MediaVidea

Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Telcos, and the Credit card company: Who will free us from the six horsemen of the consumeropocalypse?

Labels: apple, google, trends

posted by Pramit Singh @ 2:23 PM 0 Comments

A New Age Beckons: Forget Google, Do Your Own Thing

Labels: google, poster

posted by Pramit Singh @ 12:54 PM 0 Comments

Huffington Post: Google's Favorite News Content Farm

Labels: google, social news

posted by Pramit Singh @ 3:06 PM 0 Comments

Why Google Is Better Than Facebook

(Aaron Wall): I remember you once posted about getting lots of traffic from Facebook & Twitter, but almost 0 sales from it. Does there become a point where search is not the center of the web (in terms of monetization), or are most of these networks sorta only worthwhile from a branding perspective?

(Rand Fishkin): As direct traffic portals, it's hard to imagine a Facebook/Twitter user being as engaged in the buying/researching process as a Google searcher. Those companies may launch products that compete with Google's model or intent, but as they exist today, I don't foresee them being a direct sales channel. They're great for traffic, branding, recognition and ad-revenue model sites, but they're of little threat to marketers concerned with the relevance or value of search disappearing.

Labels: google, social media

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:39 PM 1 Comments

Why do people love Google?

Google controls 70 per cent of the search market, in an era when our life revolves around the 'Search Box' and when successful internet executives, like the Stepford Princess Marissa Mayer, are considered facile thought leaders, propounding theories and dictums at will, like a new-age Thoreau. Did you read her latest gem where she says "It is not what you know, it's what you can find out." Deep.

During the rise of the computers, Microsoft rose roughshod over everything else, swatting competitors like flies, bribing governments and big business bean-counters alike, always deflecting cries of monopolistic behavior by pointing fingers at the software thieves.

Now, Google deflects concerns of privacy by accusing users of "what are you hiding that you are so afraid?"

Faced with a privacy nightmare in a cloud computing world, why then, do we love Google?

This thread gives the answer, sort of speaking for the internet itself,

Yes, they are the new Microsoft. But one that doesn't charge you for their services. That's why we love them. And they're savvy.
Not only that, but it doesn't lock people in their proprietary office and protocols.

* Tired of Gmail? export it to imap
* Tired of Google Calendar? export it to ical
* Tired of Google Docs? export it to open office, ms office, html or even plain text

And,

People use google because they make great software and stay with them for the same reason. People stay with MS because they are locked in.

Labels: google, Microsoft

posted by Pramit Singh @ 7:35 PM 0 Comments

Someone please tell Google to Buy The New York Times

In 2006, I gave 7 reasons why Google should buy The New York Times, helping the cause of great journalism in the process and finally do at least one great content play. No, Knol doesn't quite cut it.

The Deal pays the Google-NYT idea a relook.

Buy The Times and hive it off as a non-profit.

Labels: google, news business, newyork times

posted by Pramit Singh @ 11:34 PM 0 Comments

The 4 timeless tenets of the link economy

Here's what you get when you combine ideas from Jeff Jarvis with that of SEO 'guru' Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz. Rand has written a timely piece of advice for web publishers and SEO people who seemingly can't cope up with Google's umpteenth new offering, or, for that matter, any new thing that Google does.

Such are the perils of surviving in the so-called Google's Link Economy, a term coined by New Media Blogger Jeff Jarvis.

Don't worry, advices Rand Fishkin.
Because, the fundamentals of success with web content in Google's World (I was going to say GARNIA, but damn, Epic Movie beat me to it) never change:

1. Make pages accessible
2. Target with keywords that searchers employ
3. Build content that users will find useful and valuable
4. Earn editorial links from good sources

Amen.

Labels: blogging, google, link economy, SEO

posted by Pramit Singh @ 10:05 PM 0 Comments

Top 5 things I would do if I were in charge of Wikipedia

Hypothesizing about a probable Wikipedia Educational Foundation, during a break from his busy schedule (yeah, right), my good friend Jayanta Bhattacharya listed out five things that he would do if God (Or, some rich person with tonnes of hard cash lying around - Jonty mentions that Anil Ambani might be a good fit) intervened, buying out Wikiepdia, and conveniently putting my fantasy-prone albeit highly- learned friend in charge.

