Google wants you to "like" them, too

In response to the Facebookification of the internet, Google has decided to move ahead with a competing ubiquity initiative to keep up with the Facebook "like" button. Google calls it +1 and it sounds just vague enough to fail. But what do I know? Mashable has a description of the new feature here.

The "World Wide Web" turns 20

Twenty years ago, a placeholder name for a revolutionary idea became the foundation for the lexicon of the Internet. On this anniversary, the New York Times explores how the World Wide Web got its name.

And here is the Nov. 12, 1990, proposal to create "...a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will."

From the proposal:

The application of a universal hypertext system, once in place, will cover many areas such as document registration, on-line help, project documentation, news schemes and so on. It would be inappropriate for us (rather than those responsible) to suggest specific areas, but experiment online help, accelerator online help, assistance for computer center operators, and the dissemination of information by central services ... are obvious candidates.

I wonder if it'll ever take off?

Four in the morning

1. James Rainey profiles "Roger the Scanner Guy," Santa Barbara's police blotter phenom. LA Times

2. The military denies a reporter entry to a murder trial because the reporter won't sign away his rights. Fayetteville Observer (via Romenesko)

3. What the Intertubes have done to our fragile brains. Atlantic

4. Politifact's Truth-o-Meter goes on down to Georgia. PolitiFact

Cocoons or public squares?

A new study, summarized by David Brooks at the New York Times, challenges the notion that the Internet is driving us into ideological cocoons and might actually encourage us to take in a diversity of opinions. However, it might also be a convenient tool to help us reinforce our prejudices by navigating a fractious set of media and social sites.

The rise of online ad dollars

Internet ads accounted for 8 percent of total ad revenue in in 2005. The number jumped to17 percent in 2009. Ken Doctor reports:

...digital marketing, with better targeting being introduced around the clock, keeps pulling dollars away from traditional media — TV, newspapers, radio, and magazines. TV ($26.2 billion) and newspapers ($24.6 billion) are still ahead of Internet, but cable (at $20.4 billion) and TV networks (at $15.5 billion) are below. Radio pulls in $14 billion, while consumer magazines take in $10 billion and trades $7.5 billion.

Where we're getting our news - and what we're doing with it

Most people continue to get their news from local and national television broadcasts, but the Internet continues to surge as a source, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The survey finds that on a typical day 61 percent of people get at least some of their news online (weather reports are the top subject matter for online consumption).

The survey also claims that online is now the third most popular platform for news, behind local and national television. The finding isn't clear cut, however, since Pew splits local and national newspapers into two categories. Depending on the amount of overlap, the number of newspaper readers could be as high as 67 percent, although it's probably less. Online comes in at 61 percent and radio is fifth, with 54 percent of people getting some amount of news there during a typical day.

From the survey:

More than half of American adults (56%) say they follow the news "all or most of the time," and another quarter (25%) follow the news at least "some of the time." Asked specifically about their news habits on "a typical day," the results are striking -- 99% of American adults say that on a typical day, they get news from at least one of these media platforms: a local or national print newspaper, a local or national television news broadcast, radio or the internet.

Only local and national TV news, the latter if you combine cable and network, are more popular platforms than the internet for news. And most Americans use a combination of both online and offline sources. On a typical day:

• 78% of Americans say they get news from a local TV station.
• 73% say they get news from a national network such as CBS or cable TV station such as CNN or Fox News.
• 61% say they get some kind of news online.
• 54% say they listen to a radio news program at home or in the car.
• 50% say they read news in a local newspaper.
• 17% say they read news in a national newspaper such as the New York Times or USA Today.

The survey shows that online news consumption is often complimentary to more traditional media sources because it provides consumers with different experiences, such as the ability to get a quick news update (weather, headline, sports score, etc.), share an article or link, or offer an opinion in a comments section. Many people also find news updates on their computer's home page, in their email box, on Twitter feeds, and on social media sites - "more than 8 in 10 online news consumers get or share links in emails," the survey finds.

