Rupert Mudoch is on to something..

On Monday the Guardian wrote up a story about Murdoch blocking Google from listing stories from his newspapers. This in addition to him changing his newspaper websites from being freely accessible to sitting behind a paywall made plenty of people think Murdoch was crazy.

It is true this could turn out to be a gift to his competitors as this blog mentions. Indeed the Telegraph on whose site that blog is hosted must be rubbing their hands in glee.

Maybe.

For me, I believe this is an opportune moment for newspaper publishers and one that may not come again for a while. Rupert Murdoch is taking advantage.

Rupert Murdoch is right to say that when Google first started indexing the web; publishers were not aware of what they were signing up to. In fact I think we can safely say they were completely blind to the consequences of what they were agreeing to. Countering this of course is the  fact that Google delivers 100,000 clicks every minute via Google News and its search engine. Removing itself from Google search is surely a surefire way to deliver more clicks to News International’s competitors right?

Definitely.

But it is an extremely short term view which will not help news publishers in the long term and that is where the opportunity that is available today comes from.

The key company mentioned in the comments made by Murdoch were that he would remove his websites from Google (my emphasis). In recent months, Microsoft launched Bing and gained enough traction that people are starting to believe Bing might go somewhere. It has of course a long way to go but one of the things Microsoft is doing is using its financial power to help it win the battle. Not just through its significant investment in R&D but also through partnerships. Witness Bing’s first mover deal with Twitter (which was quickly responded to by Google).

I believe either through a bright idea internally at News International or through a direct Microsoft approach that News International will strike commercial terms with Microsoft Bing and deliver its content through its news aggregation channel and through its search engine.

That will reset the relationship between search engines and news publishers and possibly lead to the newspapers being freely available on the web. I wonder how long it will be before Google agrees commercial terms with News International?

My bet is it will be quick enough that News International articles will never be removed from Google..

[update] The Financial Times is reporting that Micrsoft are in talks with News International to index their news stories in Bing.

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I love finding new opportunities to see new information even if around 50% of marketers are supposed to feel overloaded with data (Forrester) – if you think about how much data is out there, it is not difficult to understand the issue. The difference is that everyday there are new and simpler ways to act on that data and do something useful. The trick is to approach it in small bites and understand what you want to achieve.

Anyhow, before I get sidetracked on data – this is more informational and interesting than a tool to deal with data better. Inside twitter there is a way to favourite tweets. It is not the greatest feature ever as it is not searchable so you only ever browse through the most recent items. I have ended up using it more as a save for later feature than a favourite/like feature.

Favstar.fm allows you to see who is favouriting your tweets as well as showing a leaderboard for the most favourited/most recent tweets. v cool

As I said, more interesting than anything else – it did allow me to find some new people on Twitter though – assuming that is a good thing

[image credit: kevin dooley]

Encouraging discussion and community is an important part of the social web and Disqus has played a big part in one the most underrated parts of the social web – comments.

So I am intrigued by the teaser campaign that is going out around the web – expectations are definitely being raised. The video really doesnt say too much.. but it does sound like they are planning on uping the battle against Echo and Intense Debate.

On the administration side, I am definitely looking forward to a better management interface.. and hopefuly an easier way to find other people commenting on similar sites (though that last bit is speculation on my part); whilst for commenters the ability to go back and edit comments is a god send – how often do you notice a typo right after clicking submit?

What I really want is the ability to respond to comments on posts within my RSS reader (similar to the way Feedly does this with Friendfeed) and though it is not something Disqus can resolve, real time delivery of RSS feeds as most of the time conversations have already been had on the post by the time I receive it and everyone has moved on to the next conversation.

In this hype-bubble of real-time; they have managed to squeeze in the phrase on the video.. without really saying what it is. Maybe Daniel Ha will elaborate..

Anyhow here is the video.. and of course as soon as it launches it will be live on this website

DISQUS V3 from Giannii on Vimeo.

Some interesting research by comscore and ofcom was released recently showing the strength of UK social networks..

First up, from Comscore; data on the Top 10 Social Networking sites in the UK:

Secondly, also from comscore, showing that unsurprisingly younger audiences are more engaged today;

Finally research from Ofcom shows that it is amongst the older audiences that social networks are experiencing the most growth. 25-34 years olds on Facebook increased from 40% last year to 46% this year; whilst 35-54 years grew the fastest – up 8% to 35%.

What was most interesting though was that 15-24 year olds decreased by 5% to 50% over last year. It is the first time it has decreased so it is not exactly a trend but it will be interesting to see whether this is a blip or the start of some longer trend. Could youngsters be falling out of love with social networks? They are definitely still using the internet as much as before. My bet this is a blip and that usage will continue to grow.

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• Cyberkids abandon social networking (guardian.co.uk)
• Comscore: 2/3 of UK over 55s on social networks (thisisherd.com)

It has been relatively quiet when it comes to launching new webservices/products/companies lately. A global recession does that to the world. But recently there have been a few new services worth mentioning:

foursquare: Not available in London (come on guys!) yet, this company has been launched by Naveen Salvadurai and Dennis Crowley, who was one of the guys who founded dodgeball.com before it got bought (and ruined) by Google in 2005. It’s all about using the location based technology of your mobile phone to have fun and find new ways to explore the city. Like dodgeball, it helps you meet up with your friends and (here’s the game part) let you earn points and unlock badges for discovering new places, doing new things and meeting new people. It sounds like a cross between Qype (a local search website for restaurants, bars etc) and dodgeball (an early location based social network).

lazyfeed: there has always been a tonne of information flying around the net, and google helped you find it all. Then Twitter happened and we all realised that what we actually needed was information about what is happening now as well as yesterday. There is too much information. Lazyfeed pulls in your footprint (or sites/keywords you are interested in) online (through services like Twitter, blogs, Flickr and delicious) and presents you with the latest and greatest content without you having to look for it. Great for lazy people   It is in private beta right now, but if you follow them on twitter here, I am sure they’ll let you know when new invites become available.

[image credit: andy castro]

Related articles by Zemanta

• Even Foursquare’s Hype is Recycled from Dodgeball (gawker.com)
• You: Foursquare: Why It May Be the Next Twitter (mashable.com)
• Find the tweeter next door (news.cnet.com)