If you go to Google.com or Wikipedia today, you’re going to find that something’s missing (or in Wikipedia’s case – everything is missing). That’s because these two Internet giants are protesting the Protect Intellectual Property Act that’s under consideration in the Senate, and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that’s under consideration in the House of Representatives. This pair of bills, which is backed by the motion picture and recording industries, are intended to eliminate theft online once and for all – and would (for the first time) place restrictions on information and content shared via the Web.
Clearly, Google and Wikipedia are against this legislation, and aren’t afraid to make their stance clear to Congress. But whether or not their protest is successful, remains to be seen.
How’s that for alliteration? This week, Google began incorporating Google+ content into search results naming it Search Plus Your World – poetic, I know. Said Amit Singhal, a Google fellow who oversees search: “What you search today is largely written by people you don’t know; we call that the faceless Web. Search Plus Your World transforms search and centers it around you.’’
I’m not sure I like this idea. When I want to find my friends and their content, I’m going to go to the online source, be it their blog, YouTube page, Google+ profile (rare as that may be), or Facebook page. When I go to Google, I want the faceless Web. I want Google to provide me with searches that are as unbiased as possible, with most relevant/popular links showing up first – not some exchange I had with my second cousin on Google+. A real-life example: I like to periodically Google my name to see where I stand in the World Wide Web. Which blog posts come up, tweets, event attendee lists, competitive ballroom dance results and convicted doppelgangers are going to make their way to Page One (and yes, all of those things have been or are on Page One)? Today, I saw a whole bunch of my own posts via Google+. Not exactly useful to me.
Google did say that Google users will be able to toggle between integrated posts, just personal posts and just standard, but unless Google suddenly gets access to Facebook content and can cache the entire social web in search results (which will likely never happen, because why would Facebook and Google cooperate, and if they did, how much of a privacy fit would that cause?), I still don’t see the point.
What do you think of Google social integrating with Google search? Good? Bad? Huh?
On June 28 Google launched the Google+ Project, which is billed as real life sharing, rethought for the web. Simply put, Google+ is a social network that allows you to easily communicate with various groups of people, each in a specific and decisive way.
Google+ is currently being marketed towards individuals as social destination. Through the videos and content produced by Google, Google+ is marketed as a way to separate your work friends from college buddies, and family from acquaintances. Google+ allows you to communicate with each group of people separately, so that you can feel more comfortable sharing information with the group of people that you want to.
Aside from personal relationships, Google+ is going to have an impact on businesses. But as with every social network, platform or tool, it will have a different type of affect and purpose for each organization. Here are a few things that all businesses can expect:
1. New features for Facebook pages: After Twitter became popular Facebook quickly modified its news feed to include real-time updates from users, and it is no secret that Facebook employees (including Mark Zuckerberg) have been quick to sign up for Google+ and ask people for their feedback. Expect Facebook to soon offer some of the features that Google+ members find most beneficial.
2. Better internal communication: Google+ could become an extremely valuable internal communications platform, especially at large companies. It allows businesses to separate people by department, level and location, and have focused real-time conversations on every topic within those groups. In some ways, it is like a Yammer on steroids. It can also be beneficial if businesses want to conduct real-time meetings via the web, especially if people are in different geographical locations.
3. A new channel for better user relationships: Businesses using Google+ will have the opportunity to directly communicate with circles of users. Using Apple as an example, there could be various set up to communicate directly with Apple users. One can be made up of key enthusiasts, influences and evangelists, one of early adopters, another of general users, and even location-specific Apple customers. Apple can then communicate with each one of these groups differently, in a way that will best engage each audience member.
These three areas address what we should expect to see from Google+. However, it is important to remember that this platform is still very young, and a lot can change depending on how well (and quickly) it can attract and handle users, and how people decide to use the platform.
Also please note that Google+ is currently available by invitation only, and it has been difficult for many people to get on the site. The best thing to do is find someone who is already registered that can send you an invitation, or sign up on the homepage and wait for an email invitation from Google.
This is a guest post from RJ Bardsley, a Senior Vice at Racepoint Group. Follow him on Twitter @RJBardsley.