A small Todo list that emerged from our talks:
1. Allow every single person to make their personal pages in Wikipedia along with their achievements (or non- achievements) in life.
2. They will be charged a 5-dollar entry fee. That money would go towards the funding of schools in poor countries.
3. Bring out hard copies of Wikipedia to distribute amongst poor populations.
4. Allow sponsorships by the way of banners etc for a premium from companies. (no Google Adsense) and then use the money for purely benevolent purposes, primarily on education - education is empowerment.
5. If there is a lot of money in the coffers, Jonty would like to start the Wikipedia Educational Foundation, opening schools and knowledge centers around the world, running educational satellite channels etc. The education would be free and the schools will not be affiliated to any boards but a central WEF board.

This way, general education around the world would be of the same standard, but different countries would have different history, civic and law syllabus.

Bonus: And make Wikipedia the primary search engine on the Internet.

What would you do if you were in charge of Wikipedia?

Labels: education, google, User generated Content, wiki, wikipedia

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:01 PM 1 Comments

Why Facebook Ads don’t work

This is a solid case of Intention vs. Interruption.

I wasn’t surprised when Google reported meager earnings from advertising on Social Networking web sites.

I wouldn’t be surprised either when Facebook’s “Once in a 100 years” ad system flops.

Joshua Porter explains why:

Social ads don’t work as well because people are being social, not searching for something.

Rough translation:
People go to Google to find something, people go to Social Networking sites to see friends and meet new people – what are ads doing standing in their way?

Labels: facebook, google, social ads, social networking, trends

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:39 PM 0 Comments

Local News from Google: Bighow Local Lite?

Following Topix.com, Google News now allows you to search for local news by punching in your Zip code or locality. The announcement from Google says,

We’re able to create a local section for any city, state or country in the world and include thousands of sources.

But, using Zip codes to search for stuff does not come naturally to us and Geo Coding of all the news sources in the world is in its infancy.

I haven't been posting on this blog for almost a month now.

Reason: I am moving across the country looking for people to put some seed funding into Bighow, which takes a two-pronged approach to aggregation and publishing.

So far, no progress and I think that is because I don't have a programmer since October 2007. No team, no money.

For example of better news aggregation, may I suggest these links from an unfinished Bighow.com?
Work on Bighow.com stopped while we were working on the publishing end. Work on automatic aggregation is next on the work list, along with 100 other items. :-)

Note: Being the only active tester of Bighow.com, the pages have not been since December 2007.

Bighow Countries
http://bighow.com/country/USA
Bighow Cities
http://bighow.com/city/San%20Fransisco
Bighow Local
http://bighow.com/local/Janakpuri
Bighow Groups
http://bighow.com/group/Actually%20Useful%20Technology
Bighow Tags: Best of 2007
http://bighow.com/news/tags/Best%20of%202007
Bighow Lists
http://bighow.com/news/tag/type/List
Bighow Tags: Best of 2008
http://bighow.com/news/tags/Best%20of%202008
Bighow Tags: Worst of 2007
http://bighow.com/news/tags/Worst%20of%202007

At its core, Bighow is a multi-platform, 'Publishing cum Aggregation' tool using which we plan to have a global news network of bookmarkers and reporters.

The future of news depends on quality aggregation, a promise for which I shall fight on.

Labels: bighow, google, news aggregators

posted by Pramit Singh @ 2:24 PM 0 Comments

What a Web 2.0 user said to the machine: I own the data (you don't)

Given below, is an outline of a letter sent by a disgusted user of web 2.0 of sites like Facebook to the service:

"Look, mister, first you got me in, promising lost of fun things to do.
And Fun I have had, having poked 10,000 people so far.

But the fun ends now. To start, by default, the power to pull off my data should rest with me.
The power to make friends, allow spam... stays with me.

If you don't allow me to remove all of data whenever I please, then you are the giant machine/matrix/whatever they have been talking about in the movies.

