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Archive for the 'Google' Category

Toward a RedState/Human Events YouTube Debate

Published by William Beutler on December 2, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blogs vs. MSM, CNN, Cable News, Daily Kos, Debates, Elections, Fred Thompson, Google, Hillary Clinton, MSM vs. Blogs, National Politics, New Media Strategies, Online Campaigns, RedState, Republicans, Technology and White House '08. 2 Comments

RedState and Human Events would do a better job than CNN and YouTube

On Thursday I gave a somewhat-impulsive thumbs-up to RedState’s call for CNN to sack their political director. National Review’s indispensible Jim Geraghty has outlined eight editorial oversights (four quite serious, four merely problematic) in CNN’s vetting of the televised questioners. One or two would be enough to generate a blogswarm, but eight looks like malicious negligence, and it subseqently became a full-fledged blogstorm. Worse, CNN’s statement didn’t even attempt to be a “non-apology apology” — they’re digging in their heels and claiming:

The issues raised during last night’s debate were legitimate and relevant no matter who was asking the questions. The vested interests who are challenging the credibility of the questioners are trying to distract voters from the substantive issues they care most about.

Did somebody say “fake but accurate”? As QandO’s McQ notes, the hubris implicit in that statement is galling:

Says who? Says CNN, that’s who. It is the network that chose the questions that would be aired. Consequently what aired had nothing to do with what voters found to be the substantive issues of the day, but instead had everything to do with — say it with me — what CNN decided were the substantive issues of the day.

I stand by my initial judgement — in fact, I am all the more sure of it — but I realize it isn’t going to happen. (FWIW, CNN’s political director is Sam Feist; one wonders if indie rock/iPod Nano darling Feist could do any worse). And the truth is it wouldn’t make up for the debacle, so I concede that a change is not imperative. What would be better is a pro-active solution — that is, another debate. And so I am very intrigued by a new proposal, this time issued jointly by RedState and Human Events (both subsidiaries of Eagle Pubishing), for a “do-over debate”:

We have a base of readers who represent the Republican wing of the Republican Party. You — and the Republican Party — deserve to face the questions posed by undecided Republicans, not Democratic activists. We will solicit and obtain YouTube videos from those people and vet each questioner to establish that they are — really — undecided Republicans. We hope to include soldiers in the field in Iraq, Young Republicans, and others who still have not decided among you.

Today, allow us to make you this offer: We will organize a debate at a time and date amenable to you all. We will work with a national broadcaster to broadcast the debate as well as offer it online. We, not the liberal drive by media, will ensure the questioners are who they say they are. And we will choose them based on criteria that will be fully disclosed to you all which ensure the questioners aren’t activists for any Democratic candidate.

I think this is a terrific idea. The MSM no longer has a monopoly on campaign coverage, so why should they have a monopoly over organizing candidate debates? The only good answer is because they control the airwaves. Could Fox News be persuaded to air it? Possibly. C-SPAN would certainly set up a camera, it could be simulcast on the web, and it would obviously be made available on YouTube. Heck, put it on the History Channel. I bet more people would watch it.

And if so desired, Google/YouTube (GooTube, if you will) need not formally be involved. Eagle’s online outlets could independently create a YouTube account, put RedState’s Erick Erickson and Human Events’ Jed Babbin in a short video soliciting questions, and anyone could post their videos as responses. Eagle could narrow them down, submit them to a hand-picked group of conservative bloggers to identify the best, and blog readers would be invited to vet the questions themselves. The ultimate decisions should still be made by the organizing consortium, but the crowdsourcing would be a substantial (if not bulletproof) way to head off complaints from conservatives. Necessarily, this would aso give the campaigns time to study the questions and prepare well-thought out answers — this too would be different from the “gotcha” element that annoyed so many in the CNN/YouTube debate.

Of course, the last point hints at the major reason why it wouldn’t happen. Here I’ll note: I cannot formally join the call for such a debate; as I point out whenever relevant, New Media Strategies consults for the Fred Thompson campaign, and I won’t put the campaign or my employer on the spot. Same goes for the other campaigns, though — the Iowa caucuses are now a month away and no campaign should be pressured to join a debate in a time frame this limited. The CNN/YouTube debate required months, not to mention a “Save the Debate” movement by Republican bloggers, to happen at all. So don’t hold your breath, and save your Facebook campaigns. But it’s a terrific idea.

