Huffington going Facebook: Another lesson for News Sites!

The other day I wrote about how News Sites should think of innovative ideas to reach more people in stead of cribbing about Aggregators stealing their traffic and here is Huffington Post with one bright idea!

Huffington is going Facebook with Huffpost Social News! What are they upto? As we hear from Arianna Huffington:

When you sign up for it -- and I hope you will right now -- HuffPost Social News finds your Facebook friends who are also reading HuffPost and links you together on our site so you can dive deeper into the stories you like best. (But don't worry, you'll still have complete control over what stories and comments are shared with your friends, as well as what goes on your Facebook wall, and into your friends' news feeds. See details at end of post.)

The explosive growth of online social networking has fundamentally changed our relationship with news. It's no longer something we passively take in. We now engage with news, react to news, and share news. News has become an important element of community -- something around which we gather, connect, and converse. And we can all become part of the evolution of a story now -- expanding it with comments and links to relevant information, adding facts and differing points of view.

 Now, whoever said Links kill traffic should think again! Think of the amount space Huffington will get on Facebook if this idea clicks and people start clicking. There will be links to Huffington all over Facebook. Aren't News Aggregators doing a similar help to News Sites that give original content? Or are the News Sites one day going to stand up and say Search Engines should also pay for searching them out and showing them on the search page because Search Engines kill traffic? Bing already has a User Interface that permits users to bring up more content from the original site to help them decide if they want to go to the site or not. Google has already integrated Google News into its search results so that relevant news links come up when people search. If people only read headlines and are done with it why would experts say Google does that to subsidize people who create content? What do these tell us? Simple, where ever they are links matter and they don't kill traffic!

Image from Huffington Post

A battle of Links is on!

Arnon Mishkin wrote "The Falacy of the Link Economy" on PaidConetent.org, adding fuel to the fire that News Sites are already in. With Murdoch announcing his plans to turn all his News Sites into paid ones, the News Sites were severely criticized for not being capable of adapting to the changing needs of the Internet Era. And Arnon's post as a reaction to the demand by Associate Press and the likes for News Aggregation Sites to pay to link worsened the criticism further.

From Google News to Huffington Post, News Aggregation and Syndication Sites are aplenty. And Arnon claims to have done a study of these Aggregators. He claims he found out the following:

The vast majority of the value gets captured by aggregators linking and scraping rather than by the news organizations that get linked and scraped. We did a study of traffic on several sites that aggregate purely a menu of news stories. In all cases, there was at least twice as much traffic on the home page as there were clicks going to the stories that were on it. In other words, a very large share of the people who were visiting the site were merely browsing to read headlines rather than using the aggregation page to decide what they wanted to read in detail. Obviously, this has major ramifications for content creators’ ability to grow ad revenue, as the main benefit of added traffic is the potential for higher CPMs. (Disclosure: I have consulted for the AP and other content creators, though not on this particular issue.)

 If Arnon learned from his study that aggregators hinder the growth of News Sites, there is something seriously wrong with his method of study. I use Aggregators to keep in touch with the world as I do not have time to go and look at every News Site around. Aggregators bring the news to me and if I find something I'm interested in, I click on the link given and go read the full story. I repeat, 'if I'm interested in". Or if it is something that really matters to me. News Sites can't force me into reading any crap they write as they used to do when News Paper was the source of information. Remember those days when you had to buy the whole newspaper just to read on or two stories you were interested in. I don't buy newspapers any more. With  Aggregators around, I get to choose what I read. Contrary to what Arnon suggests, I click on the link and go to the site to read the whole story as I don't get the full picture from the Aggregator. Aggregators give me the headline and the first one or two lines of the story.

I think Agrregators add value to a link. But what that link leads to is for the News Sites to decide. If they don't have anything that will take me to their site, I won't go there for sure. I don't see the point in blaming the Aggregators for the incapability of News Sites to provide quality [interesting and worth reading!] content.