What insults me more is that you go behind my back, making deals with others services that hold users data, and God knows what surgery you are going to do with my data.

If you want me to connect with users of other services, at least first ask me how I want to go about it.

And while we are at sharing data, why don't you create a simple jabber-like open protocol letting web 2.0 users connect each other, without us worrying who see what?

Bottom-line: I don't care on whose server farm my data is, the control stays with me. I will decide whom should I allow to scrape, import or mash my data.

This is my life's details we are talking about here.

You just focus on the advertising side and how to make your service better.

I like your service. But don't be evil.

Peace.

Labels: facebook, google, social networking, web 2.0

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:05 PM 0 Comments

Useless word of the day: Data Portability

Reading this in the otherwise dull Readwriteweb blog, I had a mini-fit upon reading these fanboy-worthy words about recent developments regarding something called Data Portability:

If these industry titans can put aside their rivalry and work together - magic could happen.

I double checked whether I was on the right blog and not on some mainstream media site, where tech articles are exercises in Rabid Puffery.

To the uninitiated, Data Portability is the possibility of users being able to 'access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems.'

Mobile Number Portability is more interesting and has its uses.

Apparently Google, Facebook and Plaxo have come together to work on sharing data and modifying the walled gardens in future.

They had me with 'End of walled gardens'.

On the business side of it, I don't suppose each party will assign equal importance to each other's data. For example, some Facebook profiles will be useful for Google (e.g. the students) and Facebook will like Gmail's data - in either case, I don't think it is going be a cake walk for any of the parties involved.

For a long time, Google, Facebook and Plaxo (and all who join later) will squabble over 'who's data is worthiest' , trying to pouch whatever advantage is to be had, before one of bigger player breaks away.

This heralds the beginning of the machines' takeover: the idea of Facebook going for my Google profile, the files stored in Gmail, and my ego surfing history makes me rethink dinner.

The age of machines is upon us and it wants all my data under one roof.

Labels: facebook, future, google, trends, web 2.0

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:39 PM 0 Comments

Web 2.0 aka Big Brother aka HAL aka the Matrix aka Terminator10: Currently living in San Francisco

Somebody should tell Nicholas Carr to take it easy. The champion contrarian, call him the Howard Beal of the web 2.0 era, loves to give heartburn to the web 2.0 sales people pushing snakoil, most of whom can be found on Techmeme/Techcrunch on a daily basis.

Carr has a book to sell (The Big Switch), so many will accuse him of fear-mongering when he gives out interviews prophesizing the rise of the machines who will slowly take control of our information. Nick Carr also wrote the book Bill Gates hated the most, 'The End of IT', where he predicted the downfall of humongous IT departments at big businesses, as computing slowly but surely becomes a commodity. Now, he has turned his attention towards a scenario where net access is a commodity.

Carr says that connected computers may liberate us but they are also ‘technologies of control’.

Web2.0 is about the data we put online: Blogs, wikis, social networking profiles and activities, comments, pictures, videos, audio, search history, ratings, resumes, important documents on free hosted services…

Most of the big web 2.0 services are headquartered in San Francisco. The smart scientists who are working for Google, developing the cloud, live in a city that also happens to be the home of the Zodiac Killer. In future, they will write about how the machines rose in 'Frisco.

According to Nick's apocalyptic vision, the Net will be our hard drive and people other than us will have control over all our data, rants included. Let us see how.

Using Web 2.0 tools, we frequently shout at authority through our blogs. We tell our bosses to go to hell via a blog comment, our Prime Minister to have a spine through a Youtube mashup, diss our colleague with a podcast and have 5000 friends on Facebook without having any friends in real life.

While we are doing all this, the machine is watching us 24 * 7.
It is watching us so that in future, it may out-think us.

And all this time, I was all gung-ho, having just read that erstwhile web 2.0 blowhard real estate mogul Sam Zell was getting into blogging.

Are web 2.0 users creating a Matrix, which in future will consider them as ‘mere nodes’ ?
The Facebook User #1234567980, aka pramitsingh2275, who can’t do what he pleases with his data and service he helped build.