Traditional sources are less interactive and more reflective. They continue to be the headwaters of news, with their original reporting flowing out onto the web to be shared or hashed over in pools of social networks.

Interestingly, these social networks appear to be less interested in hashing over local news. From the survey findings:

The most popular online news subjects are the weather (followed by 81% of internet news users), national events (73%), health and medicine (66%), business and the economy (64%), international events (62%), and science and technology (60%).

Asked what subjects they would like to receive more coverage, 44% said scientific news and discoveries, 41% said religion and spirituality, 39% said health and medicine, 39% said their state government, and 38% said their neighborhood or local community.

*Edited

Neutral territory

On Monday the Federal Communications Commission is set to endorse several rules to keep the Internet open to all technologies, and prevent major carriers from discriminating against their competitors.

Google buddies up to newsrooms

After announcing a proposed platform that will allow publishers of any size to charge for content, Google has launched an experimental site called Fast Flip to gives big publishers a share of the advertising revenue from the search.

Neither of the products will save the publishing industry nor give independent bloggers and startups the kind of revenue they need to stay afloat. This does indicate, however, that Google sees a future in which people pay something for online content. In the former case, we have a farmer's market model in which smaller publishers can get something for home grown work. The latter points to a more traditional mall product, where name brands are on display.

Ken Doctor at Content Bridges has more on Fast Flip. He notes that Google, now #9 on the list of top news search engines, needed a better mousetrap. Indeed, Google may have found the ultimate cheese to lure newspapers and magazines away from all the other aggregators: revenue.

A specialized diet at Readers Digest

To survive both the decline in print and America's great differentiation, the now-bankrupt Readers Digest plans to transform itself from a general-interest publication into something better suited to our fragmented society.

As Robert Rector observes, Readers Digest once traded on a caricature of the upright, white, suburban middle-class family and, in doing so, gained a broad audience in an America that strove to be a being part of that world. The Internet has punctuated and amplified the cracks in this worldview, and now Readers Digest must become a caricature of itself. It will strip away the veneer of mainstream appeal and follow the cultural guideposts of the sect called American conservative.

Rector writes:

...the Digest, after years of trying to broaden its appeal, is being pushed in a decidedly conservative direction.

It is cutting down on celebrity profiles and ramping up on inspiring spiritual stories. Out are generic how-to magazine features; in are articles about military life. ...

Indeed, the Digest plans to introduce a new multifaceted effort produced with Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor, called the Purpose Driven Connection. For about $30, subscribers get a quarterly magazine with religious workbooks, along with DVDs featuring Warren, and membership in a social-networking Web site, including tips on what to pray for each week. It is available through churches and at Wal-Marts.

Eleventh

California ranks 11th in an annual survey of average Internet speeds for the 50 states and three U.S. territories. Delaware, home of the credit card company headquarters, is first. Puerto Rico is last. Montana ranks as the state with the slowest speeds, falling behind Alaska, which had the distinction last year.

The survey was done by the Communication Workers of America, which would like to see the government spend more money on upgrades. From the summary:

The results of this third annual Speed Matters survey of Internet speeds show that the U.S. has not made significant improvement in the speeds at which residents connect to the Internet. The average download speed for the nation was 5.1 megabits per second (mbps) and the average upload speed was 1.1 mbps. This was only a nine-tenths of a megabit per second increase (from 4.2 mbps to 5.1 mbps) since last year. At this rate, it will take the United States 15 years to catch up with current Internet speeds in South Korea. And when compared to the rest of the world, the United States ranks 28th in average Internet connection speeds.

Oh, and Jessica Biel is the celebrity most likely to give you a virus.

(via Chicago Tribune)

TMI?

The line separating private from public has shifted dramatically with the rise of the Internet culture. As we search and set up accounts on various social and work sites, we leave pieces of our identity behind. Data collectors have begun to stitch those pieces together to create a rough outline of our identities. A few websites, PeekYou and snitch.name among them, let users track individuals - famous and not famous at all - and get automatic updates when new pieces of the person's identity are deposited.

