Guardian Searches Beyond Google
November 13, 2009
I love that “beyond” phrasing. The Guardian, an outfit facing some rough financial seas when it comes to online revenue, published “Why I’m Searching Beyond Google” on November 11, 2009. I think the Guardian is showing that some of its editors are somewhat obsessive about electronic information. Victor Keegan wrote:
Google’s power is no longer as a good search engine but as a brand and an increasingly pervasive one. Google hasn’t been my default search for ages but I am irresistibly drawn to it because it is embedded on virtually every page I go to and, as a big user of other Google services (documents, videos, Reader, maps), I don’t navigate to Google search, it navigates to me.
I am confused. Mr. Keegan no longer makes Google his first choice in search yet he is drawn to it. I wonder if there is a bit of conflict involved when one resists, yet is “irresistibly drawn” to something. In Harrods Creek, I know some folks who have this type of personality. Let me tell you that I find that push-pull quite interesting.
He provided useful links to lists of the top Web sites. He said,
If you want to test other websites try http://bit.ly/vicsearch3 for the top 25 niche engines or http://bit.ly/vicsearch4 for the top 100. Even though Google’s brand dominance doesn’t yet look under threat, competition not only provides choice for ourselves but will keep Google and the others on their toes.
My opinion is that Google has an 80 to 85 percent share of the Web search market. Microsoft and Yahoo make up most of the remaining share. These other systems have a challenging trail to hike. I don’t know if users or the stakeholders in most of the Web search engines have what it takes to continue the journey over a long period of time. Google’s “market share” has been 11 years in the making. Train has left the station in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, November 13, 2009
A public service posting for the publishing industry. I will report the no-fee nature of this article to Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation in honor of the “buck stops here” president.
Google and Structured Content
November 12, 2009
Oh, my. Some of the folks who are cheering the tie up of Microsoft Bing.com and WolframAlpha.com have something to consider. Google is not partnering for technology; the Google is going direct to data providers and merging the information in search results. You can read “World Bank Data Now in Google Search Results” and get a sense of the direction in which Google is taking baby steps. The World Bank’s Web site is a pretty exciting service, so bring a beverage and maybe something to read. For me, the most important point in the write up was:
a special Google public data search feature will show numeric results for 17 World Development Indicators (WDI) reliably sourced to the World Bank, with a link to Google’s public data graphing tool. Google’s feature lets users see and compare country-by-country statistics and offers customized graphs with a ‘link’ or web address that can be easily embedded and shared in other websites. From the Google Public Data graphing tool, users can learn more about the data on the new World Bank Data Finder, which allows them to access indicator definitions, quick facts, interactive maps, and additional World Bank related resources. All of these features can be easily exported and installed on other websites. Data Finder also provides customizable maps and concise analysis to inspire user data comparisons and ‘mash-ups’ or combinations with other Bank reports. Under the population growth indicator, for example, the site generates the following statistic, “8 of the world’s 9 billion people will be in the developing world by 2050.” Data Finder is filled with other compelling quick facts from the Bank’s extensive global databases of global knowledge on development.
You can read more about Google’s content capabilities in my Google: The Digital Gutenberg. I wonder, “Isn’t the World Bank an author?” What happens if Google goes directly to people who write books and monographs? Think about the implications? I did when I realized that the Google was morphing into something new, what I describe as a “digital Gutenberg”. In depth briefings are available if you want to know more. With these data and individualized Google, what does Google deliver? Maybe personalized magazines? Interesting.
Stephen Arnold, November 11, 2009
I want to alert the local Animal Control Officer that I was not paid to write an article that suggests Google is more of a threat in certain business sectors that some pundits assume.
Writing about Online Revenue Is Easier than Generating Revenue from Online
November 12, 2009
The Guardian’s new media group took a kick in the kidney. Navigate to “Guardian News & Media to Cut More Than 100 Jobs”. Note these phrases, please:
- revenues have fallen by a worse-than-anticipated £33m
- the Guardian’s Thursday Technology print section will cease publication we cannot offer clarity about who is leaving and who is redeploying
- If we do the right things now, which I believe we are doing
- the organization should “not be paralyzed by change, but galvanized by change”
- December 9
Yep, easier to write about online than make it generate revenue. Happy run up to Christmas?
Stephen Arnold, November 12, 2009
I got my change back fro Stuart Schram who took $5, paid for lunch, and gave me a bottle of Rooibee Red Tea. I must write the Prospect Police and inform them of this financial transaction as I wrote this blog post.