Our apocalyptic web 2.0 led future is closely linked to the fates of Facebook Beacon, the Walled Garden mentality of social networks and Google’s continuing dominance in the Search business.

If these three go down, our chances of survival go up.

In his new book, "Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships," Artificial intelligence expert David Levy says that in future we will have sex with human like sexbots, geeks are already salivating at prospect of having their own Number Sixes.

That was the happy part of our future. The unhappy part:
What do we do with web 2.0 before it morphs into an all-controlling machine?

The premise of “The Ring” movies was that movies can kill you – the images may get out from the screen and do things to you. A new movie “Untraceable” suggests that the Internet may kill you – a murder is being livestreamed and an increase in internet traffic speeds up the death of the victim.

We have had thrillers based on our usage of the telephone and mobile before.
At least, telephones and mobiles do not capture our talks and SMSes, that too by default.

What are the harms of having our data up in the cloud?
The web 2.0 machine gave us the choice of having two-way conversations, much to the chagrin of newspaper owners and media bosses. But, there are the downsides.

There have been downsides with any piece of technology before, which have now been amplified in this age of War on Terror (which is not even a noun, as Jon Stewart reminded us).

But the Data Cloud is not as tangible (and easily targeted, through or collective power) as governments of the world.

Carr says ‘We're transferring our intelligence into the machine, and the machine is transferring its way of thinking into us.’

This massively paralleled machine is mining and analyzing our data while we upload the latest pics from the holiday. Soon after, we become downloadable entities.

We become part of a data matrix ruled by the holy trinity of M/s Brin, Page and Zuckerberg.
Hell, I am sounding like a Nick Carr Fan Boy.

Labels: facebook, future, google, nicholas carr, privacy issues, trends, web 2.0

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:15 PM 4 Comments

What will happen next: Rounding up the 30 best predictions for New Media 2008

These are 30 of the best predictions about the internet business in 2008 that I have had the opportunity to read this week. As I mentioned in January 2007, a phase of consolidation is on in the web 2.0 field, this BBC story makes some interesting points about it, and I see no reasons to think otherwise.

I only wish that more people get a chance to make a better living through online publishing.
So far the internet is dominated by a few of the so-called Plantations (thank you Nick Carr).

1. Giant Blog Publishing House Takes Birth: TechCrunch + GigaOm + VentureBeat + Read/Write Web

2. Cash Rich Media buys more into successful blogs.

3. Clicks & Bricks back in vogue, in true web 2.0 style, of course.

4. Books are very much in (Lulu.com self publishing, print on, small magazines, rss subscriptions, and Kindle?).

As Bill Murray once said about computers, "we are reading more on the screen", or something to that effect.

5. "Friendiligence" will be hot: we will conduct due diligence on friend requests on Facebook, Myspace and all other me-too social networks.

6. "MicroTubing" zindabaad: More and more small publishers (mostly single person startups) using innovative video content to prosper.

7. Google Buys an Ad Agency: WPP?

8. The Wall Street Journal will follow NYT and go free online.

10. Large magazines, part of large publishing conglomerates will fold at a higher rate than 2007 and Niche, targeted titles will flourish.

11. Internationalized Domains Names become more and more popular (as sensible .com names become more scarce, expensive and crazy)

12. Someone from among the troika of News Corp, Microsoft or EBay buys Yahoo.

13. Another Twitter-like success, coded by a 20-year genius kid (no hope for us 30-somethings) will rule users' hearts, with a similarly simple interface (and hopefully better productivity and healthy monetization prospects)

14. Ajax will get serious or people will dismiss it for a time-waster.


15. Social Networking (along with gaming environment and virtual worlds) will cause serious security incidents as Malware gets another mode of distribution - "social networks +social engineering"

16. One of the trio among probable Google killers, Mobile search will finally take off by the end of 2008 (other hyped Google killers include Classifieds and Local)

17. A massive datacenter meltdown will happen when one of these energy guzzlers finally gives in to the constant barrage of worm infections.