Whatever, the battle of linking is on! If News Sites are going to seriously consider the three suggestions Arnon makes in his post, then the present Aggregators are doomed. They either have to pay for the content and links they use or they may have to run advertisements from the original content developers on the Aggregator Sites.

All said and done, I still can't see Arnon's point. If his theory of Aggregators stealing traffic from News Sites holds water, then even if all the News Sites come together and create an Aggregator of their own, as he suggests, things will be pretty same. The new Aggregator will have all the traffic and News Sites will have none, unless they improve content.

I think the issue with the News Sites is about how the package information. On-line Versions of News Papers look pretty like the News Paper it self. Many News paper Sites have E-versions of their Printed Versions. I think that was such a bad idea to digitize the printed versions of news paper. If only they could spend that money to make locally relevant content available. If only they could use that money to allow users to set their preferences so that they get what they usually read. If only they could spent some money to make their headlines more catchy. If only they could use that money to promote citizen journalism. If only they could use that money to convert their News Sites into News Services. I wish!

Crisis Phobia and "The Top 100 Search Terms Queried by Kids"

I remember a Professor of mine who used to always call our attention to the 'crisis phobea' some writers try to spread. I don't know if you have ever noticed some writers going about their job as though the world is going to end if you don't listen to them. I remembered my Professor and his long lectures on the perpetrators of crisis phobia when I read OnlineFamily.Norton's list of  top 100 terms kids search on-line.

Top 100 Search Terms Queried by Kids? Do you know what they are? There is everything from YouTube to Google to Face Book to Michael Jackson to Pokemon to you name what you consider popular with kids on net and they are there! Take a look at it and at first it appears to be a very innocent list. But wait a second! Is it as innocent as Norton is trying to sound?

There are some search terms in the list  that can be very disturbing where parents are concerned. Sex is fourth in the list. Porn is sixth in the list. And at least four more 'taboo' words occur on the list. And the write up does not mention the age levels of the children who would have searched these words while they were surfing. It simply gives you a general list of 100 search terms and of course a note to many of them in case parents sat wondering what they were.

Norton claims that they tracked down 3.5 million searches and a search term had to be submitted at least 50 times to qualify as a 'kids' top search term.' See how they are trying to validate their findings in the best way possible. And Norton says [See the crisis words stressed using inverted comas]:

According to OnlineFamily.Norton, kids’ top 100 search terms include sites like YouTube, eBay and Craigslist, as well as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. The words “sex” and “porn” also made it to the top, ranking number four and six respectively.

And one clearly understands that the post target parents as there are explanations to most of the search terms used. Why did they do it? Of course we know - they have this OneFamily Child Protection, Net Filtering Software to sell. Yah, the one like China's Green Dam. And this report shows us even they can keep track of what you are doing with your PC, like Green Dam.

Please don't get me wrong! I do not endorse children visiting pornographic sites. I do not endorse adults visiting pornographic sites even. Because most of these sites spread malware, viruses and spyware. It is not healthy for your computer if you visit them. And to make sure that your personal information like passwords and credit card number are safe, you need to make sure that spyware and malware do not infest your PC or MAC. And I know kids sometimes tend to visit such sites out of curiosity and in turn gets the computer affected. And perhaps, it is good to have a Site Filtering System on your computer.

However, that does not justify the the way Norton has tried to scare poor parents into buying their software. [Ya, it is free now! But what about later?] It does not justify their attempt to generalize search terms and make it look like 'kids are as pervert as adults' I would not have bothered if they gave a reference to the age level of children. But they have made the list look like every kid from a toddler to a teenager needs to be closely watched like police watches a suspect, every time they go on-line. I can not agree with the idea that they collect user data [which is personal] and publish it on-line and try to make that a selling point!

Print Screen Image from Norton's Site

The Cyxymu Lesson: Forwarding Emails is E-Sin!

