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The press is abuzz with word on GBuy, Google's new payment platform debuting any day now. So are people searching for it?
Not yet, according to the trend at right of 2006 search activity. Red is PayPal, blue is GBuy.
Even the blogs are sticking with PayPal, according to BlogPulse. We'll see if this changes when GBuy actually launches.
Click on the images for a larger view.
This week the attention shifts to old media, as a panel of media titans (Malcolm Gladwell, Arianna Huffington, Slate.com's top brass, Time's former top editor) debated what's ailing newspapers - and whether search engines are killing them. My take: they're all dead wrong.
Join the conversation at MediaPost's blog, or read the column in the extended entry below.
At a panel last week hosted by the New York Public Library in honor of Slate’s 10-year anniversary, several renowned journalists and editors debated the future of newspapers. As much fun as it was to see Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell chime in every 20 minutes with a pithy, crowd-pleasing anecdote, relieving me of the constant strain of trying to make out what Arianna Huffington was saying, these panelists filled the hour and a half with wild assertions and ill-informed prognostications that seemed no more prescient than what any media consumer could come up with.
One of the most repeated theories, which has some truth to it, is that newspapers as we know them are dead. So who’s killing them? Those fingered in this game of “Clue: Media Edition” included Ms. Blog in the den with a $30 iPod microphone, Mr. Craigslist in the attic with a free classified ad, and Colonel Search Engine in Mountain View and Sunnyvale with a new media paradigm.
Continue reading "Search Insider: Search - Newspaper Slayer?" »
"Rocky and Bullwinkle," once $1.99 an episode, is now free on Google Video. The ad sponsorship model offers a text ad permanently atop the video, rather than the standard pre-roll deal. I still don't get why consumers would pay that much for a lot of these videos. Granted, a lot of this content would otherwise be gathering dust, so there's little harm in offering it for a fee. I'm still convinced that publishers will make more on most of these videos by running ads than selling the content. Check out all the once-premium content that's now free (at least for the trial).
Update: find the latest on this event at Upcoming.org.
The night before Frost & Sullivan's Internet Marketing Strategies 2006 (I'm moderating a panel on blogging), some bloggers and other renowned geeks are getting together at a dinner at Fire & Ice. Noted luminaries there include Web Prophet Jeremiah Owyang (he will also prophecize your order - if he's wrong, you eat free), Ted Murphy of MindComet and Internet Marketing Voodoo (and a fine podcast host), and Naked Conversations author Shel Israel (just wait till you see what he's wearing to the dinner conversation).
All these A-list bloggers are letting me come along and play geek with them. I'll be like Anybodys in West Side Story, but with a better haircut.
The dinner's at Fire & Ice, 205 Berkeley St, Boston, 7pm on Wed July 12. RSVP if you can come so we reserve enough seats for everyone and their gadgets.
It turns out "The Daily Show" makes viewers more cynical, makes them less likely to read newspapers, eliminates the positive effects of statins, decreases the birth rate, increases hurricanes, and, come 2008, might just lead us to a totalitarian regime. All these inferences are as logical as the ones Richard Morin covers in his latest Washington Post column.
He reviewed a study from Jody Baumgartner and Jonathan S. Morris of East Carolina University who found that "The Daily Show" makes its young, impressionable viewers more cynical. Apparently, after watching Jon Stewart, viewers have less respect for politicians across the political spectrum, and they put less trust in the news media.
"Ultimately, negative perceptions of candidates could have participation implications by keeping more youth from the polls," they wrote.
Well, yes, this is true. If you think everyone running for office is an idiot, it's going to be hard to wake up early come election day. But imagine the other consequences: viewers demanding more of the news media, people aware of who's representing them and what the elected officials are doing for (or against) their constituents, citizens seeking out political candidates with more substance. What the study completely seems to overlook, if the Post's coverage of it is anywhere near accurate (being a cynical "Daily Show" watcher, that's a tenuous assumption), is what dangers lie from buying into very last word that politicians and the media spew out.
It's the status quo that allows this Post reporter to recycle coverage of this study without even questioning what it's saying. He'd be well served by watching "The Daily Show." Maybe he'd even develop a sense of humor.
Okay, the show's good, but that's a tall order.
