News Corp Blames Digital Again

News Corp's CEO Robert Thomson has been out attacking Google, Facebook and Linkedin once more, this time accusing them of "Kleptocracy, Piracy and Zealotry".

Yes, the organisation that: breaks into voicemail, publishes fiction as truth and plays politics with its publications...has claimed that online social networks are spammers that help themselves to content without paying for it.

He also publicly stated that “The words Intellectual Property don’t appear in the Google alphabet."- but far be it for me to tell a journalist that you can make any words from the alphabet.

Thomson went on to further attack the new media sector by saying "None of them actually create content, and they certainly have little intention of paying for it, but they do redistribute the content created by others – they would argue that such redistribution is a natural extension of their role as social networks. I would argue that much of the redistribution is an unnatural act”

All this smacks of hypocrisy... especially given News Corp in 2005 bought MySpace, then a leading social network that in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the USA... before watching over its decline and its sale in 2011 for less than 8% of its purchase price.

Also... given that News Corp has only recently decided to change the direction of its WSJ and Dow Jones publishing sector to focus on digital media efforts and that its own Social News Agency Storyful is responsible for finding and redistributes news stories (and apparently hiding Rebekah Brooks in their offices)... methinks they need to keep their insults to themselves.

Full story here:
http://mumbrella.com.au/news-corp-ceo-lashes-google-for-piracy-zealotry-and-kleptocracy-at-lowy-institute-event-312252 

New Google nav hints at Google Plus desparation

I recently blogged about the new navigation that Google was rolling out across it's varied and rich estate of sites. The older black nav bar looks to be consigned to the scrapheap (at least for some areas) and the new navigation sits right-proudly in a right-aligned format on top of some of Google's principle functionality (Search, GMail, Calendar, etc.).

Although this change may have been done to easily give consistent and easy access to further Google areas... I can't help think that the search giant has also tried to put the link to Google Plus, it's own social networking platform, in a more prominent place. Google has therefore moved this link from the far left (where is sits as a link with your name and a plus symbol) to center stage, where it now the first of only three text links.

To be frank, there can't be anywhere more obvious to the user than putting the Google+ hyperlink in its new place and hints at desperation to drive users to a tool that still doesn't seem to have the user adoption that it might have expected or hoped.

I am still not using Google Plus

There are enough things in my life to keep me busy (and provide a distraction) including the time I spend online. Of that online time I now spend a lot more of it blogging and on Twitter than I used to, mainly because this is where I get the most benefit and get my news. This therefore means I spend less time on Facebook as well. So although I can instantly communicate with friends and family there, I really don't use it as often as I used to.

As for Google Plus (Or Google+ as some call it), I've never really got into it and still don't really see the purpose of it. Sure, some friends use it and some business contacts are 'hanging out' there, but for me I don't need either another personal social platform or another business-orientated social network.

Perhaps, like the Dunbar's Number (the amount of people somewhere between 100 and 230 that it becomes almost impossible to sustain social relationships with), there's also a maximum number of Social Networks that the average human is capable of using at anyone time? For me it is around 4 (if you include the two blogs that I write for, plus Twitter and Facebook), but for others it might be higher or lower.  This might also go some way to explaining why I don't really find Pinterest Pinteresting and why Instagram hasn't gripped me.

I'm also not going to force myself to use Google Plus. Yes, I am aware that there are quite possible positive effects for using it (e.g. for SEO) and this does not mean other individuals or organisations shouldn't use it as a social media channel. It's just not for me right now... or at least until I stop doing something else and get less distracted!

Is F-Commerce really working?

Facebook Commerce (or F-commerce as it is colloquially known), the practice of buying items within the walls of Fortress Facebook, took a knock today. The slightly unsurprising news is that the Social Network transaction platform Payvment is closing soon and handing over its customers to a competitor. This removes a key player from the market and will be a sore lesson to those that put up the $8m investment.

F-commerce for over a year now has been heralded as the new wave of online retail. However the hype and the reality haven't come together in an online proposition that really works for most purchases. It's fair to say that Facebook does not always work for all kinds of online commerce situations.

Even Payvment's CEO recently stated: "Social product discovery and social commerce have very little in common with the considered purchase process" 

What this means is that Social commerce is apparently better at delivering impulse purchases for products or services that the user wasn't necessarily looking for. Meaning that more expensive items that have a longer purchase cycle than just 'see it, like it, buy it'  aren't suited to F-commerce.

Payvment's CEO Jim Stoneham gives more details in his interview here allthingsd.com/20130128/payvment-pulls-the-plug-on-facebook-commerce however insiders and analysts must surely now be looking at the other players in the market to see how they fare.