Twitter was so abuzz with discussion about Google and fair use of AP content that I couldn’t resist riffing off yesterday’s post by BurrellesLuce Executive Vice President Steve Shannon regarding AP copyright discussions.
The graphic below shows tweet results for the terms “Google,” “AP,” “Copyright,” “NAA” (Newspaper Association of America) and “ACAP” (Automated Content Access Protocol). If one were to review quantitative share of conversation yielded by this graph you would think Google “owns” the conversation; however a qualitative look into these conversations shows if Google were to engage in a “pay-per-click” micro-payment system for copyrighted content, the search giant risks being abandoned by some searchers.
If public relations teaches us anything it’s that huge fires can be started by a small spark. This graphic also demonstrates that the metrics produced the fastest and easiest often tell only part of the story.
Google has already found it’s difficult to monetize social media (e.g. purchase of YouTube) and may experience some bumps in their upward trajectory if micro-payment of copyrighted content takes hold. This situation will continue to evolve and Internet users will be watching closely to protect the free search.
I’m left thinking this is one more reason to protect the free press and investigative journalism that could provide in-depth reporting on this very important issue. Is this the tipping point showing the importance of getting the estimated 15K-20K trained reporters back to work? While micro-blogging grows increasingly popular, my guess is micro-payments won’t be embraced with quite the same fervor. I want a good investigative journalist to take the reins on this and let us know the real ramifications and the likely future of copyrighted material.
Questions specifically for public relation pros:
Will micro-payments change how some of you currently use the free alert system?
How will you be affected if Google alerts are forced to change its source list?
Are you prepared to modify your benchmarks to accommodate this change?
Dear Johna,
I think that your graphic exposes the “room elephant” for what it realy is.
I have been concerned about the success of Google for some time. Google’s biggest problem has always been the consistantly high quality of their product, and the excellence of their marketing plan. They have done such a good job, that they have stifled any significant competition.
I was disappointed last year when Yahoo refused to join Microsoft in her merger offer. A “Mic-ro-hoo” might have been able to have given Google a run for her money.
Look at what happens all over the world, hundreds of millions of times a day, from Albania to Zimbabwe.
An Internet user wants to discover something.
Let’s say that his friends are all a “twitter” about an article on widgets. An article that they had been “Google Alerted” to, from a “Google News America” story which originally had been posted, some three minutes earlier, on “Google News Slovakia”.
The protagonist in our novella wants to learn more, so he goes to Google types in widgets and hits the search button.
Fifteen nano-seconds later he is confronted by five adds for widgets, prominently placed at the top of the page . “Buy widgets here !” is their common theme.
And on the right side of the page, in an eye catching enlarged bold font, he notices four more widget related adds.
He is momentarily intrigued by the adds, “My life as a widget” and “How you can get that widget monkey off your back ‘ “Come to Amazon now. You and your mouse are only a click away, from getting the the widget fix you both so desperately crave,
The image of “shooting-up Google, litteraly” does briefly flashes through the mind of our favorite mouseketeer. But then our Odysseus puts “wax in his ears, ties himself to his chair ” and sails onward, on Google search.
Finally our hero reaches the section dedicated to “legitimate widget information links.”
But to his horror he discovers that the next dozen links ar actually widget info-mercials masquerading as information links
But he doesn’t give up because he remembers that by Google’s own admission their computers prioritize their links, in the descending order of their potential future add value index.
Our hero doesn’t know what that means. But he does know that by now he has logged into a half dozen pseudo-information links which sirend that they would provide quality information. And each time he had been Googled into visiting more widge-o-mercials.
By now he feels less like a Knights Templar and more like Don Quixote. But he decides to lower his lance, and attack one more link on “widgets for windmills”.
To his amazement this link provides just the information he has been seeking.
Nirvana! He whispers into his mouse’s ear.
This link has turned his questions into revelations. With “his heart all a flutter and his mind all a shutter” he fast forwards to G-mail, to share his epiphanies with his “twit-mates”
At the top of his G-mail page, Google has posted one last desperate add “A little bird told me that you have been thinking about widgets! .”Last chance! Discount widgets! click here now! !”
But he ignores what he foolishly thinks is the last widget add he will ever have to read.
Finally when he shares his widget revelations with his twit-mates, they go wild with joy!
And for five nano-seconds our “missing link’s” cyber-dreams came true !
Then one “twerable-twatteler” ends his joy, by informing his t-clan that: “Thanks to a recent legal ruling… They will all be able to read the book “Everything ever known about widgets.” And that it can be read, free of charge, at ( Google Free Books dot com)
Free that is, if you don’t consider the expense of the mental anguish of looking at 900 Google widget adds that are peppered through out the book’s 300 pages.
Please forgive me for twatteling on about this topic.
Why did I ever offer to open a box for this Pandora? You have provably been repeating to yourself, for the last four minutes.
But there have been some thoughts that I just had to get off my chest.
Right now it looks like Google is about to corner the market on information. And whoever controls the information, controls our public relation’s golden goose. (eggs and basket included, It’s only a “glick” away! )
Got to run. A Tweet-mate just twold me that, Google was offering a cash bid of 250 million to buy Twitter. Silly me! I thought that a competitor had bid 500 million earlier. But then, just for a moment, I quixoticaly forgot that Google doesn’t have any real competitors, now do they?
Well Ms. Burke thank you for opening the discussion. My story is my question.
So what is the answer?
We who are about to post, salute you.
Most Sincerely,
Jackson Drake
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