I have many friends who keep in touch only by forwarding emails. There are people from whom I receive forwarded emails on a day to day basis. Many of them do it very innocently, I know, knowing little that they are possibly making themselves and the receiver vulnerable to potential internet misuse by hackers and spammers.

We have a live example in front of us: Twitter. It is quiet possible that when you click on this link you get an error message and the site does not load as Twitter is under a Denial of Service Attack. I am told that the Denial of Service attack on Twitter has increased ten times on the second day of the attack. I am not going into the 'geopolitical nature' of the attack. I am not going to make assumptions about who did this. I am not so much worried about if the Russian Government did it or some Criminal Outfit is behind this attack. That is Twitter's job to find out and tell the world. I am more bothered about how this could happen!

How could this happen? Wikipedia tells me that a Denial of Service Attack happens when the number of requests for a particular site increases beyond the capacity of the servers on which a site is hosted. They also call it Distributed Denial of Service Attack. Hackers target popular sites and prevent them from functioning through a Denial of Service Attack. And this is what happened to Twitter.

DoS on Twitter seems to have happened as an individual or an organization was targeting a blogger named Cyxymu. When repeated requests for his page on Twitter, LiveJournal et al happened on August 6, 2009, the servers where the sites are hosted could not handle it and as a result the whole Twitter Site stopped functioning.

People have different opinion about how it happened. Some say that Russian Hackers hacked Cyxymu's Gmail Account and started sending links to his accounts to people. And when people started clicking on these links to know what exactly it was, DoS began! I don't think so because an attack of this sort cannot survive on email links alone, though it is true that a Joe Job Email Campaign happened from Cyxymu's Gmail Account.

There is another theory, which is more plausible. Experts say that the attack was managed using botnets. Botnets are, in simple words a network of computers which runs software robots. The hackes who drowned Twitter seem to have a huge network of computers they could use to send repeated requests for the site. Where did they get all these computers from, because you need millions of computers to organize an attack at this level of ferocity?

Probably they got all these computers linked up through emails. People send you hundreds of forwarded emails. Have you ever wondered where they come from? Who would take such struggles to create information and send it to you for free? Who made the original message?

I have no idea who sends them. But I know one thing. The original messages are sent using automated services available online. There are sites that let you send bulk emails for free and keep a track of them. [I am not giving you a link to an example site for an obvious reason - I don't want to be a party to the prorogation of such sites] Usually these emails, though they may sound very innocent, contain malware that plant robots in your system. They link up with each other and create a network after they are in your system. This way hackers get to use your system even without your knowledge.

I think we should stop forwarding emails and opening emails that are forwarded. Forwarded emails compromise the security of personal information as well as personal computers. Forwarding E-mails should be considered as E-sin. Why?

1. Forwarded emails are an easy way for hackers to spread their bots on systems across the world. 
2. Forwarded emails may contain viruses that are harmful to your system.
3. Because there are systems that can easily track forwarded mails, you should know that your are compromising the email addresses of the friends to whom you send the email. Hackers who keep track of the mails add the new addresses to their mailing list and harvest.
4. Forwarding E-mails is a waste of other people's time. They may not be interested in the mail you have forwarded. 

After Thought: I also have another doubt. There are many companies today that allow you to use Remote PC Support for free. They permit you to use software that allows you to access and use computers from anywhere. Have you ever thought why they do it for free? If I can use that software to control computers in my network remotely, they companies who give them to me can do it too. And what if these companies used the computers that use their Remote PC Support Software and turn them into a botnet? I am told that there are companies who sell such networks to third parties for campaigns and other internet related activities. There are people who sell botnets and make good money out of it. What if the attackers bought one such botnet to attack Twitter?

Happy News Bloggers: Mr. Murdoch will charge for online content from next year!

Rupert Murdoch is an old man now. 78 years old. As an old man, may be he has lost that spark which saw him rise to the position of the media emperor he is today. Perhaps, that is the reason why he has announced the most uncharming business decision of his career the day before yesterday- a decision to make all his news sites available only to users who pay, from next year.