If you’re on the West Coast and just waking up, run, don’t walk to your nearest news source. What you’ll find is a blistering barrage of news from some of the biggest and coolest tech brands this morning. Here is a quick run down of what hit the Wall Street Journal today.
Microsoft buys Skype for $8 billion. This is the biggest-ever acquisition for Microsoft. Can they make it work? It makes sense – Skype will add a lot to MSFT’s gaming and communications platforms.
Google Unveils Web Music Service… uh, watch out Apple? I don’t know about that, but Amazon and Spotify may be shaking in their boots a little bit. Google still has to secure licenses from the four major record labels. Expect the system to operate like a remote hard drive.
Apple and Google will both testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on mobile privacy. Yes, location-based information is really neat, but it turns out people don’t really like it when you know where they are all the time…
LinkedIn set the terms for its IPO: how does $3 billion+ sound? This could be the first in a flood of US tech IPOs. Expect Groupon to follow suit later this year and Facebook maybe next year. Freescale, the chip company also set price terms for its IPO yesterday. Can you say 1998?
Silicon Valley wild child, NVIDIA, also announced an acquisition this week. It bought Icera, a UK start up focused on baseband chips. The move will make NVIDIA more of a competitive force in the mobile phone market.
Gilt, the online luxury retailer (and @rdeplazes’s frequent digital haunt) has raised $138 million form investors. Yeah, I guess you really can say 1998…
Video game maker Activision announced a 32% jump in sales.
Apple and Conde Nast announced that many of your favorite media outlets – including Wired, Glamour, Vanity Fair, Allure, Self, GQ, and my personal favorite, Golf Digest – will be available for subscription on the iTunes store. Yey.
Over the past week (and most recently yesterday), both Facebook and Google have announced that they have set up deal offers and will soon be launching their platforms in select cities (mostly on the west coast).
Google’s deal launch comes after a failed attempt to acquire Groupon, and Facebook had already added limited deals into its mobile check-ins which launched back in November 2010 and had been more similar to Foursquare then a daily deal site.
Even though Google and Facebook have hundreds of millions of users, it remains to be seen if they can successfully market their deals to regional/local audiences, something that daily deal companies Groupon, LivingSocial and BuyWithMe have successfully done.
Google and Facebook won’t be the first national Internet company to launch a daily deal. AOL launched wow.com, which is available in select cities around the US, and also features national deals. However, it’s never caught on like some of the others have.
While Facebook and Google have better access to users then AOL, their ability to successfully localize the deals and get the best merchants will be critical to their success. Of course, they could always team with current regional deal sites and publicize their offerings to a larger audience.
Will you check out the deals that Facebook and Google offer to your city?
For the first time ever, Google has placed video on its homepage. It comes in the form of a tribute to Charlie Chaplin where the Google logo is usually found.
While Google has long been celebrating holidays, special occasions and anniversaries with unique logos, this is the first time this space has been occupied with video, which could signal big changes for the future in relation to Google’s interaction and multimedia that’s present on its classic crisp homepage.
A lot has happened in 2010, and we’ll be looking at some of the year’s best tech and social media developments in the coming weeks. But first, here is look back at the entire year that was through the eyes of Google.
(Yes, there are some shameless plugs for Google’s products, but it’s a great video).
This morning a new search engine called Blekko officially launched it site. Their goal is to provide users with a clean search experience, one that has worthwhile results but not the spam. While it’s a noble idea the end result for Blekko will almost certainly be disappointing, as many search engines have tried to uproot Google (remember Cuil?) and failed.
Let’s look at the facts: Google overwhelming owns the search engine market share. The two search engines that can actually be compared with Google are Yahoo and Bing (owned by Microsoft). Is some small, awkwardly named site like Blekko really going to come in and unseat Google? It’s doubtful. In fact, if you want to argue who the next big search engine will be, take a look towards Facebook and Twitter. Both social networks have a lot of data that is very relevant to many people – and both sites are already filled with users.
However, regardless of the search success that other companies can (and will) have, unseating Google is simply not going to happen, and here are three reasons why:
1. Search should be easy: When people use search engines they are looking for information they need. They don’t want it to take up a lot of time, they just want to find what they’re looking for. When it comes to searching, familiarity is key. If you’re comfortable with the site you’re using and know how to use it, finding a result will be faster if you’re using that site. Google has a lot of users that are really comfortable with their site.