To address another issue: A few commenters on the above-mentioned post here, including some friends of Blog P.I., apparently read my criticism of the debate as a complaint about tough questions. If I understand them correctly, they feared a not-yet-proposed alternative would result in “softball” questions. I replied that they were mistaken, and pointed to a prediction by Patterico following the Democratic CNN/YouTube debate in July:

The Democrat debate was dominated by questioners asking: “Why can’t you be more leftist?” And the Republican debate will be dominated by questioners asking: “Why can’t you be more leftist?”

That pretty much nailed it. The problem is not that the issues CNN is so pleased with itself for raising were illegitimate or unfair. They were not. It’s that those Dem-leaning questions asked by Dem-leaning YouTubers were general election questions, and the general election audience generally (as it were) was not watching. Certainly Republicans should keep an eye toward next November, but a debate for a Republican primary should focus on issues that matter to Republicans. Say what you will, but “don’t ask, don’t tell” just isn’t one of them, and it doesn’t help Republican voters make up their minds. It does no good when Google flies a publicly-identifiable Hillary Clinton supporter in to berate the candidates about their position on the issue. (One which, I would like to point out, is unlikely to be a major factor in the general, either.) In fact, it rises to the level of farce when Anderson Cooper asks said Hillary supporter to rule on whether or not the candidates answered his question and the guy says “no,” yet anyone who was paying attention knows they did answer his question honestly, but he just didn’t like their answers.

True, CNN did air questions about illegal immigration, gun rights and religion. But RedState/Human Events would query those subjects, too. They might even include a question about the Bible that doesn’t conform to slack-jawed yokel stereotypes (sorry, Joseph Dearing, whomever you are, but when you assert that your question tells us “everything we need to know” about the GOP hopefuls, that’s how you come across). Although various writers at RedState and Human Events have evinced support for various candidates (Erickson most notably in favor of Fred Thompson, I can’t help but note), I would argue they have a greater interest than CNN in a strong, fair debate that includes difficult questions for all the candidates, because (as Erickson and Babbin point out) it’s their audience who will be deciding which Republican goes on to the general election.

In short, RedState and Human Events would be better curators of a Republican debate than CNN.

Because I am confident that this do-over debate will not come to pass, I encourage both to organize similar debates for Senate and House candidates, whose primaries mostly will not be decided until further into next year. This would give them time to work out the kinks, gain experience appealing to local television channels for airtime, and give them credibility in proposing such a debate in 2012 (er, 2011, but you know what I mean). I call on Pajamas Media, NRO, Heritage or any other independent, webbish, GOP-leaning organization to do the same. Now that I think about it, I call on Josh Marshall’s TPM empire to do the same for Democrats.

You know what would be awesome next fall, sometime after the conventions and before the general election, Commission on Presidential Debates-permitting? A RedState/Daily Kos YouTube debate.

The Good, the Bad and the SEO

Published by William Beutler on September 21, 2007 in Google, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Online Campaigns, Rudy Giuliani and SEO. 10 Comments

From yesterday’s techPresident Daily Digest:

OpenLeft’s Chris Bowers is back with an update on his latest Googlebombing campaign, this time directed at Rudy Giuliani. Bowers is claiming that because of his and other liberal bloggers’ efforts, two of his targets — an article claiming that Rudy is worse than Bush, and a letter from NYC firefighters to Hizzoner — are now among the top ten Google search results for “Rudy Giuliani.” Is this tactic a method of search-engine optimization (SEO) or gaming the system? William Beutler, who writes Blog P.I. and works for the Fred Thompson campaign, thinks it’s the latter. “It’s not making the pages better, it’s not doing the organic things that Google is supposed to do,” Beutler told the National Review.

Ironically, most of the links in the original didn’t work — if it had been a Google bomb, it would have been a dud. But I digress already. I do appreciate the shout-out, and it’s inspired me to comment on Google bombing and SEO in a little more depth than I could for National Review. And because Chris Bowers seems particularly aggrieved by the comments I made in that article, perhaps this will clarify things.

First and foremost, what Bowers calls “search engine optimization” isn’t, quite. A webmaster implements SEO techniques to make a page he controls rank prominently in search engines, primarily on industry-leading Google. If you’re doing it “white hat,” this means knowing what Google’s bots will and will not respond well to, and acting accordingly. This is not “gaming the system” — this is just playing the game. Bowers and his allies have no control over the pages they would like to see place higher in the rankings, so what they’re doing instead is optimizing the search engine for their pages, rather than their pages for the search engine. There’s no getting around the fact that this is “black hat” SEO. I don’t suppose Bowers particularly cares. His goal is to win elections, and if that makes him an unethical SEO, so be it.

