One of my daily routines is to log on to dealnews every morning to see what some of the best shopping deals are of the day.  From technology to clothing, the site gives you a good idea of what kinds of sales and deals to be looking for if you are looking for something.

Every now and then their editors come up with some really interesting articles and/or videos.  I wanted to share one of them with you today.  You may have already seen or heard about this story, as it has been out a few weeks, but its really been on my mind lately and I wanted to share and solicit your responses.

It has been reported by various media, including the New York Times, that General Mills changed their legal policy so that if a customer "likes" them on social media or downloads an online coupon, that customer gives up all rights to take full legal action against the company.  In effect, you are only allowed to go into binding arbitration instead of a lawsuit.  While companies are starting to protect themselves from class action lawsuits by implementing standard-form contracts that require disputes to be raised only through the informal mechanism of arbitration and that claims be brought one by one, this appears to be the first attempt to limit litigation via changing legal terms on the web and social media.

For more online reading, Google "general mills like away right to litigation".  Here is the video I promised from dealnews  as well as a "retraction" from General Mills.

What are your thoughts?  Any company has an obvious right to protect it's investors from suit, but is this going too far?

Brent H. O'Connor
Executive Producer

Well, after days, weeks, months and darn near a year of struggles of figuring out what the heck Google was doing, we think we've started to figure out how to make our Google listing and Google+ Page work for us.  If you're not familiar with the issues, it seems that even some of the best in the SEO field were struggling to keep up with the changes and problems caused with all of the changes Google has made over the past couple of years as they tried to become more of a "social hub" for web users.

We love Google for web searches, but when they took over Youtube, it seemed like they just wanted to complicate things. Then, they started messing with our Google accounts by pushing everyone towards the new Google+ environment.  So, after adding, deleting, recreating, joining and un-joining all sorts of profiles, users, etc., we think we've finally got it figured out and can now start to make our social media work for us instead of cause us just to pull our hair out.  

So, hopefully over the next several weeks we'll get both our Youtube and Vimeo channels showing essentially the same videos (so you have your choice of viewing options), and we'll maybe post a little more on our Google+ site.  Also, we're hoping you'll join us on Google+ and give us some positive reviews.

That's all we've got for now.  Thanks!