The Interntubes are fragile

According to a Facebook executive, a fierce denial-of-service attack aimed at a single Georgian blogger yesterday was what brought down Twitter and disrupted service on Facebook, LiveJournal, Blogger and YouTube.

CNET News has the story:

The blogger, who uses the account name "Cyxymu," (the name of a town in the Republic of Georgia) had accounts on all of the different sites that were attacked at the same time, Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook, told CNET News. ...

Political conflicts between Russia and its former republic spilled online last year with DoS attacks and Web site defacements going in both directions.

Are these sites really this vulnerable? Do the Russians (clearly implicated here) have that much technical kung fu? Or is there more to the story than an attack on a Georgian blogger?

*Also, one year ago today Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, marking the start of a 5-day war.

Surf's not up

The average time we spend on the Web has plateaued at about 12 hours per week, according to an annual survey, up from less than six hours a week in 2004. Faster Broadband speeds are given partial credit, since people don't have to sit wait as long for pages or videos to load. Researchers also say people are more accustomed to what's on the Web, meaning they are just surfing around but go online to find particular sites.

All of this could be an anomaly, of course, but the researchers seem to think we've hit a high water mark. Also, the survey uses self-reported data, and people do tend to play down how much time they spend on leisure activities, such as watching TV.

Some good news in the report for newspapers and magazines, though:

The report, released Monday, also indicates relative stabilization in other media channels, most notably newspaper and magazine reading.

Then there's this exchange with one of the study's analysts:

Ad Age: Some traditional media have actually shown less decline than what one might think, from the headlines. People reported no change in their TV habits from 2004 to 2009; they reported a 6% drop in magazine reading, although it appeared flat over the past year; and while newspaper reading has dropped 17% since 2004, it appears flat over the past year.

Ms. Rousseau-Anderson: Yes. Many people expected huge drops but as mentioned above, people aren't deserting traditional media and fully jumping to digital yet.

The capitalists are coming

So-called paywalls are coming to the Internet as surely as George Hearst came to Deadwood. We'll look back on this time of bickering between the AP and bloggers and the Jarvises and traditional journalists with a mix of nostalgia and regret once the big-monied interests move in, buy up the property and build their grand gates and fences. They're just waiting for the digital frontier to get settled before they move in to stake their claim.

Or, as Barry Diller said:

...Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, joining the refrain of media moguls who say an era of free Internet content is ending.

The media and technology executive, whose company runs the Ask.com search engine and the Match.com dating service, said it’s “mythology” to view the Internet as a system of free communications.

“It is not free, and is not going to be,” Diller said today at the Fortune Brainstorm conference in Pasadena, California.

Missing links

Shortly after the shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday, websites that hosted the writings of James von Brunn began erasing the links. Although caches of the writings still exist, the effort to remove his words has raised questions about online ethics and transparency.

From the Washington Post:

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, which resulted in the death of one security guard, several items were unearthed online that appeared to be written by von Brunn: a piece titled "Obama Is Missing," which questioned the president's citizenship, on conservative forum FreeRepublic.com. A Wikipedia user bio page (von Brunn had edited only sporadically), in which he wrote that Judaism is "the Enemy of Mankind." A long-stagnant personal site, HolyWesternEmpire.org, which included links to a novel.

Throughout Wednesday afternoon, these links began to disappear. Clicking on the personal site resulted in an error message. The Wikipedia user page vanished. The Free Republic link was also removed -- at least for a while. Current events Web site Daily Kos remarked on the removal, and a few hours later, the post reappeared.

Four in the evening

1. The Associated Press, normally quick to report on downsizing at newspapers, quietly thins its own ranks. Editor & Publisher

2. Forget the content, you've gotta get your search words and link pages in order if you want to be popular. Knight Digital Media

3. Google makes Bill Keller's frenemies list. NYO

4. Newspaper vs. the Internet, the cartoon. Slate

Rain day

It must be the weather: The Internet filter at the Los Angeles Daily Journal is temporarily down.