Pay Dike Being Rebuilt
November 10, 2009
I am not sure if this blog post by Jennifer Lush is 100 percent accurate. I found it suggestive. Judge for yourself. Navigate to EditorsWebLog.org and read “Murdoch Postpones Date for Introducing Paywalls.” In my experience, it is possible to generate revenue from content. Mr. Murdoch wants to charge for content and he has pointed out that some companies are ripping him off because he is not being paid for links, headlines, snippets, whatever. The delay, if real, may point to one or more reasons. What’s clear is that sweeping generalizations are easy to make; delivering is a bit more difficult in my opinion. Technology and cost issues are two challenges which come to my mind.
Stephen Arnold, November 10, 2009
To the Government Printing Office. I wish to report that this write up is free. I even recall the halcyon days when most of the US government’s information was available without a charge. Hmmm. Should this be disclosed?
Murdoch to Test the Magnetism of News Corp. Content
November 9, 2009
Yep, I see a big lab test coming. As a conservative goose, I will not predict the results of the test. I will let data speak for themselves. You can get the scoop and a sense of how big media views Mr. Murdoch’s most recent anti-free campaign in “Murdoch Could Block Google Searches Entirely”. In my opinion, it is pretty darned easy to block Google’s indexing software, but the headline illustrates the level of understanding about indexing, online, and Google that permeates big media. I am looking forward to four outcomes:
- News Corp.’s discovery that traffic on its sites declines, and that Google will offer AdWords as a way for News Corp. to regain some of its referral traffic. This is the situation in which AT&T finds itself. The company fights Google and then buys AdWords. The Google just chugs along. Only game in town in the phrase that comes to my mind.
- News Corp. will have to find a way to generate sufficient cash to deal with two challenges. The first is to make up lost print revenue. The second is to fund the marketing needed to find a solution to the traffic drop. The result will be a big cost hit because News Corp. is going to be a vacuum cleaner for outside experts. News Corp. will hire people to help fix the problem the “no Google” decision creates. Good for consultants. Not good for shareholders.
- News Corp. will have to figure out what to do when bloggers recycle News Corp. stories which Google then indexes and displays in pointers to these third party sources. I can see the lawyers drooling about this situation.
- News Corp. will have to figure out how to taser competitors who are in the traditional media game and sufficiently inventive to flow into the space News Corp. creates. Once some clever competitors figure out how to surf on Google, News Corp. has to fight a two front war. The evil bloggers AND the traditional publishers who see an opportunity in the News Corp.’s “no Google” method.
Exciting. In short, I don’t see much good news for News Corp. with this lab test.
Stephen Arnold, November 9, 2009
A publisher bought me lunch, but this publisher did not pay me to write this commentary. Quick report this fact to the US Postal Service.
Google News Ranking Algorithm
November 8, 2009
Short honk: The Google continues to edge forward with replacing functions once done by humans with semi-autonomous agents. Who cares? I suppose publishers may want to think about this approach. The USPTO document that caught my interest was US20090276429, Systems and Methods for Improving the Ranking of News Articles.” Like most Google patent documents, the claims are interesting. Dig in. The company did include a brief abstract with the filing:
A system ranks results. The system may receive a list of links. The system may identify a source with which each of the links is associated and rank the list of links based at least in part on a quality of the identified sources.
The key word in the summary for me was “quality”. Google’s method is to assign a source with a score, roughly analogous to an editor’s judgment. In the Google system, the idiosyncratic, often cranky news editor becomes:
Organized and generally without a large expense account and a penchant for making life tough on 23 year old journalists.
Stephen Arnold, November 8, 2009
You think anyone paid me to compare a human editor to a method? If so, report me to the Jefferson County Animal Control officer.
Texas Tribune Taps Donations for New Online Content
November 7, 2009
When I worked at the Courier Journal & Louisville Times Co. in the 1980s, out databases generated revenue and turned a profit. I read with interest “Texas Tribune’s Launch ‘Just the Beginning’ of Databases, What’s to Come”. The main idea is that a newspaper is creating online “databases”. For me, the key passage in the write up was:
The site, which is being underwritten with tax-deductible donations and has received foundation grants from Houston Endowment and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, is partnering with six television stations in large and small markets throughout the state to share content. Texas Tribune political reporter Elise Hu plans to go on television in Dallas and Waco in the next week to help further promote the site.
