Technology has made many things possible, and is enabling unethical people to pay as little as one quarter cent per word for their writing. The Internet is the great democratizer. It is also the great enslaver of the disadvantaged and the marginalized.

Freelance writers, often students, mothers, and older people, are the victims of a global conspiracy to pit people against each other to auction their skills and time for as little as possible.

One of the culprits is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MT). Amazon didn’t invent microworking, which is the practice of paying independent contractors by the task instead of by the hour. But they are the first globally recognized company to put their name on the practice, thereby endorsing it and making it an acceptable business practice.

Amazon MT is a service that allows businesses to contract with Amazon to have people perform very brief, discreet operations like manually forwarding an e-mail based on subject matter or moderating blog comments. My son, a student, worked for MT moderating pictures for a social network at the rate of a few pennies each.

ShortTask is another example of a service that brings together businesses and people who want to do microcontract work. In addition to facilitating this process, ShortTask often has questionable tasks like paying for positive product reviews and blog comments, Diggs, Twitter followers, etc.

And last night, someone tweeted a link to Article Slash, which had this posting:

“Hi, I need a group of writers or writing teams who can deliver 20-30 articles of 300 words every day. Payout will be made everyday through paypal.. 0.75$ for every 300 word article.”

Seventy-five cents per article! That’s .0025 per word, one quarter of a penny! If you could write 1200 words per hour (I’m a professional writer and I can’t), you could make $3 an hour doing this.

Our current minimum wage in California is $8, and the federal minimum is $7.25. As bad as that is, there are millions of Californians who would think they had died and gone to heaven to get $8 an hour. The rate at which people work and the quality expected by buyers varies, but the wages offered by these services, like the 75-cent, 300-word article, are equivalent to under $2 an hour. The last time the federal minimum wage was below $2 was in 1974.

Both California state and federal law require* that pieceworkers be paid a rate that is equal to or more than minimum wage, except for students and “new learners” (people who have never done the job before) who are paid at 85% of the minimum wage. Of course this is for regular employees, not contractors.

Some of the inevitable byproducts of this trend are:

• Devaluation of good writing, research and analysis
• Illiteracy
• Theft of editorial content

Microworking is an area in which the law has not caught up with technology and common practice. And the marketplace for these services is mostly underground, so the average person isn’t aware of it or upset by it. The operators of sites like Article Slash and ShortTask may argue that they are merely facilitators, and not responsible for the behavior of their users.

Ours is supposedly a free market economy, but we also have checks and balances so that everyone from the soup kitchen to the boardroom is protected from abuse. As the economic recovery slowly ticks up, one can only hope that supply and demand moderate the wages for microworkers so they are fairly paid for their effort and intellect. Unfortunately, the practices, which may have been made necessary by the downturn, will be status quo for some companies who will be unable to resist the appeal of continued lower operating costs.

* This is based on my research and interpretation of government documents. I am not an attorney and could be wrong about this.

Tags: Microworking, Article Slash, minimum wage, piecework, Amazon, Mechanical Turk, ShortTask, writing, writers

The Labor Department reported this morning that “initial applications for unemployment insurance fell by 4,000 to 621,000 in the week ended May 30,” but there are still 6.74 million Americans receiving unemployment benefits. It’s still a crowded job market, and qualified candidates need every edge they can get.

Professional social network LinkedIn is a great resource, but active job hunting is not the same as career development and professional networking. My latest Talent Zoo column offers some hints for using LinkedIn to find a new job:

“You can’t just ‘build it and hope they come.’ You’ll want to spend some time optimizing your LinkedIn profile and network. And you’ll need to check in to LinkedIn often to search for jobs, refine and update your profile, maintain relationships and communicate with potential employers.”

LinkedIn has so many features — like its applications, job search, and groups — that you can use to improve your chances of landing the right position. Whether you’re new to using LinkedIn as a job search tool, or you want a refresher, please check out the rest of the article. If you have some tips of your own, or a question about LinkedIn, please leave a comment. Thanks!

Tags: LinkedIn, job search, unemployment

If you’re in a field like PR, marketing, advertising, or social media, and you have a blog, you have an obligation to write well. Have you ever seen an e-mail from a Blackberry with the signature “Sent from my Blackberry, please excuse the typos.”? My Blackberry signature was “Sent from my Blackberry, but I hope there aren’t any typos, because I’m a professional communicator!”

As a professional communicator, you have to ask yourself just what is it your clients are paying you for, or more simply, what are they buying from you? They are paying you to communicate. That is the literal definition of a professional communicator. And if the product they see in your blog is shoddy, that reflects on you and your company. Your company’s clients, and prospective clients, are constantly observing, and making judgments about, the company’s ability to communicate professionally.

Other than laziness, there are three culprits in the decline in the quality of online writing: e-mail, chat, and SMS. With the introduction of informal online communications, people who generally had to write to a strict set of guidelines were suddenly free to write anything, any way they wanted. No one but your recipient sees your e-mail or IMs goes the argument, so you can relax, and be yourself when you use these tools.

These informal communications tools have given us implied permission for misspellings, incomplete sentences, grammatical lapses, and other abuses of the language. Heap on top of that l33t sp34k and SMS abbreviations and so began the decline and fall of Western civilization.

I feel like I’ve done a stunning job explaining my position (the rant portion of this post), but wouldn’t it be more helpful if I offered some suggestions on how to write better online?* So, herewith I offer just a few hints for improving the writing on your blog.