He said, :"Quality journalism is not cheap,..The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites."

You should read people's reaction to that. Many reacted as though, it is not a big deal and they consider News Corps news sites as crap. Most of them said they don't care as they are not going to pay to read his sites anyway. News Analysers sounded very disappointed that a person like Murdoch took such a naive decision. Stories ran on blogs and technology review sites on how this decision is all about News Corps digging its own grave. Journalists are wondering how and why this is too risky for nothing. One reviewer even went to the extent of saying only Apple can save newspapers.

Is Murdoch serious about what he said or was he just testing the waters? True, his business ventures reported a net loss of $ 3.4 Billion this fiscal year. True, recession is at its best and on-line advertisement revenue is dipping. True, Wall Street Journal, a paid news site from Murdoch is doing relatively well and has users paying to read news. But, is he serious? Or was he, as I said, just testing the waters? Or, was it just a sudden outburst of frustration? May be, it was all the three put together.

Why do I say that? I think Murdoch is missing a key point here. On-line content is just a tool. I don't believe that Internet is all about Information. Internet is about advertisements. Certain products are just tools to sell certain other products. Why do Google let me search for free? Why does Google or Wordpress permit me to upload content on my blog for free? Why do social communities allow me in for free? Why are there many sites that give me many of their services for free? Why are open source applications free? Why is the news free, after all? I think these things are free because they want me to stick around as long as possible. You stick around so that you buy something, sooner or later.

 This is not a new business model. In India we have temples and churches organizing festivals around their theme of worship. They spend a lot of money, organizing a fare, staging plays or other performances by professional artists etc. These religious festivals last for five to ten days. The plays or other performances go well into midnights. You don't pay anything to watch a play during the festival. Why do they do it for free? Because, they know that people who come to the festival will visit the temple or church to pray. But the few coins they offer when they pray is not the target! People come to these festivals to set up stalls that sell from glass bangles to kitchenware. They pay lovely loads of cash to people who run the temple or church as rent for these five to ten days. In fact, there are groups of people in India, who travel from one festival spot to another and make a decent living!

To me, Internet sounds like a temple or church festival. And people who make content available or provide spaces for people to meet are like the Temple or Church Committee Members. They run the show. Sites like Murdoch's or Google's or Facebook's or Twitter's are these plays or performances staged during this Big Bang Festival called Internet. People come to the festival, because these performances are for free. And as they come, some of them, sooner or later most of them, will buy from the people who set up stalls in Google's or Murdoch's or Facebook's or Twitter's premises.

What happens if Murdoch makes his sites 'pay-per-click' as he says? May be there are going to be people who are willing to pay like there are people to read Wall Street Journal. But imagine the number of people who would have read Wall Street Journal, if it was available for free?

And if Murdoch is going to hide his content behind the 'paywalls', what about those people who hit the search engines for anything and everything? Google, Bing and Yahoo! If they won't have traces of Murdoch's Sites, won't he disappear from the minds of people gradually? This is why I said, Murdoch's announcement is happy news to Bloggers.

I am sure he will not hide all his content behind the paywalls. He will float enough summary of news stories around to make sure that he is on search engines. May be he will enter into deals with Search Engines to make sure that he is there, when people search. But even then,, it is happy news for bloggers!

Experts say that about 90% of his traffic will die because of this decision. Let Murdoch take his ten percent! Where will the rest go? The rest will trun to sites that make content available for free. I think, if Murdoch will implement his decision, there is going to be an increase in traffic to blogs we have around. Is this not happy news bloggers?

Image from Wikipedia

George Orwell, 1984, Amazon.com and Kindle: A Historical Irony!

George Orwell and his famous novel 1984. Amazon.com and their latest publication hype, Kindle. Who would have thought that July 17, 2009 was going to connect them in the most bizarre and paradoxical way ever? On July 17, 2009, Amazon.com remotely removed copies of 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell from Kindle because of some copyright dispute they had with someone.