18. Users of web 2.0 sites will revolt, demanding a better privacy deal and moving on if things don't change.

19. More Blog-led publishing media startups (including Blog Networks) take root and flourish (with hopefully less rewriting and spam)

20. Big Brands get into Web 2.0 in a big way, opting to create their own content.

21. Search Engines use more user data (user preferences, search history, etc) and customized search results become common.

22. Casual games will be the social networking of 2008.

23. "WEB TO WEDDING" will gather force. Did you know that almost 3 million adults have converted online dates into a long-term relationship including marriage?

24. In this age of blogs, twitters, Forums, Facebook, and Youtube Videos, companies become more careful with Online Branding, and hope that they are well equipped to deal with irate citizen journalists (read: customers, competitors) of the world.

25. Crowdsourcing, aka Crowdmining will continue to prosper and will have more innovative uses from some of the best companies in the world.

26. Demographical targeting becomes more difficult as age, gender, marital status are but only a few things that determine consumer behavior in the internet age.

27. While Group Lending got a leg up in 2007 via sites like prosper.com, Group Buying will be hot in 2008.

28. The Internet will slow down considerably as data centers and service providers reel under the increasing demand for multimedia content.


29. Some Asian startups get a hold in the tough U.S. market, despite the inward-looking, arrogant Silicon Valley types.


30. No one (except perhaps the Blackberry and the Google Phone/Android when it is a reality) will challenge the iPhone in 2008.

31. The opening up of the U.S. cell phone setup will create an exciting variety of new applications and cheaper service offerings, more in line with that in Asia, the leader in cellphones.

32. Google gets into the Cable Operators' Set Top Box business.

More Google predictions, all the usual ones are here.


While we are with predictions, indulge me for some predictions from the offline world:

Green IT takes a big foot forward in 2007

China and India will finally begin to emerge as strong domestic markets for solar.

Reverse knowledge migration will gather force: bright and well-educated workers (not exclusively returning prodigal sons will move from developed countries to developing courtiers creating a new class of "cyber-gypsies".

The Rich will get richer and lead more outlandish lifestyles.

The Fed will continue to cut rates and the U.S. economy will begin to pick up steam in the later half of the year.

Labels: 2008, Blog networks, blogging, google, new media, news 2.0, predictions, social networking

posted by Pramit Singh @ 5:39 PM 3 Comments

Is Google going Microsoft’s way?

Through two almost successive product announcements, Google has started to convince me that it may be going Microsoft’s way. Microsoft used its dominance in the Desktop OS and Office business to clone existing successful programs with great success in the 90s, destroying many startups in the process.

Google is doing the same things but I suspect Google’s ability to defeat the incumbents with two upcoming services.

First, Google announces a Wikipedia-type system called “Knol” where people can write encyclopedia type pieces and share ad revenues with Google, benefiting from Google’s easy indexing promise.

About.com, ehow.com, wikihow.com, squidoo.com, hubpages, mahalo.com, howstuffworks.com…these are some of the heavy weights that Google aims to defeat just because it enjoys 70% dominance in the search business.

Earlier Google launched base.google.com to challenge Craigslist, pages.google.com to challenge easy web page creators. What happened to all these?

Then there is the trust thing. Will Google go Yahoo’s way and show links from only its properties as top results. That is easiest way to lose credibility in the market.

Coming on to the second announcement of Google introducing a redesigned version of the long dead Google Answers, where it will most probably show results from Google search. If this is the case, the new service can be as vague as some Yahoo Answers replies can be. At least the original Google answers had people who gave detailed, researched replies for a fee.

Suggestion for Google:
Combine the above two services and create an army of 10000 people (when it died, Google Answers only had 800 people answering questions) who are willing to search on demand and try to create a better service than existing human-powered search services, including chacha.com.

Labels: google, knol, Microsoft, search, web 2.0, web strategy, wiki

posted by Pramit Singh @ 5:12 PM 0 Comments

What is design?

Clay Shirky has written an elegant article on design, drawing upon the struggle between users who want more control and designers who often want to dictate how things should work.

Clay includes the often discussed examples of Myspace (ugly but usable), iPod (elegance, which I think is marred by Apple’s insistence of fusing the battery)

Is Design Arrogance?