(Note: I'd mistakenly reported earlier that the filter was down for good, but that too was merely a temporary reprieve from the DJ's electronic censors.)

Suicide live

A Florida teen broadcast his suicide live on the web. From the BBC:

After several hours, when he had not moved some viewers finally notified the site's moderator, who then called the police.

The boy's sister said: "They got hits, they got viewers, nothing happened for hours."

It is unclear how many people watched the suicide unfold. Some reports suggest that some viewers thought it was a hoax.

The last transmission from the webcam is of a police officer bursting into Abraham Biggs's room, when he discovers his body and then he places his hand over the camera.

You won't read this all the way through

Word, words... yawn.

Newspaper execs have spent many sleepless nights and confused days trying to nip and tuck traditional newspaper journalism into a shape that fits the Internet. The tendency is to go for shorter, snappier, less wordy, more graphic-y, bullet-points-will-do front pages that entice grazers and excite the ADHD mind.

They may be on to something. A new study by Web researcher Jakob Nielson reinforces the idea that Internet users, on the whole, don't go online to read. Not in the traditional sense, anyway:

In the eye-tracking test, only one in six subjects read Web pages linearly, sentence by sentence. The rest jumped around chasing keywords, bullet points, visuals, and color and typeface variations. In another experiment on how people read e-newsletters, informational e-mail messages, and news feeds, Nielsen exclaimed, "'Reading' is not even the right word." The subjects usually read only the first two words in headlines, and they ignored the introductory sections. They wanted the "nut" and nothing else.

This has given rise to what I refer to as distraction journalism, which is designed to provide the click-through reader with bite-size packets of information, with a blog or sports score on the side.

While newspaper publishers seem to be increasingly cognizant of the way people "read" the Internet, and design their Web sites accordingly*, they should be just as cognizant of the downside of our online habits:

Ever since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, money has poured into public-school classrooms. At the same time, colleges have raced to out-technologize one another. But while enthusiasm swells, e-bills are passed, smart classrooms multiply, and students cheer — the results keep coming back negative. When the Texas Education Agency evaluated its Technology Immersion Pilot, a $14-million program to install wireless tools in middle schools, the conclusion was unequivocal: "There were no statistically significant effects of immersion in the first year on either reading or mathematics achievement."

If the primary mission of news organizations is to inform readers through well-reported and accurate stories, then we have to face the fact that Web-only publications cannot fulfill this role. At least, not unless we actively participate in shaping the way we use the Web (teaching kids to read on the Internet, making them use it to do more in-depth research, creating software to facilitate a more traditional literacy, etc.), rather than passively accepting it's design as inevitable.

To that end, journalism schools should stop trying to convince students to hop on board with the newest gimmick and instead lobby to make the Internet a place where good reporting can thrive.

*In this online environment, one would think small and medium-size papers would invest in smart copy editors who can quickly digest news stories and produce informative, accurate and interesting headlines and summaries for the Web page. In my own experience, and from what I see on many sites, this ain't happening.

Toll lanes on the information superhighway

We are living in a special time. A time as magical and carefree as it is fleeting. It is our version of free love. Rivers of free information are flowing through the intertubes and, for a small fee, we have unfettered access to most of it. A virtual orgy of free information. Generations to come will look back on this time with green-eyed jealousy, wishing the world would offer them a chance at the innocent experimentation and instant gratification we had, bitter at us for not realizing just how good we had it.

Because it's going end. Free is, as newspaper companies will vouch, not a workable business model. Free is never really free in the long run. And Internet providers are already plotting ways to cash in on our new found habits.

The latest idea is placing meters on the information flow. The more we use the Internet, the more we'll pay for it. It probably won't happen for a few years - they need more of us to get hooked on the goods before they raise the prices.

Unless, of course, we give up on net neutrality and let the big guys to squeeze out the little guys. That should free up some bandwidth. But even that might only forestall the inevitable.

So, gather ye gigabytes while ye may. Download what you can. Check out every corner of the Internet before they put the fences up and start charging entry fees. Make sure you enjoy this time because it soon shall pass.