managers alike struggled to define how to use the Internet properly. Adoption happened slowly. Things seemed risky. Hands were wrung, and decisions delayed until others took the lead.

More case studies were needed.

Soon everyone was an Internet ‘expert’ and the scrum began. Every agency, freelancer, and Johnny-come-lately tried to get digital work. Innovation was sought at the expense of meaningful results. Things had to be new. They had to be shiny. And they had to have lots and lots of Flash.

Prices fell. The talent pool swelled. Expertise was defined by what you’d just launched. The noise level rose. Soon it became hard to tell what was great from what was working. Flashy was the new good.

Now, reread the previous paragraphs and replace the word ‘Internet” with the words “Social Media.” All of this has happened before.

Then, terrible things happened. The economy tanked. 9/11 occurred. The dot–conomy imploded. All those people dreaming of their Internet riches and piles of stock options e-lost all their virtual iDollars and ended up in thepoorhouse.com.

The party was over.

But that tragedy led to the rise to an aristocratic class of digital talent that had gained the specialized skills needed to survive while living through those volatile experiences and creating bigger and better tools. These are the survivors. These are the few. These are the Digerati.

Look around any major marketing meeting. Chances are there’s a late thirty something “smartest-person-in-the-room” that knows everything about anything digital you could want to talk about.

Strangely, I see the lessons of the past not informing the decisions of today. Social media is too new. It’s too different. It can’t be measured. Sound familiar? It should. All of this has happened before.

What I find most astonishing about this is that the very people who seem so flummoxed about how social can be applied to real business challenges are the very same people who should know better. They lived through the pain, and they fought the battles and struggled to be relevant. Yet, here we are again. Square one.

The same regulatory challenges that slowed the adoption of the Internet are playing themselves out all over again in this socially driven age. Remember when the biggest concern about creating a website was whether showing images of packaging  would somehow lead to fraud or a rise in fake products being sold? It may seem quaint now, but the fear was very real and very, very time consuming to navigate.

The challenges faced during the beginnings of the Internet age may be somewhat different than those of today, but the methods for success formulated during those times are just as relevant now.

So where does that leave us? Looking back at the past it occurs to me that 4 key lessons emerge. These may seem like “well, duh” tips, but I assure you, they are often ignored, usually at the expense of some really great ideas which never end up seeing the light of day.

1. Have a defined objective.

The seduction of new tools and technologies are that they generate opportunities to create some really “wow” stuff. That’s all well and good, but often the tried and true works better. Have an objective. Stick to the plan. Generating buzz can be a perfect objective for some programs but is definitely not a one size fits all outcome. Chase the shiny object only if it gets you somewhere. After all, it would be far more valuable to have 1,000 highly targeted, highly engaged patients than 10,000 outliers that will never ask for your product.

2. Understand your audience.

Your audience wants value. They want you to fill a need. If they’ve raised their hand by fanning your page, give them something in return. If your social strategy is merely to repurposed content that already exists elsewhere, chances are you will fail. People in social channels want content and experiences that are useful and in some way shape or form entertaining or interesting. How you write for social is going to be fundamentally different than how you write for a website. Giving them yet another BMI calculator isn’t going to get it done. Location based tracking tools for Alzheimer’s caregivers? Now you’re getting somewhere.

3. ROI matters.

More often than not, I read articles and blogs proclaiming that social media is too unique to measure, that it’s more important to experiment than worry about results. The problem with this mindset is that we all work in a results oriented culture, and showing how every dollar made an impact is very applicable to ensuring you have dollars available next year and the year after, let alone a job. Digital people use metrics like time on site, page views, opt ins, click through rates, likely to be referred, lifetime value and a whole host of other data points to justify the exorbitant money thrown at e-marketing tactics. If your agencies or consultants tell you that they can’t measure the impact of a social program, fire them. Do it now. There are plenty of smart people out there that can help you get the data you need.

4. Put your money where your brain is.

The proximity bias dictates that for the most part, people will go with what they know. I’ve seen brand after brand push money into failing programs simply because they are familiar and “seem” to work. Take a look at how much money you spend on display ads. What’s your click through rate? 2%? How many websites do you have? Do they need to be redesigned? Why? Amazon hasn’t changed its interface in 7 years, but it does reinvigorate it’s offering all the time. Other programs, especially in social may be able deliver far better results for far less money. Challenge assumptions. Push innovation. Demand value. Hard metrics are your friend.

The era of social is here, whether you like it or not. It’s an exciting time, one fraught with challenges, opportunities and adventures. But the lessons of the past should inform the decisions of today and tomorrow, not be forgotten. Mistakes should be learned from and strategies adopted. After all, all of this has happened before.

But it doesn’t have to happen again.

*Get off my lawn, you damn kids!

TRANSCRIPT–

WILLARD: Only 15 billion bucks. All right guys, can the power of social media change the world? Toyota would probably tell you it already has. The company is trying so hard to keep its stories about recalls and other problems under tight control. However, the Internet was abuzz with people tweeting, re-tweeting and Rebecca re-tweeting about Toyota’s problems.

