A coalition of insurance industry groups called "Get Health Reform Right," led by Blue Cross Blue Shield and including America's Health Insurance Plans, the American Benefits Council and others, has been caught tricking Facebook users into sending electronic letters opposing health care reform to their Congressional representatives by paying them with "virtual currency."

Here is how it works: Facebook users often play habit-forming, online social games with names like "Friends For Sale," "FarmVille" and "MafiaWars." The games utilize virtual currency which allows players buy objects within the game and advance their progress in the game. Ads appear during the games offering Facebook users more virtual currency if they agree to take an online survey which, when filled out, automatically sends an anti-health care reform email message to their Congressional Representative.

Players get the virtual currency through an "offers provider," in this case, a middleman for the anti-reform group Get Health Reform Right, which facilitated bringing three interested parties together: gamers seeking currency, game-makers seeking business and lobby groups looking for people to manipulate. Dan Porter, the CEO of a game site called OMGPOP.com, says that most likely Get Health Reform Right agreed to pay an ad agency for every letter-writer it recruited.

The Business Insider, one of several outlets to expose this arrangement, proposed naming the scheme "virtual astroturfing." After the electronic PR maneuver was exposed, the game company Zynga, which runs the games "MafiaWars" and "FarmVille," removed all offers from its games. Get Health Reform Right suspended its Web page and posted a statement that said, "Because of unauthorized use of the Get Health Reform Right name and logo, we have temporarily suspended the Get Health Reform Right website."

Wasting no time, video game startup Heyzap.com in San Francisco has created a video game based on Colorado's "Balloon Boy" hoax that is circulating on the Web and through Twitter. In it, a young Falcon Heene clings to a tinfoil muffin-like balloon while flying through the air trying to shoot down things that get in his way, like UFOs, rainbows and birds. At higher levels of play, Falcon encounters filmmaker Michael Moore in a helicopter. To win, the balloon boy must reach his secret attic. The game asks "How many $$$ of taxpayer money can you waste?" Players accumulate dollars based on the number of flying objects they can shoot down. Another Web site, Zazzle.com, is selling Balloon Boy T-shirts, refrigerator magnets, keychains, mugs and tote bags.

In a King Canute-like speech to the World Media Summit in Beijing, Rupert Murdoch, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of News Corporation, took aim at Google and Yahoo. "The aggregators and the plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content," Murdoch proclaimed to an audience of 170 news executives from around the world. "But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph." The Editorial Director for Digital for The Independent, Jimmy Leach, in unpersuaded that News Corporation's aim to charge readers for content will work. "News consumers," he wrote, care "more for the subject matter than the logo at the top. There is no brand loyalty on the web – especially not if you make your content difficult to find, and you charge people to read it when they’ve done so. Murdoch is telling Google, and the whole internet that they must change. It’s unlikely either will listen."

The U.S. Special Operations Command awarded General Dynamics Information Technology a $10.1 million contract to build the "Trans Regional Web Initiative." The project will include "a minimum of two and no more than twelve websites" in languages such as Arabic, French, English, Chinese, Farsi, Russian, Urdu and Malay / Indonesian, in support of U.S. military "combatant commands." General Dynamics is tasked with recruiting a "network of native / indigenous content contributors with backgrounds in politics, academics, security, culture, entertainment, and other aspects of the Global War on Terror, which appeal to identified foreign target audiences." The project's goal is to develop "rapid, on-order global dissemination of Web-based influence products and tools in support of strategic and long-term U.S. Government goals and objectives." Network World notes that "conducting a war of words is a hot topic." In July, the Air Force awarded a $29.7 million contract to BBN, "to develop a prototype machine reading system" intended to allow artificial intelligence systems to "gather and analyze information from the Web."

The National Advertising Review Council (NARC), a "coalition of advertising organizations" that recommends standards for industry self-regulation, issued its first rulings dealing with blog promotions. NARC faulted two companies for "posting 'reviews' of dietary supplements, but not disclosing that they actually own the products," or that the reviewers were paid. One company, Urban Nutrition, ran websites that "claimed to offer un-biased reviews of products," but really used paid reviewers to write favorably about the company's own products. NARC ruled that, in doing so, Urban Nutrition "was in violation of the FTC's Guides on Endorsements and Testimonials." Urban Nutrition agreed to add disclosures to its sites. The other company, Herbal Groups, ran a blog that pushed its dietary supplement, including via "testimonials" containing "incorrect information" and "dubious claims." The company agreed to take down the blog. The actions come as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) updates its endorsement guidelines to include blogs. The FTC is considering requiring bloggers to disclose "not only when they are paid by a company, but also when they receive a free product," reports the New York Times -- a proposal that the Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Industries and Word of Mouth Marketing Association strongly oppose.