From a technical standpoint, Google bombing is pretty much the same thing as link farming. All that differentiates them is the leftroots are farming with mules, while black hat professionals are using heavy machinery. Bowers still has to push the mules, while the pros merely start up the combines and turn them loose.

If Bowers & co. were in fact doing this with bots, it would be a clear case of fraud — if Google catches you using automated link farms, your site or page may be delisted entirely. But because they are doing it with crowds of like-minded individuals, the practice is technically legit. Bowers could argue, even compellingly, that their linking patterns are just as legitimate as any other. But the coordination is the difference. Google’s results are supposed to be the revealed preference of millions of unconnected individuals. Yet Bowers has replaced Larry and Sergei’s invisible hand with his own, pushing the mule along.

I’ll stop before I mix any more metaphors, but let me add, I blush at the idea of Google trying to “defuse” these “bombs.” Once Google gets into the business of deciding what is organic and what is not, they’ve got a) a Miller v. California dilemma on their hands, and b) too much work because of it. But I have no authority over search engine results, so I will say that I know this one when I see it: The practice of selecting a single critical story from all the coverage about a political candidate and linking it over and over and over to make it more prominent than it would be otherwise is far from organic.

As long as there remains a benefit (or perceived benefit) to Google bombing, amateur politicos will keep it in their toolbox. Unless Google sets up a Gmail account to collect bombing complaints, there’s no way to stop them from doing it. So, as I argued earlier in the year, the only way to counter negative Google bombing is with positive or reverse Google bombing.

P.S. The question still remains, how effective is Google bombing? Here are two quotes, one from the NR story, the other from a Bowers post. Here’s Drew Ryun, son of ex-Rep. Jim Ryun:

When a campaign goes wrong and a five-term incumbent loses, there are a whole lot of things that have gone wrong. So was the Google bombing the sole reason we lost? No. Was it a part of it? Yes, but how big a part I don’t know.

And here’s Bowers, in reply:

Hahahahahaha! Yeah, of course the Googlebomb campaign hurt Jim Ryan’s re-election chances.

Well, I already knew what Bowers thought. But the fact remains, nobody can really tell how influential the practice is. But per my comments in NR, I submit that if you can get a negative link in the top three results for a politician’s name, then you have an effective Google bomb. And you’ll know this one when you see it — because you’ll be guaranteed of actually seeing it.

The Good Fight: On The Google Bombing Campaign of 2008

Published by William Beutler on May 22, 2007 in George W. Bush, Google, John McCain, SEO, Stephen Colbert and Wikipedia. 5 Comments

When it comes to monkeying around with Google search results, MyDD is the undisputed leader in the political blogosphere. In a comment thread there yesterday, the appropriately-monikered Monkey in Chief is already thinking ahead to the bombing campaign of 2008:

Considering that there is a lag before Google’s index will be updated, it’s likely prudent to start the 2008 Presidential Gooblebomb once the Republican nominee is known.

I wonder if an early round targeted at all the candidates (except maybe Ron Paul should link to sites what emphasize his opposition to the war) wouldn’t be of value. The only downside to starting early is that it gives the other side more time to respond.

An advantage of an early start is that Google may be getting tired of having their algorithm gamed and reduce the influence of a sudden spike of links. In this case, starting early would be an advantage.

As a defensive measure, we should reverse good Googlebomb the Democratic nominee with links to official and favorable websites once the Democratic nominee is known.

These are questions the underdog online Republican activists should be asking themselves as well. The Google wars rage on, and as every strategist knows, fighting the last campaign is rarely enough.

The Chief is correct about Google’s displeasure with overt efforts to “optimize” its search engine: Google bombs for “miserable failure” (George W. Bush), “waffles” (John Kerry) and “greatest living American” (Stephen Colbert) have all been defused, though news coverage of each remains.

So a gradual effort would make sense. But which sites do you choose? Will the strategic decisions of mid-2007 hold up in late 2008? Might Google step in and make an editorial judgment again anyway?

