Archive for October, 2006
Does the Web need political representation?
October 24th, 2006
Further to my post last week, calling for the UK Government to embrace social media as a communications tool, an excellent piece by Richard Wray, the Guardian’s communications editor, got me thinking about the need for political representation for the Web.
The article focused on Google’s registration as a political action committee (PAC) with the US federal election commission.
Google’s NetPAC will enable it to enter the often murky world of corporate donations to support candidates seeking elected office.
In a quote from the article, Ricardo Reyes, Google’s senior manager of global communications and public affairs, commented: “We started this NetPAC in order to be able to support office-holders and candidates who share our vision of promoting and preserving the Internet as a free and open platform for information, communication and innovation. Google has thrived thanks to the opportunities of the free market so we believe it is important to look at policymakers as they make decisions that impact our users and businesses.”
Initially alarm bells started to ring, but hang on, who is going to represent the interests of the Web as an open information platform?
The move makes absolute sense for Google, as it needs political representation to fight increasingly hefty battles on a global scale. The first target of which will be Net neutrality.
I’m not naive enough to believe Google is doing this solely for the good of us all, and of course I can already hear the arguments about the web being a Google dominated medium, but who better to fight the good fight at a political level right now?
I hope this move will assist the safeguarding of the evolution of the web. You can guarantee one thing, Google has the power to be influential on a political stage.
Let me know your thoughts on this issue.
Technorati tags: google, net neutrality, political web , netPAC
Are leader writers’ days numbered?
October 23rd, 2006
An opinion piece entitled “Isn’t it time we ditched the newspaper leader writers?” by Jeff Jarvis editor of BuzzMachine, has caught my eye in The Guardian today.
To quote straight from the article:
“The irony of leader writers is that they commit the sins usually attributed to bloggers: they rarely report and mostly just opine and pontificate - that is, they leech off the work of other journalists. And they work anonymously. Leaders speak as the voices of institutions, issuing opinions from the mountaintop, hidden by the cloak of distance. Yet today, in our connected society, we do not trust institutions. We demand transparency. We expect conversation.”
As a former journalist with friends still in the trade I feel a traitor supporting Jarvis’ opinion, but I have to admit I agree. Blogs in particular have raised the bar for quality comment and analysis, and as media becomes more and more ’social’ and discursive, leader writers in particular are going to have a tough job hanging on to their position of authority.
It would be great to have some leader writers commenting, but as Jarvis concludes:
“So perhaps leader writers should not lead, but instead should become moderators and enablers of the democratic discussion, no matter where it occurs: in newspapers, on blogs, on television, and now on internet talk-shows like the conservative network 18 Doughty Street.”
Update: Guy Kewney’s response on The Register is also worth a read.
Yahoo! suffers ‘body blow’ on back of massive Google results
October 20th, 2006
The boardrooms at Google and Yahoo! are two very different places today, and that may offer some insight into why the recent financial results for these companies are so far apart.
For those that didn’t catch Yahoo!’s Q3 results, the figures may come as a surprise. The company posted profits of $155m (£83m), sounds good, but this represents a 38% decline on the $253m Yahoo! recorded in the same period last year.
However, Yahoo!’s figures were really put into perspective last night by Google’s massive Q3 results, which reported $2.69 billion (£1.43 billion) worth of earnings, a massive 70% increase from last year’s Q3 results ($1.58 billion). This was also a 10% increase over Q2 revenues of 2006, which totaled $2.46 billion.
So 70% up v 38% down. There aren’t many positives for Yahoo! on that scale.
Many would say Yahoo!’s results are a reflection of its cautious approach to development and while stock options (Yahoo! did add an $80m charge for the cost of handing out stock options to staff) detracted from Yahoo!’s figure, Google’s considerable market leadership and investments are looking more impressive than ever.
Trip Chowdhry, Global Equities Research analyst, overviewed the situation perfectly in the International Herald Tribune: ”The difference between Google and the second and third place players has become enormous. This definitely shows that Google is going to own the next generation of the computing environment.”
The final words should go to the guys at the top, as you will see, the statements are quite different:
Terry Semel, chief executive, Yahoo!, commented: “I am not satisfied with our current financial performance, and we intend to improve it. We are not exploiting our considerable strengths as well as we should be and we are committed to doing better.”
Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google:“Our third quarter results are a testament to the strength of our network of advertisers and partners, as well as our continuing focus on users. We were particularly pleased with the contributions of our international business in a seasonally weaker quarter. In addition, we continued to forge significant partnerships with companies such as eBay, Fox Interactive Media, and Intuit that will be of great value to all involved.”
Technorati tags: google, yahoo , financial results, financial markets
FT launching financial markets blog
October 19th, 2006
The FT is launching a live financial markets blog on Monday, which will be edited by the Guardian’s former financial editor Paul Murphy.
A beta version of the Alphaville blog is already live at http://ftalphaville.ft.com/.
The blog will offer rolling news and commentary through the UK and European trading day, and guidance on where to go for quality comment and analysis.
A message on the site is telling of how this blog will feed into the FT’s overall editorial direction: “The editorial thinking underpinning this new service from FT.com is that in a world where market professionals are inundated with information there is a pressing need to edit and filter, and hopefully sow a few ideas along the way.”
Blogs have certainly given rise to a greater emphasis on comment and news analysis. Flick through any trade magazine, and there will generally be one page devoted to analysis and a couple of columns of comment from industry insiders. Blogs have shifted this balance, and it’s interesting to see how the FT is responding to this.
Google CEO asks techies to show Governments the way…
October 18th, 2006
Speaking at Tuesday’s public symposium in Washington, hosted by the National Academies’ Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said: “The average person in government is not of the age of people who are using all this stuff. There is a generational gap, and it’s very, very real.”
The day’s discussion was focused on how aspects of computer science and telecommunications will look in 2016, and made some interesting points into the convergence of media, net neutrality and copyrighted content.
However, the online generation gap is something we have been discussing at Liberate Media this week, and that’s the point that hit home. As we discovered, the UK evidence proves the generation gap is actually shrinking, but Mr Schmidt’s point about the average person in government not using ‘this stuff’ has been evidenced recently in the UK. Or at least not using social media to its full potential.
Not forgetting Mr Cameron’s (leader of the Conservative party in the UK) exploits, and related opposition spoofs, government is certainly missing a trick when it comes to communicating with the electorate.
Can we see better use of social media coming out of the UK Government as well please? I’m sure there are a range of people willing to show the way…if only there was a way of contacting them…
Technorati tags: social media, government, google, politics