“I know what you want better than you. Here it is.”

Is Design Humility?
Or, Is Design Problem Solving? (e.g. Google)

Apple might be making the shiniest thingy but its designers have a two decade track record of thrusting their own whims down customers’ throats. The recent brouhaha over the iPhone and locking issues is a good case in point.

Labels: apple, design, google

posted by Pramit Singh @ 12:47 PM 0 Comments

What Google CAN buy

Google share prices crossed the $600 a-share mark yesterday, which takes its market capitalization to about &188 billion, give or take a few hundred millions.

How long will this price growth sustain? We don’t know.
Can Google share prices reach the predicted $2000? We don’t know.
Can Google find more means of making money and not get stuck with a one-trick pony assessment?
And does it matter that Google is a one-trick pony?

Looking at reports of ad-supported mobiles coming soon to a wider user base, we can’t say for sure there is any harm in betting on advertising.

There have been a huge one-trick pony called Microsoft in the the PC/Windows/Office world before.

Om Malik has listed some companies whose combined market capitalization is less if not equal to Google’s market capitalization:

The New York Times Co. (NYT) ($2.86 billion),
Reuters (RTRSY) ($16.5 billion),
CBS (CBS) ($23 billion),
Viacom (VIA) ($28 billion),
News Corp. (NWS.A), ($71.5 billion) and
Yahoo (YHOO) ($35 billion)

And,
Enough change left over for buying Facebook.

Of course, these are fanciful specimen of speculation, much like what Bill Gates’ money would buy. To buy anything that costs over $10 billion, Google might have to dilute its shares, which might evenbring the value down.

Labels: google, Microsoft

posted by Pramit Singh @ 1:16 PM 0 Comments

Is the Facebook the biggest Flip Play ever?

In the light of current reports in the Wall Street Journal which suggest that cash-strapped (?) Facebook is seeking about $500 million in cash and values itself anywhere between $10-15 billion dollars, I have finally come to conclusion that Facebook was nothing but a sham, in fact it might be the biggest ‘Made-to-Flip’ play of all times.

It is a perfect case for Harvard Case Study or movie, depending what your preferences are: We have a young founder who makes it a point to appear cool, spout cool new phrase (social graph), who probably took the idea from someone else and focused on making a cleaner-looking social networking site than Myspace and one who understands the value of free Public Relations ala Google.

2007 will be remembered when the Silicon Valley went crazy promoting a social network that was primarily meant for students.

A founder who knew you did not need a business plan to make money, Mark Zuckerberg has read his tech history well. Like a good history student, he knows how to benefit when the giants are at war.

Now that he is reportedly offering 5% of Facebook to Microsoft, he is only doing what Bill Gates did with IBM with DOS – IBM wanted to break big into personal computing and DOS Licensing was going to be it. Today, Microsoft (and Yahoo) will do anything to ward off Google and will go to any lengths, and why not? Thanks to that ATM called the Cash Reserve augmented daily by the Windows Cash Machine.

That brings us to the making money part. It is still not clear how Facebook will make money out of all that traffic.

I am not sure all those Facebook users (note: I have registered but am not a regular user) are ready to be guinea pigs for all sorts of advertising nonsense in the name of innovation. I am not sure whether Facebook will keep my data secure or not.

It is a virtual jungle that Microsoft is buying a pricey ticket to.

Does this mean Facebook is no more the darling of web 2.0?
How will Facebook’s greed play out for the rest of the Web 2.0 arena? Does it herald the onset of the bubble burst?

- Or, will the social networking fad will play itself out in the long run?
- Is Facebook really worth all that money?
- Is Facebook in a better position that Google was in its pre-IPO stage?
- Did the Facebook people know that the IPO would probably wouldn't sell in a subprime-beaten market, with no visible earning pattern to show?

The next generation of social networking is already happening all around us.
The web applications we use on a daily basis; the blog comments we make; our comments on social news site…it is all seamless and it needs no hi-fi plugging.

Updates 28/9/2007
1. Darnell Clayton writes in the Blogherald that instead of investing in an uncertain entity like Facebook (it may still be the next Geocities), Microsoft should invest in Digg and get itself some credentials among bloggers who are heavily into social news.