Little would have George Orwell thought that one day he and his book are going to be the victims of a Big Brother when he wrote about the "memory hole" Of course Orwell was talking about censorship. I think what Amazon did was worse than censoring and it serves them best to have taken George Orwell away from the Kindle Users. They allowed a historical irony by doing so!

What does it mean when Amazon removes a book from Kindles without the permission of the owners? It means 'you must be afraid' This means Amazon has the power to remotely control your Kindle. Now, that is not good news. If Amazon has the power to control your Kindle, what about Microsoft? Do they have the power to control your laptops and PCs? If Amazon can remove a book from your Kindle, what about service providers like Google or Yahoo? Do they have the power to meddle with your emails and documents, you have on-line? It worries me when I think that soon we are all moving into a more modern version of 'cloud computing.'

I remember an English Film I had seen long ago. I don't remember the name of the film. But I remember that it was about robots. There were robots in every house. And the Government introduced a more advanced version of robots and gave one to each family. Little did they know that the new robots were spying on the families. And one fine morning, the Government took control of all the robots centrally. The film was something like that. But I remember the protagonist, who was always against the idea of having a robot in his house. No one saw his point untill it was too late. The Amazon Kindle Episode reminded me of the film.

The seven flaws of Twitter?

MarketWatch's  columnist John C Dvorak seems to be too irritated with the news of people looking at Twitter as a new source of news, in real time. He calls the idea of Twitter as a News Source 'Horsecrap". He says: 'The microblog is simply not a news source." He writes off Twitter as 'unpredictable noise in the crowded darkness." in his column "Second Opinion" in Market Watch.

Well, here I have a second third opinion about what John wrote about the idea of Twitter as a potential news source:

1. Elephant Syndrome: I hope John will be kind enough to show us one news paper, one TV Channel or at least one Online News Service that does not have elephant syndrome. I don't know why John does not understand any 'breaking-news' for that matter is an 'elephant'. 
2. Unvested Reporters: We hear this ever since bloggers started writing about issues that matter to the community at large. We hear that bloggers are no good at giving the news. But we have sometimes seen the Big Guys in Journalism depending on the Small Guys in Blogging for News. I don't know if John has purposefully not seen instances where Bloggers have reported better than Journalists. I think John's statement about J-school professors applies to John himself. Let me add a few words and take off a few words from John's own sentence to show how! "The silly notion of citizen journalism propagated undersetimated by J-school professors columnists seeking some excuse for their continued existence is part of the problem."
   
3. Vlunerability to manipulation: I hope John has his history of Journalism right. I don't know if John has heard about the American Government manipulating the news sources before any war. I don't know why John thinks some 'Workers' Party' [??] can manipulate only 'Twitter." The fact is anything can be manipulated, if it can be. 
4. Hoaxes and Goof Balls: John sounds like Hoaxes and Goof Balls started happening only after people started blogging. I don't know why John doesn't know the public will fall over and over again for hoaxes even if Twitter doesn't exist. 
5. Lack of Access: I don't understand why one should have access to spokespeople and officials to report news. There are many instances in history when the Officials have lied and gave false information to the public. News is not just about swallowing the official version as it is. The photograph of a cop beating an old lady might be a useless piece of information to John, but not to people like me.
6. Lack of Analysis: I don't know which J-school professor taught John that news is all about analysis. News is news. Analysis comes after the news. I have a suggestion. Let Bloggers and Twitter users report news. Then people like John who make a living analysing things can go ahead and do their bit of analysis instead of simply writing off Twitter Users.
7. Skewed Priorities. Twitter is about the users himself or herself now. Like blogging was once. Why can't it be about other things too, like blogging is now? 

It is sad that writers like John messes up their priorities [skewed priorities?] and blurs their vision about the possibilities of social networking! People like him should be encouraging it!