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Call it viral, buzz or word-of-mouth advertising: Getting customers to spread the word about a new product through their social or professional networks is a hot strategy in the marketing world. Its proponents insist that the technique — whether online or face-to-face — is sure to boost a companys return on investment ROI.

But how can companies find the right individuals to deliver the message? Marketers may wonder if they are finding the best “seeding points” — that is, well-connected people at the hub of social networks who will latch on to a product and promote it widely among the people they know.

New research led by Wharton marketing professors Raghuram Iyengar and Christophe Van den Bulte, working with University of Southern California preventive medicine professor Thomas W. Valente, has found that traditional targets may not be as influential as previously thought. The pharmaceutical firm that sponsored the research for their recently published paper, “Opinion Leadership and Social Contagion in New Product Diffusion,” had its “a-ha” moment when they found Physician No. 184 on a map.

via The Buzz Starts Here: Finding the First Mouth for Word-of-Mouth Marketing – Knowledge@Wharton.

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The backlash against Facebooks updated privacy policies is about to expand. The Electronic Privacy Information Center EPIC is preparing to file a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over the social networks updated licenses, PC World has learned.

“We think that Facebook should go back to its original terms of service,” says EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg.

EPIC expects to have its complaint submitted to the FTC by the end of Tuesday.

Wide-Reaching Reaction

The wave of reaction, of course, is hardly limited to official organizations. More than 38,000 Facebook users have joined a user group protesting the change, and countless blogs and news sites have written extensively about their concerns. The issue comes down to a couple of alterations within the companys terms of use that, it would seem, give Facebook eternal ownership of your personal content–even if you decide to delete your account.

The changes were actually made in early February but not widely noticed until Sunday, when The Consumerists Chris Walters stumbled upon the subtly shifted language. The section in question explains how Facebook has an “irrevocable, perpetual” license to use your “name, likeness, and image” in essentially any way, including within promotions or external advertising.

That clause, Walters noted, wasnt new. What had changed was that a sentence at the end of the paragraph was now mysteriously missing. The deleted line stated that the license would “automatically expire” if you removed your content. With that line omitted, Facebooks license to use your content is simply “perpetual” and “irrevocable,” even decades after you delete your stuff.

via Facebook Privacy Change Sparks Federal Complaint – PC World.