That’s why I’m intrigued by the reverse-Google bomb; not only is a preventive strategy wise, I presume the Oracle of Mountain View is unlikely to step in and demote a positive website — so the chances of the effort being wasted are much lower. Even if one goes the negative route, it still makes sense to match search terms with a website that actually contains those terms. The aforementioned trio of Google bombs were easy to identify because they were so obviously contrived. That said, an ongoing effort to associate John McCain’s name with negative coverage appears to be failing, at least so far.

Websites to avoid include the candidate’s Wikipedia entry and official site, which are already likely to be near the top. News stories are also risky, as a news organization could move the location of a particular story at any time, for any reason, without warning.

So what kind of site should the positive-bombers select? Here’s an idea: The participants should set up a brand new advocacy blog for that candidate, to which they can link the candidate’s name when blogging at their own sites. Not only will the new entry rise to the top, but if the blog is well-maintained, it will generate multiple entries that will rise to the top of the results as well.

Most SEO guides advise that the best recipe for success is to create content that people want to click on, link to and read. That should apply here, too. Don’t muck up the results — create the results you want people to find.

The Google wars probably will never end. But this is one way to neutralize the damage.

Mr. Romney Goes To GooTube

Published by William Beutler on April 15, 2007 in Google, Mitt Romney, Online Campaigns, Social Networking and White House '08. 12 Comments

YouTube's YouChoose '08 Spotlight on Mitt Romney

GoogleTube really appears to be making a go of its YouChoose ‘08 political channel, and this week Mitt Romney became the first participant in the YouTube Spotlight. This basically means the former Massachusetts governor and (depending on the measure) second, third or fourth place candidate for the Republican nomination recorded a short video (at right) asking the YouTube community “What Do You Believe Is America’s Single Greatest Challenge?” and what would you do about it?

This survey of people with webcams was posted Wednesday, April 11, and as of Sunday, April 15, it has been viewed about 285,000 times and picked up 54 video responses. More replies are doubtless on the way [update: yep], and I’d be surprised if anybody watched them all. That job would probably fall to Stephen Smith, and in case he hasn’t sat down and picked through them all yet, I’d like to save him the at least some of the trouble.

I spent a rainy Saturday watching all the videos and took notes about each contribution. Surprisingly, all or nearly all are earnest replies, suggesting the possibility (even probability) that YouTube has removed attempted griefers. Even the Lonelygirl15 wannabe who said “preventing death” was our greatest challenge seems to believe what she’s saying. But they are not all quality, and where appropriate, I have noted the fact. And to those of you who have disabled embedding, come on.

Here’s what I found:


Takes over a minute to actually string together a complete sentence, observes there are “so many challenges”
Jeff Jarvis asks what Romney thinks is the greatest challenge, also asks “which Mitt Romney” he’s asking people to vote for — the “reasonable fellow” from 1994 or the “Mitt Romney we see today”
Checks and balances, reforming education and health care, repairing US image in the world, end Iraq war

Small business owner David All worries about Democrats’ economic policies and Republicans losing support of twentysomething voters
(inaudible)
Coming to an agreement with the religious radicals in Iraq

Protecting our Constitutional rights — free speech, privacy, right to bear arms
America’s reputation abroad
Too many challenges (Iraq, education, health care, energy)

Iraq, Social Security, Medicare, gas prices
Listening to other people, listening to each other
Disappointed two-time Bush voter Bob Hanson: Red vs. blue divide, racial animosity

Getting troops out of Iraq, America’s reputation in the world, health care, homelessness, taxes
Alan from Utah: Education
Lack of vision for the future, better leadership, pessimism in Washington

Would-be Lonelygirl “absurdum00″ says “Death is an incredibly tragic occurence that we must work tirelessly to prevent”
Poverty and education
Education and poverty (see Poverty and education)

Southerner Lee Dean: mass media doesn’t represent average Americans (except maybe Fox News), a dozen others, Part 1 of 3 (10:03)
“Greatest challenge: The restoration of America’s image. Proposed solution: Jumpstart Israeli-Arab negotiations beginning with Syria”
illegal immigration — no amnesty, fixing the visa system

“Answer: gaining a better understanding of the impact our lifestyle has on the world around us”
Schoolteacher: Improving public schools
Ending reliance on fossil fuels, plug for TheOilDrum.com (no sound)

Education (9:51)
Illegal immigration — no amnesty, no work program
Protecting and honoring the rights of the individual, reining in big business