So what can a company do when the information they want controlled is out of control through the people in the media outlets that they truly have no control of? Work with me, guys. Bill Evans is from Fleishman-Hillard Public Relations and is the senior VP of their Digital Strategy Division. I call it “revolutionomics”. Whether we’re protesting the Chavez in Venezuela or we’re being angry about Toyota trying to hide problems they can’t stop the revolution.

BILL EVANS, FLEISHMAN-HILLARD SVP, DIGITAL STRATEGY: That’s right, Cody. We’re talking about moms in minivans and cars and safety, I mean they strike very much at the core of what people value. And so I think what Toyota is learning almost the hard way is that people are going to come together, they’re going to share their experiences. They’re going to make purchasing decisions based very much on what they hear and what they feel and Toyota is really at a crisis at this point.

BOLLING: But this is the way of the future. I mean the information is out there now, whether it’s politics or business, Toyota recalls anything –

EVANS: Yes.

BOLLING: The social media has really brought information to everyone, right?

EVANS: Yes. I don’t think it is about necessarily bringing information to everyone. I think it is empowering people to bring information to each other, so the era of advertising really defining what a brand is or what a message is, is over. So you’re going to have a story that you want to tell, FOX is going to have a story it’s going to tell.

Toyota is going to have a story it’s going to tell. But people are going to come together and sort of measure the credibility about that and what they feel and align themselves to people that are alike themselves as well. And the Internet is really giving us a visibility into that we never had before.

DIAMOND: And so how does the company then — you’re a public relations expert.

EVANS: Yes.

DIAMOND: How does the company then contain this balloon that’s out there that’s just growing –

EVANS: Sure.

DIAMOND: — getting, you know, bigger and bigger until it pops with social media? They have basically no control over it.

EVANS: I think the — the way we counsel clients at Fleishman (ph) it’s not about controlling the story. It is about establishing credibility. I mean Toyota is learning that trust is a global commodity and it’s really not about controlling the spin anymore. I think people want them to come out, own the story on the situation. What did you know, when did you know it, be very transparent and tell us how they’re going to fix the problem. I think that will go a long way to establishing or re- establishing their reputation as a very trusted brand.

WILLARD: So it ends up being — it’s something we talk about on the show all the time. If America would focus on quality and not propaganda –

EVANS: That’s right.

WILLARD: — perhaps American companies would once again prosper.

EVANS: That’s correct. And I think you know Toyota could take a page from Ford back a number of years ago when they were having some issues. President of the company, Bill Ford, came out, took ownership of the problems, said here is what my plan is to fix this and this was before social media really became a prevalent channel.

I think Toyota if they were going to put a plan forward to the American people and people at large, say here’s how we’re moving forward. Start to show some of the stories of how people are engaging in success, what’s it’s been, how people are getting their cars fixed and really getting back to some core fundamental values and establishing trust that will go a long way.

BOLLING: Do they get it now? I mean you look at Toyota, OK, so they dropped the ball. They probably thought they were you know too big to fail.

EVANS: Yes.

BOLLING: Tiger Woods, it’s the same thing –

(CROSSTALK)

BOLLING: Am I — it’s the same — it’s a good theory, right?

EVANS: Same theory. I think the idea that they’re somehow tone deaf to the opinion against them is the lesson here. I don’t know that they still quite got it. The fact that (INAUDIBLE) allegedly they knew about this problem for quite some time exacerbates that they didn’t have a plan ready to go and engage in people and really tell their story. I think Tiger Woods is a great example. He tried to shut the story down, control it, hope that it would go away. It actually just fueled the fire.

DIAMOND: Or maybe, on the same lines, Eric, that they were just too confident. They were too — like Tiger said, he thought was too good, he was entitled, and he — you know, the same with Toyota. They’re number one. They’re growing. They’re, you know — they’re Teflon.

EVANS: That’s right.

DIAMOND: But you know, they didn’t realize that, hey, you can be taken down, as well.

EVANS: Yes. And I think, again, the lesson here is not to be tone deaf. I mean, if you look at conversations, how people talk about your brand, your reputation of your brand, that’s much more valuable than your Q score with an ad campaign. So I think Toyota needs to really start to measure value of how their consumers perceive them, as opposed to how things test in advertisements.

BOLLING: That’s Bill Evans. We’re going to have to leave it there. Very nice tie…

(CROSSTALK)

BOLLING: Nice tie.

DIAMOND: The power of Twitter!

BOLLING: All right, on tap, it’s the much anticipated return of the sizzlingest segment on TV, “Street Meat.” Back, baby. And in “The Diamond District,” President Obama looking to block health insurance companies from raising rates. Can his proposal work? Rebecca’s got the details when “Happy Hour” continues.

WILLARD: Are you guys on Twitter?