2. Gmail: When getting someone’s personal email address these days, it’s usually a surprise if they don’t have Gmail. With so many people already on Google for their email, using Google for search is a natural extension (as referenced in reason #1, it’s all about familiarity).
3. Because you can ‘Google’ it: When you’re taking with friends and can’t figure out the answer to something does anyone say “I’ll Yahoo it or Bing it?” Exactly. “I’ll Google it” is a common expression, so common that it’s in the dictionary. Google has become part of our language and is recognized globally. When it’s that automatic it’s going to be reall difficult for things to change.
This is a guest post by Anne Potts, Senior Vice President, Racepoint Group.
The mid-term elections give us a chance to take a hard look at the health of our democracy and the direction of public discourse. The consolidation of the journalistic voice brought about by media mergers and failures under the weight of an unsustainable economic model is unacceptable. It inexorably weakens our democracy.
Leave it to Google to see the chance to make change with a $5M gift to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on “advancing journalism in the digital age.” In partnership with the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge, Google’s $5M will fund projects that meet the “challenge” by addressing the critical success factors of a new approach, like expanding access to news and generating community involvement, use of mobile technologies, helping people understand the source for the news they read, and creating new economic models to sustain a journalistic enterprise.
Bringing this much Google juice to their work will be a true accelerator and will hopefully blaze a trail for a new and powerful Fourth Estate. Focusing American innovation on our media and its critical role in our Democracy – thanks, Google and Knight. We’ll be watching for the outcomes of your efforts.
Early this week Universal Pictures invited RaceTalk to attend a private screening of the documentary “Catfish.” Given our extensive coverage of social media, and particularly Facebook, the studio felt we were the perfect viewers.
The film follows a young, New York City based photographer, Yaniv “Nev” Shulman as he forms relationships with a family in Michigan. After seeing one of Nev’s photographs in the New York Sun, this Michigan family sends him a painting of his photograph, done by their eight year old daughter Abby.
Nev winds up “friending” Abby’s mother, father, sister, brother and more via Facebook and communicates with them regularly. Over the coming months they share countless emails, Facebook messages, phone calls, photos, videos, song recordings, and of course, more paintings. Eventually, Nev begins to form a romantic bond with Abby’s older sister Megan. He talks to her every day on the phone, via text, email and she sends photos and recordings of her singing songs she wrote for him.
One evening Nev discovers via the power of Google and YouTube, that Megan has been sending music recordings that are in fact stolen from an artist named Amy Karney. When he confronts her about it, she becomes frazzled and overly emotional. From this conversation on, things with Megan and the entire family begin to unravel. In an attempt to get some closure on what now feels like a mountain of lies, Nev and the two film makers (his older brother Ariel and their friend Henry) decide to drive to Ipsheming, Michigan to meet the family in person and uncover the truth.
Without spoiling the ending, because if you are an active user of Facebook you must see this movie, I will say that “Catfish” caused me to rethink my personal approach to Facebook. As a PR professional, we counsel our clients on the use of social media and the real-time web, and encourage them to share, share often, and share with complete transparency. We position social media as an easy, low cost way to reach your target audience on the websites and applications they are already using. Personally, we do the same. We use our Facebook profiles to share photos, videos, articles we enjoy, blog posts we write and more. Facebook has become so ubiquitous; we behave this way without question.
In David Kirkpatrick’s book “The Facebook Effect” he chronicles the early days of Facebook when a user was required to have a college, .edu email address to join. Mark Zuckerberg felt the university email address provided a level of authenticity that you are who you say you are. Once Facebook was opened broadly, and that requirement disappeared, you could use any email address to sign up, even a fake one.
“Catfish” demonstrates that the internet and in this case Facebook, allows users to not only share content, but to also steal content; to poach photos, videos, music and more and re-purpose it for their own use. The current explosion of content on the internet and social networks provides users with the ability to pluck content off the web and create an entire identity with stolen information.
Nev is still an active user of Facebook. His experiences have not diminished his use of the network. However, “Catfish” will force you to re-think the way you use Facebook and exactly how open you want to be with your personal information and the people you allow into your network. This film is a haunting, brutally real look at the power of social media.