Racism (Don Imus and Sparkling Wiggles)
Justin Hart, Mitt Romney supporter: Politicians’ casual disregard for the people they represent, on the threat of JIhadism and spending in Washington
Keeping the big picture in mind when making decisions, reading “The World is Flat”

Imus getting fired
Adopt the Fair Tax
Focus on domestic issues like poverty and hunger

Getting the U.S. out of the United Nations
More sea to shining sea, less bombs bursting in air (Canadian)
The U.S. should be a “beacon of light and hope in the world”

The Corporate Agenda
???
Takes two minutes to not answer, asks Romney what he thinks (British)

“Keep up the good work, you got my vote, godspeed brother”
Alternative energy, banning lobbying, health care, racial equality, genetically modified foods
Abolishing Corporate Personhood (doesn’t mention Romney by name)

To sum up:

The single greatest challenge facing America today is Iraq, health care, education, fossil fuels, illegal immigration, corporations and Don Imus.

The Google Primary II: Buy Your Rivals

Published by William Beutler on April 9, 2007 in Advertising, Barack Obama, Google, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Online Campaigns, Rudy Giuliani and White House '08. 9 Comments

Yesterday I managed to get a whole post out of the observation that most, but not all, of the top tier candidates are buying up their own names on Google AdWords. In this post, I’ll try to get some mileage out of reporting something more interesting:

The candidates who are bidding for their own names on Google’s advertising program are also bidding on their opponents’ names.

To take one example, when you search for Mitt Romney on Google, one of the ads you’ll see in the AdWords column along the right-hand side will be for John McCain. So I ran searches for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, and then I compared the results. If the image below hurts your eyes to read, right-click on the image and open a larger version into another browser tab. Here’s what I found, in the order listed:

2008 presidential candidates on Google AdWords

When you run these searches, slightly different ads come up each time. It’s probably in Google’s interest to mix it up some, not to mention a number of advertisers may be bidding the same amount on some of these phrases. Therefore, the image above is only meant to give a general idea of what ads will appear. For example, since I Photoshopped that together last night, I’ve now seen a Giuliani ad appear in a Romney search. It isn’t reflected above, but it has been factored into this post.

Okay, but who all bought who? Here’s whose name/keyword was bought by whom — keyword, then campaigns:

Clinton
Obama
Giuliani		 Romney
McCain
Giuliani		 Giuliani
McCain		 McCain
Romney
Giuliani

If you’d rather see who bought whose name as a keyword, try this on for size — campaign, then keywords:

Obama
Clinton		 Romney
McCain
Giuliani 		Giuliani
Hillary

McCain
Romney		 McCain
Giuliani

You can probably do all the same armchair analysis here that I can. Obama’s camp believes he can win over Hillary Clinton people (supporters, or those interested enough to Google her name), Romney’s team hopes to win over McCain people, McCain aims to pull support from both his GOP rivals, and the Giuliani squad is on a comparative buying spree, to the point of wooing some Hillary supporters. For some reason, nobody is bidding on either Edwards or Obama.

Meanwhile, in a post seemingly anticipating this one, Oregon Dem consultant Kari Chisholm observed:

The point of a Google ad isn’t to find people who know they’re looking for you — they should be able to find you just fine. It’s to find people who are looking for something else; and your candidate is the answer to their question. This will work even better for the second-tier candidates who aren’t getting much media attention.

I didn’t find any second-tier candidates bidding on the top-tier names, but he’s right: They should be. I also didn’t venture any further than the top six candidates as generally agreed upon by looking at polls, fundraising and what how the Washington Post/New York Times axis treats the various contenders. Another mini-study such as this might turn up some interesting results for other candidates, and other phrases that on which campaigns have bid.

Additionally, election campaigns are not the only customers bidding for higher-placed ads on Google AdWords — they are joined by various for- and not for-profit enterprises, who seek to associate their products and programs with the candidates listed. Here’s what I found, based on the screen caps taken on Saturday night:

  • YouTube — that is, Google — bought everybody. They also bid the most. Hmmm.
  • The Pew Forum, not (yet) owned by Google, was the only other website/organization to bid, and bid high on the words.
  • The Center for American Progress’ Campus Progress bought Obama, and Obama only.
  • Something called Ascend Alliance — which appears to be a student exchange program without the students — has bought Romney, but no one else.
  • The do-gooders do seem to like Romney: the One campaign claims “Romney wears ONE band.” The ONE blog provides evidence, although it could simply be that he held one in his hand.
  • Human Events bought Giuliani and more curiously, Obama as well.
  • Cringe-inducing pro-voting groups have attached themselves to Edwards (generationengage.org), Rudy (declareyourself.org) and Romney (megadittoes).
  • Moviefone and Tickets-for-Events.com are both betting that people mistake John Edwards for John Edward of “Crossing Over” fame (or “fame”).
  • Hillary, Obama, Edwards and Romney all have obviously for-profit concerns bidding on their words — selling buttons and T-shirts, mostly — perhaps saying less about how well they think those candidates will sell than about how the others will not. The market has spoken — and Republicans aren’t moving units so well these days.
  • Hillary, Obama and Romney are all popular enough as keywords that a link at the bottom of their columns will take you to more ads, if you wish.
  • Trouble for Romney: one of the websites bidding on his name is ConservativesAgainstRomney.com. Lucky for Giuliani, sister site ConservativesAgainstRudy.com does not appear to be bidding on his name.
  • On the other hand, the Conservative Book Club appears to have bid on Romney and Romney only, so he should be reassured that not all conservatives are against him.

Anything I missed? Let me know in the comments.

Update: Credit where it’s due: Jeff Jarvis had this idea last week, although we went about it in different ways. Meanwhile, Kate Kaye at the ClickZ News Blog decided to see which candidates had bid on certain issue-related keywords:

iraq war, troop surge, social security, poverty, global warming, climate change, new hampshire, homeland security, terrorism, immigration, us attorneys, alberto gonzales, iran, iran nuclear, nuclear weapons, china trade, trade deficit, wmd, afghanistan, pelosi syria, british sailors, retirement, gay rights, women rights, feminism, labor rights, minimum wage, living wage, abortion, pro life, roe v wade, draft, military draft

So who bought those key words? Apparently none of them.

The Google Primary I: Paying, Or Not Playing

Published by William Beutler on April 8, 2007 in Advertising, Barack Obama, Google, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Online Campaigns, Rudy Giuliani, Second Life and White House '08. 4 Comments

Considering that Google controls just about half of the market for search in the U.S., that Google estimates its advertising network reaches 80% of U.S. Internet users, and that their program is extremely flexible, any political campaign should think strongly about using them. And even though pay-per-click ads are not without risk, this should be all the more true for a presidential campaign.

I’m working on a longer post looking at the 2008 candidates’ use of Google AdWords, but in the meantime, let’s first see who is playing and how they’re playing. Counting only the top six contenders from both parties, here’s what each campaign wants you to see at the top of a Google search results when you search for their name:

Giuliani's Google Sponsored Link

John McCain's Google Sponsored Link

Mitt Romney's Google Sponsored Link

Hillary Clinton's Google Sponsored Link

Barack Obama's Google Sponsored Link

John Edwards' Google Sponsored Link

Hillary has incorporated Blogads into her online strategy and Edwards has been running an online campaign since early 2005, yet neither have bothered to make sure their campaign sites are the top result on Google. (Of course, Google News results do appear beneath the Sponsored Links for the others, but I have cropped them out.) Although Democrats have rushed into Second Life and other brave new worlds, apparently two of their top contenders are ignoring plain old Google.

A few other findings, based on tedious reloading of the same searches, over and over:

  • Obama is indeed playing, but he’s not all in. His ad displays less than half the time — so if you don’t see it, hit reload.
  • For all three Republicans, their Sponsored Link appears almost every time, but not quite.
  • McCain has three different versions of his ad in rotation. Key phrases: “Learn More” and “Sign Up.”
  • Romney also has three versions rotating. Key phrases: “Build a New American Dream” and “Strong. New. Leadership.”
  • Giuliani has just the one pictured above.

More later. Stay tuned.

What the Zell is Going on Here?

Published by William Beutler on April 7, 2007 in Google, MSM and Publishing. 10 Comments

Before the ink has even dried on the contract transferring the troubled Tribune Co. media empire to real estate tycoon Samuel Zell, the unremorseful buyer has sent a major sign that he doesn’t understand how web content works. As the Washington Post reports:

In conversations before and after a speech Zell delivered Thursday night at Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, Calif., the billionaire said newspapers could not economically sustain the practice of allowing their articles, photos and other content to be used free by other Internet news aggregators.