Go back to the basics: spelling, style, grammar, punctuation, and usage

The fastest way to vastly improve the writing on your blog is to discard the notion that since blogging is “different,” you don’t have to follow the rules. If you write white papers, press releases, briefings, scripts, etc. for clients, you know the tolerance they have (in most cases zero) for bad writing. A professional blog should be written to the same standards you would apply to a final document you would be willing to send to a client.

If you haven’t already done so, get a good dictionary (one with pages and two covers), a thesaurus (you don’t trust Microsoft to give you reliable software, which is their core business, why would you trust them to help you come up with the right word?), a copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, and some kind of style guide. If you’re at an agency, maybe you use The Chicago Manual of Style (online/book) or the Associated Press Stylebook (online/book). You probably have these in the agency library, and there are online editions of both of these (though you have to pay to use them).

It’s not enough to let your computer identify misspellings for you (see above RE: thesaurus). Read your post carefully prior to publishing it. Check for the right version of its vs. it’s, their vs. they’re, and your vs. you’re.

Save your post as a draft and have someone else in the company look at before you post it. Or paste it into an e-mail and send it to someone to review.

Understand that online writing is different

Writing effectively online is very much like writing off-line with a few exceptions. Off-line word counts of 700 to 1500 hundred for short to medium length documents don’t apply online. (The blog post you are reading is a long one, and thanks for sticking with it this far.) A typical blog post should be 250-500 words. Paragraphs should generally not be of more than five sentences each.

These are just guidelines, and if you’re in control of your writing, know what you’re doing, and how to do it, your writing may take a very different form, but if you’re having trouble, try these limits.

Informal tone is fine when you are writing a blog, and is generally preferable. That means you can write in the first person. And say “sort of” (if you must). And use sentence fragments. Like that. And be conversational. Just don’t write like you’re preparing a grocery list.

Write like “the greats”

You probably know good writing when you see it. Emulate the writing of the people whose work you respect and read most. If you read something and it moves along quickly, maintains your interest, and offers the occasional surprise or unexpected moment of enlightenment, go back and take a minute to figure out what it is about the writing you found so attractive. Now, go write like that.

* I can almost guarantee there are grammatical and style errors in this post. Now that we are expected to churn out thoughtful, well researched essays every day, it is difficult to turn out a piece that is perfect in every respect. But I won’t stop trying.

We are in the worst economic situation of the past 25 years, and the tech sector in the Valley has been hit hard. I thought instead of commenting on each layoff as it happens, it would make the whole thing more tangible to look at how actual people are affected. I invited a friend of mine, Cathy Browne, to talk about her situation. I hope if you have a kind word, or better still, a lead on a career opportunity for Cathy, you will leave a comment below, or contact her by email or through Twitter. Thank you. - Joel

Guest Post by Cathy Browne

It’s hard for me to write this without tears falling onto my keyboard. Last week I gave my landlord notice to put my wonderful little cottage apartment up for rent. My savings are gone.  My visitor’s visa will expire in six weeks.  After several years in Silicon Valley, I will have to leave the U.S., my adopted family, my precious cats, my friends and the life I cherish here. This is, and will always be, home to me, and I am broken-hearted.

I’ve been a tech PR practitioner for 25 years. People tell me I’m good at it. I love my profession, working with media and analysts, start-ups and all things geeky. I’m also legally blind, but I manage to fake it until I encounter a glass door or a name tag I can’t read.  Besides, you don’t need to see much to tell a good story.

I’ve watched PCs, email, voice mail, fax machines, the Internet and cell phones emerge to become the things we take for granted.  Now I’ve embraced social media big-time, and I’m as excited about its potential as anything else I’ve ever seen. I want to help integrate SM into PR programs for tech companies who haven’t even thought of it yet.

But I’m stuck. As a Canadian, I can’t work in the US unless I have a visa – a process that many employers consider too complicated and lengthy to take on.  And who can blame them?  There are so many deserving, smart people out there who, like me, are looking – and they’re a snap to hire.

I get that. But I am aching to work. And I have to work to support myself. So I scour Web sites for opportunities, I network, I live on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (my new addiction) and I meet with terrific people.  I don’t intend to give up until I’m dragged kicking and screaming onto my Air Canada flight.

Why do I bother?  Why don’t I just go back?  I love it here. I love the work ethic, the energy and the attitude that pervades this Valley. I love that my time here has injected that enthusiasm, curiosity and desire to succeed into me. I feel 20 years younger.  And most of all, I feel I still have something to contribute.

If you are a VC, company or agency out there who recognizes the critical importance of PR and needs help, take a chance on me before I have to leave at the end of January. Let me work for you for a day or two – for nothing – to prove my worth.  Throw whatever you have at me, and if you like what you see, hire me. Give me an offer letter and I’ll fly up to Vancouver, go through the usual hassles at Customs, and come back legal. You’ll be happy you did.

If you’re interested, let’s talk.  You’ll find me on Twitter, @mscathybrowne, and on email at cb@cathybrowne.com.

Thanks for listening. Happy holidays.

Tags: Canada, Canadian, visa, Cathy Browne, recession, Silicon Valley, career, opportunity, Bay, Area, Tech PR

I’m looking for a social media manager/blogmaster/blogmistress and two research associates to help with my new book SocialCorp. These are unpaid positions but will include recognition on the blog, and for key contributors, in the book. This is a great opportunity for an extended summer internship requiring 5-10 hours a week between now and November. There will be cash bonuses for people who stick it out and are with the project through publication.

If you’re interested, or know someone who might be, check it out!

Thanks!

Joel

Tags: socialcorp, internship, interns, social media, jobs