2. Writing in the Guardian, Charles Arthur says that your Facebook profile is really worth $238 to Microsoft if only it worth $237 (£117) - or even $237.99 - to Google.

Labels: facebook, google, social networking

posted by Pramit Singh @ 3:00 PM 3 Comments

Google News & Comments: Google’s smart ploy to please news publishers

Google News, the favorite whipping boy of ostrich/ignorant news publishers, has found a way to keep the blow-hards happy.

Soon, a closed group of participants, basically all who are mentioned in the news story can publish their replies on news appearing on Google News, adding clarifications and what have you.

Here’s what the Google news team has to say about this decidedly Web 1.0 move,

"We'll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question. Our long-term vision is that any participant will be able to send in their comments, and we'll show them next to the articles about the story. Comments will be published in full, without any edits, but marked as "comments" so readers know it's the individual's perspective, rather than part of a journalist's report."

Michael Arrington calls it Google’s Hypocrisy, walling off comments for normal users. (which reminds me to ask Michael about accepting my comments on Techcrunch)

Josh Catone avers,

Rather than encouraging an open discussion on news topics, Google is perpetuating a closed debate between newsmakers and journalists. And they're using a clunky, slow medium (email) to do it.

Quoting Gabe Rivera of Techmeme, Danny Sullivan writes,

Since there's going to be valuable information in these comments, shouldn't Google open these pages up to others to crawl, as Gabe Rivera from Techmeme urges?

The PR bonanza
Danny asks a more important question:

Are public relations firms considered "participants" in a story, if they represent someone or some company mentioned?

Echoing Danny’s views, vis-à-vis PR guys, John Murrell suggests that we might soon witness a boom in PR hiring.

Google sets its own rules. Only Google can decide what is okay and what is not.

The new comments move, promising to give 'voice' to PR guys, suggests that Google has succeeded where Federated Media failed with its brand of “conversation”, where it tried to use the services of A-list bloggers to ‘spokesblog’ for Microsoft.

With its latest move, Google has made the PR guys happy, forcing some of them to make delirious judgments - you will also understand why I don’t give a hoot for what PR blogger Steve Rubel thinks. If Google did venture into original content, putting ‘Walled Comments’ would be a pretty lame way to do it.

It will be far easier and useful if it hired some good editors from these complaining news organizations, getting them to select, submit and moderate a better version of Digg, running on top of Google News, taking into account Google Reader stats as well.


Related Mediavidea posts on Google News
How Google can Gobble Digg

What would we do without the News Indexes

Cliffnotes on News 2.0 for Sam Zell

Coming Soon: Old Media' s last stand

Looking for the future of news

Labels: controversey, google, news 2.0, news aggregators

posted by Pramit Singh @ 2:13 PM 0 Comments

Can advertising alone bring success to Google's competition?

Following in the wake of Ask.com's aggressive marketing campaigns, it is now Microsoft's turn to promote its Live search service. On its recently launched Lice Search Club site (club.live.com), Microsoft gets users to play games and solve puzzles, awarding them points which they can later exchange for assorted goodies.

It sure sounds like a Pepsi campaign. The clincher here is this: while you solve word puzzles, Microsoft 'pushes' live search results related to the word, without you ever even asking for it. There is a hint a button which shows up further search results.

Can 'Push Search ' and Puzzles make die hard Live Search users out of us?

Producing search results for predefined/preset words are one thing, showing results based on context of the content of a document, that too, on-the-fly is another.

Even Google couldn't do detailed semantic search.

Besides, Search is about Intention, Relavancy and Discovery.
I am not sure Push Search is fit or ready for this.

On a happier note for Microsoft, since it pushes automatic search results as users play games and puzzles on club.live.com, Hitwise reports that Microsoft’s share of US searches shot up from 8.46% to 9.85%.

Compared to Google's strengths and reach, this is chump change.
Google did not need advertising to promote its search engine.

Labels: google, Microsoft, search

posted by Pramit Singh @ 12:32 PM 0 Comments