I suppose it is easier to seek grants and donations than create a product for which people will pay. I guess I am old fashioned. I liked the online approach of the Courier Journal, an approach that did not require third party subsidies.
Stephen Arnold, November 7, 2009
A gift to the newspaper mavens who read this blog. Hear that, Food & Drug Administration?
Wall Street Journal Proving that Newspaper Marketing Is Off the Rails
November 5, 2009
Okay, I am a real life subscriber to the Wall Street Journal. I have written the company, called its 800 number, and captured the spam attack on me in this blog. The Wall Street Journal simply ignores a customer’s requests to be treated as a – well – paying customer.
Today more spam. Here’s the crap that floats into my personal mail account:
This is the same annoying, repetitive, stupid offer. I am a subscriber. I paid more than $204 for my print subscription. If I am smart enough to subscribe, perhaps I am smart enough to figure out that the WSJ is low balling me. Why would I buy a second subscription at a lower price when I have learned that the WSJ gouged me earlier this year?
But that’s not enough!
The Wall Street Journal mailed me the following offer:
Note that this special offer to me, a paying customer, is yet another astounding discount. How much can I buy a second unneeded subscription to the Wall Street Journal?
The cost is only $59. Keep in mind that I paid more than the spam offer. Now this desperate, confused and inept publisher is reminding me that its premier business publication is worth $59 a year or in the $0.20 per day range.
How stupid does this outfit think I am? Pretty stupid, I assume.
To recap:
- I am a customer.
- I paid hundreds of dollars for one subscription to the Wall Street Journal
- One one day I received an offer via spam email and then a second lower ball offer via snail mail.
Folks, this marketing is a clear signal that the Wall Street Journal does not care about me as a customer. It is marketing special offers that make me feel as if I were duped. The company ignores a customer’s request to be spared unneeded, unwanted offers.
Mr. Murdoch, you have a method that angers me and demonstrates poor business judgment. Keep in mind that I am an existing customer. Amazing.
Stephen Arnold, November 5, 2009
- To the Government Printing Office: I was not paid to write this case analysis. Do you think the WSJ would pay me to do anything for them?
Tribune Tests Zapping the AP
November 5, 2009
My recollection is that the AP (Associated Press) had its roots in the newspaper industry. The idea was that newspapers could pool some resources and get better coverage without putting their own feet on the street in certain news hot spots. Well, the times are changing. Phil Rosenthal’s “Tribune Co. Papers Rewiring for Experimental Week without AP” describes an interesting test. A big newspaper will publish without content from the AP. For me, the most interesting comment in the article was:
Some newspapers have determined that shared wire content that is available to readers from many other outlets is worth less to them than unique, proprietary content, especially online. Coupled with reductions in the space allocated for news in print, papers are weighing whether there’s the same need for Associated Press content as in the past.
If the experiment provides data that the Tribune cannot move forward without the AP content, that’s a plus for the AP. If the experiment provides data that the Tribune can operate without the AP content, that’s a negative for the AP.
Set aside the outcome. If the AP is “must have” content, why is a test needed? If there is uncertainty, there must be substantive cause. Ergo: big trouble brewing in my opinion. Either way, the “value” of the AP causes doubt.
Stephen Arnold, November 5, 2009
The Kentucky county commissioner must hear from me that I was not paid to write this blog post. Oyez.
Making Content the Old Fashioned Way
November 4, 2009
When I write a crappy story, Tess bites my ankle. The rest of the goslings don’t care. Programmers are not entranced by my prose. I found it interesting that the mavens of real journalism, the custodians of news, resorted to a fist fight, if the story in the Washingtonian is accurate. Navigate to “Fists Fly after Post Editor Tells Writer, “It’s the Second Worst Story I Have Seen in Style in 43 Years”. The passage I liked was:
Veteran Style writers said they knew Allen [the attacking editor] wasn’t happy. He had come up in Style’s heady days, when writers could wax for a hundred inches on the wonder of plastic lawn furniture or the true meaning of the Vietnam War Memorial. No more. Working part time on contract, Allen seethed over the lost art of long-form journalism.
The writer and the editor had a fist fight. Yep, the lost art. I wonder if the metadata for the news story will include such terms as fight, culture, custodian, intellectual, and maturity?
Stephen Arnold, November 4, 2009
I want to disclose to the Peace Corps. that I was not paid to write this short article.
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