A global study into 60 citizen journalism projects in 33 countries found citizen journalism flourished under governments which could be characterized as "soft authoritarianism" regimes such as in Malaysia and South Korea. Professor Michael Bromley from the University of Queensland School of Journalism and Communication told The Australian that citizen journalism flourishes "where there is room to comment and to intervene and to participate but there are strict rules: for example, the media is controlled by the state. That creates a need for it." In repressive countries, such as Burma, there were fewer examples. Citizen journalists, Bromley said, "come out of a history that includes social activism. Bloggers and tweeters [users of micro-blogging site Twitter] can be citizen journalists but it's not just that independent personal view. It's about investigating, going to primary sources, offering your opinion. Often the blogger is the primary source."

In what may be the first case against online astroturfing, New York's attorney general has reached a settlement with a cosmetic surgery company. Lifestyle Lift will pay a $300,000 penalty and has agreed to "stop publishing anonymous positive reviews about the company to Internet message boards and other Web sites," according to a statement from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office. Concerned that "negative Internet posts had significantly hurt the company's reputation," Lifestyle Lift directed its employees to post comments and even create websites praising the company's facelift procedures, while pretending to be Lifestyle Lift customers. In one email, a Lifestyle Lift manager told an employee to "put your wig and skirt on and tell them about the great experience you had." Employees also tried "to 'attack' legitimate comments criticizing the company and tried to get such postings removed." One of the company's websites, MyFaceliftStory.com, now clarifies that it's run by Lifestyle Lift and no longer has stories from people claiming to have undergone the procedure. An archived version of the site from 2008 claims the site was started by "Ann," who wanted to respond to the online "horror stories about Lifestyle Lift," which she thinks "were probably from envious doctors and just made up."

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) "may soon require online media to comply with disclosure rules under its truth-in-advertising guidelines." FTC assistant director Richard Cleland said, "Consumers have a right to know when they're being pitched a product." But the "hypercommercialism of the Web" may be "changing too quickly for consumers and regulators to keep up," reports the New York Times. "Product placements are landing on so-called status updates on Facebook, companies are sponsoring messages on Twitter and bloggers are defining their own parameters of what constitutes independent work versus advertising." Izea, the "online marketing company" that created PayPerPost in 2006 to match marketers with bloggers willing to promote products, is branching out. Not only does it have "25,000 active advertisers ranging from Sea World to small online retailers" and 265,000 bloggers, but it's readying "a 'Sponsored Tweets' platform for Twitter users to blast promotional messages to their followers." Giveaways to popular bloggers are often a part of such campaigns. Last year, Izea carried out a campaign for Kmart that gave "six popular bloggers known to be influencers" $500 gift cards "to shop at the discount chain." The bloggers were "asked to write about their experiences," and the campaign "generated 800 blog posts and 3,200 Twitter messages that reached 2.5 million people over 30 days," according to Izea.

The Israel Project, "the organization spearheading Israel's public relations efforts in the United States," recently released its 2009 Global Language Dictionary, authored by Republican pollster Frank Luntz. When discussing Israeli settlements, it suggests avoiding religious arguments or quoting from the Bible, warning that "even your Jewish audiences will recoil." Claiming that the land really "belongs" to Israel is "unconvincing because, officially, Israel itself defines the territories as 'disputed.'" It's also not effective to argue "that the Arabs use the settlements to their own advantage," as that "fails to justify Israel's policy." Instead, "the guide for Israel warmly recommends that advocates complain bitterly about the idea that a given area will be cleared of Jews," while Israel grants "equal rights to its Arab minority," writes Akiva Eldar. "Unfortunately, the guide does not suggest a response to anyone who heard and/or read the opinions of Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayad, or of Ahmed Qureia, the head of the negotiating team," who have invited settlers "to remain in their homes and live in peace and equality as a Jewish minority in Palestine." In related news, the Israeli Foreign Ministry is "setting up a team of students and demobilized soldiers who will work around the clock writing pro-Israeli responses on Internet websites all over the world, and on services like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube." The government budget refers to the effort as the "Internet fighting team," reports the Israeli newspaper Calcalist.