“If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?” Zell said during the question period after his speech. “Not very.”

One wonders if Zell is familiar with the doctrine of fair use. In fact, one wonders if Zell is driving at something else entirely, because these comments make no sense. I have limited sympathy for Viacom’s billion-dollar lawsuit against Google/YouTube, but at least they have a case.

Apparently Zell has never used Google News, because the website doesn’t itself host any of the stories it features — it merely links. Google is “stealing” what, headlines and news photos? They aren’t even hotlinking those images, so the free advertisement doesn’t even cost Zell a cent — but it does give readers a thumbnail view of what to expect if they click through.

To demonstrate, if you run a Google search on the word “Zell” right now, here’s what you’ll find:

Results for "Zell" on Google

Note, Zell is the proud new papa of two of the papers linked above. Google is not depriving him of traffic, but delivering it to him.

If Zell sticks to his guns, I fully expect he’ll demand Google remove his newspapers’ headlines from their aggregator, sue Matt Drudge (who actually does hotlink images) and then set his sights on Google once again when he realizes those damn kids on Blogger are using his excerpts without permission.

At that point, all that’s left is to build a subscription wall around the Tribune Co’s online assets. I can’t wait to sign up for ZellSelect.

Not only does Zell have no idea what he’s talking about, he has no idea what he’s doing. The Internet is a threat to the long term viability of print newspapers for a number of reasons, but newspaper owners’ failure to understand what makes for successful online content will only hasten their slide into irrelevance and unprofitability.

The Time Machine

Published by William Beutler on December 17, 2006 in Asymmetrical Media, Earned Media, Entertainment, Google, Journalism History, MSM, Metapost, Photoshop, Seriously and Social Networking. 48 Comments

Are we this good or is Time just that predictable? On October 9, the day Google announced its acquisition of YouTube, we wrote:

[I]t’s only been about 10 months since Time Magazine declined to choose an individual for its much-devalued Person of the Year award, so it only stands to reason they’re back in the hunt. It’s also been nearly a decade since Time named someone (or thing) from the tech industry — Jeff Bezos in 1999 — and more than 20 years since they named the PC its “Machine of the Year.” Also, it’s not an election year, so it won’t be the winner of the presidential election. It’s time for another gimmick!

At left, our Photoshopped prediction from two months ago. At right, Time Warner’s actual latest cover, announced this weekend:

Time POY Prediction: You       Time POY Reality: You

Although Blog P.I. doesn’t make prognostications a regular part of what we do, we have made a few good calls — Not Paul Begala told you here first that Jon Tester wasn’t getting an Appropriations seat, and again relying upon this year’s breakout phenomenon, we did start talking about the “YouTube election” well ahead of most.

But if we can’t even pick a fantasy football team that makes the playoffs, we’re not going to stake our rep on predicting the future. So the answer is yes, they really are that predictable.

Google + YouTube = GoogleTube?

Published by William Beutler on October 9, 2006 in Asymmetrical Media, George Allen, Google and Lamont v. Lieberman. 15 Comments

GoogleTube = Google + YouTube

Sure, why not? That whole “video” thing was just getting in the way — nobody actually believed Google was storing all those clips of The Colbert Report on magnetic tape, I hope.

I won’t pretend to know whether Google is ever going to see the $1.65 billion they just put down on YouTube ever again, but I will pretend to know what this is going to mean for news consumers toward the end of the year.

You see, it’s only been about 10 months since Time Magazine declined to choose an individual for its much-devalued Person of the Year award, so it only stands to reason they’re back in the hunt. It’s also been nearly a decade since Time named someone (or thing) from the tech industry — Jeff Bezos in 1999 — and more than 20 years since they named the PC its “Machine of the Year.” Also, it’s not an election year, so it won’t be the winner of the presidential election.

It’s time for another gimmick! And, in this year of the Lamonsters and Macaca and Lonelygirl15, I have a guess as to what it will be:

Person of the Year, Lonelygirl

P.S. Of course, other questions remain, including all of the important ones. Such as what does happen to Google Video? And what will Mark Cuban say now? Actually, he’s already sounded off at Blog Maverick. And though still sees a rocky future ahead for the proud new parent company (he calls them “crazy”), he offers a small concession, in his semi-literate way:

And what if Im completely, absolutely wrong and no one sues anyone ? That everyone just loves the fact that their content is available to tens of millions of viewers and advertisers and Youtube and Google definitely qualify to be protected behind the Safe Harbors of the DMCA ?

That Im an idiot and it really is different this time, and the content companies have all recognized that ?

Well, I’m ready for that too. I went ahead and registered www.effingreat.com because thats how much fun its going to be using Filesanywhere.com features to support a “load everything you own and share it with world” website.

I will host in the same way as Youtube and Google. Upload in the same, dont ask, dont tell approach. I will sell ads however they do.

This seems rather petulant for a man worth upwards of a billion dollars. On the other hand, that’s billionaires for you. [Update: Rex Hammock, commenting on the same post, calls Cuban "an expert on crazy. And I think I mean that as a compliment."]

In the tech blogosphere (which, to be fair, is the original blogosphere) most of the discussion so far is mindless chatter, though Michael Arrington sat in on the joint conference call and took notes.

P.S. Valleywag is calling the acquisition GoogTube. With all due respect, I like mine better. And yet, Robert Scoble’s typo repetition is actually better than what either of us came up with.

P.P.S. Not Paul Begala suggests Gtube:

GoogleTube, GoogTube, GooTube, Gtube

He may be onto something.

Update: More substantively, now that it sounds like Google Video will remain and YouTube will continue to be called YouTube, I expect that YouTube will be relieved of pressure to compete with Apple’s iTunes Music Store — which by now is hardly an accurate name* — and can continue on its path to becoming the MySpace of video. Google Video, meanwhile, with its longer videos, higher resolution, downloadability and monetization, now must compete with iTMS.

Schmidt/Brin/Page vs. Murdoch and Jobs? That should be fun.

* I have since been informed that with the release of iTunes 7, the iTMS is now simply called the iTunes Store. Still not quite right.

Blogpsot.com

Published by William Beutler on October 9, 2006 in Cybersquatting, Google, Religion, Seriously and Website Design. 5 Comments

I’ve had a Blogger account since September 2002, which means over this period I must have typed in the domain http://*.blogspot.com hundreds, if not thousands of times. But this past week appears to have been the first time I’d ever mistyped the URL as blogpsot.com instead — althouse.blogpsot.com, it happened to be. Try it yourself.

When you land, you’ll find yourself at “AmazingBibleStudies,” a Netscape 4-optimized CSS job which feebly boasts of being a “Mega site of Bible studies and information”:

Blogpsot.com screen shot, screen cap

Though the claim of mega status probably cannot be substantiated, it most certainly is a Van Impe dispensationalist collection of Bible passages and vacation photos of Israel.

And it turns out that no matter what subdomain you use — atrios.blogpsot.com, iraqthemodel.blogpsot.com, americablog.blogpsot.com — the administrator has them all set to display the “AmazingBibleStudies” page.

It’s a common technique to buy domains based on probable typos for popular domains, with the expectation that they’ll be useful for spamming and scamming and squatting — so this could be the spam version of Crosswalk.com, or just an amateur evangelical Bible scholar with a mischievous self-promotional side.

The domain registration does not list it as an E-commerce site, though there is that rotating banner ad at top. If it was really a money-making enterprise (or even an attempted one) it would presumably be plastered with Google AdSense. WHOIS does reveal the owner of the domain to be one Doug Powell of St. Petersburg, FL. It may very well be this Doug Powell. And for what it’s worth, the contact page indicates that he would like you to call him “Master P.”

I figure Powell is not a professional cybersquatter because he doesn’t hide his name. Compare to Blgspot.com, a true squatter site, owned by Caribbean Online International Ltd., “your reliable provider for hosting websites in the caribbean.” Now that’s a legitimately illegitimate site.

That said, the Blogpsot.com registration details are nevertheless intriguing:

Blogpsot.com Whois meta information

Let’s repeat part of that again for the Google bots: “666, angels, antichrist, armageddon, audio bible, audio sermons, baptist, bible helps, bible prophecy, bible statistics, bible study, bible tracts, bible, catholic, christian, churches, cults, devil, free sermons, gospel music, gospel, heaven, hell, israe.”

Yes, Israe. And 666 comes before angels? And the devil gets a nod, but no mention of Christ? Yikes — maybe it’s less Van Impe and more LaVey.

Update: Credit where it’s due — Respectful Insolence took a somewhat more in-depth look at this site in a December post titled “Cypersquatting for Jesus?”