It was a couple of days ago now, but Nat Torkington of O’Reilly had a great post about the kerfuffle (or was it a schlemozzle — or a brouhaha?) over Google’s Health blog and how the blogger in charge there took a run at Michael Moore’s movie Sicko in an attempt to sell the virtues of Google’s AdWords. If you’re interested in all of the back story, there’s a post at Search Engine Watch with details, and the blogger’s mea culpa is here.
Nat’s post (which I found via Media Influencer) does a great job of dissecting what went wrong with the Google post — and why that kind of thing is an endemic risk with corporate blogs:
“I feel sorry for Ms Turner, whose post has a painful logic to its existence. Blogs let you communicate directly with your audience. Of course, we’re too busy building product to communicate with our audience, so let’s hire a marketer to do it for us.”
What happens then, Nat says, is that the marketer tries to assume the voice of a blogger — that is, an authentic personal voice — but because what they are really trying to do is push an agenda, it all comes out pear-shaped:
“When inexperienced marketers get a blog, they all blog the same way. Their voice is as authentic as a Twinkie is organic.The time-honored marketing blog post formula is simple:
1. Find something topical. In Ms Turner’s case, it was the release of Michael Moore’s new film.
2. Identify the shiznit you wish to pimp. In Ms Turner’s case, it was Google’s Health Advertising services.
3. Find a line (however tenuous) between the two and the post just writes itself!”
Sadly, I have seen too many posts that fit that exact same formula. And it has the exact opposite effect as the one intended. Instead of making the company or the blogger in question look smart and clued-in, it makes the company and blogger in question look ridiculous and lame.
“So, to recap, the recipe for a disaster is easy: hire marketers with no authentic voice, ask them to pimp offal, and when they’re busted for it make them force out an apology in which they blame it on their authentic voice.
You too can make the front page of TechMeme for two days running with three easy steps, though you might get wet sleeves fishing your career prospects out of the toilet when you’re done. You’re welcome!”
Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks to Pat Mitchell of the Paley Center for Media during the World Economic Forum in June. Schmidt talks about Google’s efforts to expand into newspaper advertising, radio and TV advertising and other areas, and discusses what he sees as the company’s successes and failures — including the first trial of newspaper advertising and the difficulty of striking partnerships with big media companies like Viacom.
In contrast to the usual whining and moaning about how Google News and other similar aggregators are killing journalism and ruining the newspaper business, the World Association of Newspapers heard from someone who believes that Google and Yahoo can help to save newspapers, and perhaps even get teenagers to start reading them:
“After a five-minute delay Mike Smith, executive director of the Media Management Centre, part of America’s Northwestern University, took to the stage with some good news.
And it was radical news. Rather than website news aggregation services such as Yahoo News killing newspapers, they can actually save newspapers’ networks of foreign bureaux. Not only that, they can actually achieve the near impossible and prompt teens to start reading newspapers.”
Smith went on to talk about how the joint venture between Yahoo and a dozen large newspaper companies, including McClatchy (now owned by Knight Ridder) has helped papers cut costs and has saved more than a few foreign bureaus.
Lots of commentary on Techmeme today about Google’s new Hot Trends feature, which builds on the search engine’s previous Trends and Zeitgeist features by adding news and blog posts. Many people seem to pay particularly attention to the absurd or stupid things that people search for, including “legless chihuahuas” and “nose bidet.”
Fair enough. Don’t get me wrong. There’s no question that people search for plenty of ridiculous stuff — and yes, the Trends include lots of stuff about World of Warcraft, etc. But still, I think dismissing Google’s Hot Trends as a throwaway toy or a sideshow is missing something. And I think search guru Danny Sullivan made the point in a comment on Duncan Riley’s post at TechCrunch made the point pretty well: “legless chihuahuas,” he pointed out, were in the news; Oprah referred to a “nose bidet” on her show; and one of the other search terms was a radio contest question.
In other words, browsing through the search terms is a pretty good barometer of what people are interested in at a given moment. When I looked at the terms, Justis Richert was a popular term — because the porn actress who was born with that name happened to perform… well, a service for a state trooper while he was on duty (and still wound up getting a ticket, apparently). In other words, it was sparked by another news story.
Anyone who has spent any time running a news-related website knows that there are the stories you wish people were interested in, and then there are the ones that they really are interested in — and they aren’t always the same thing. For better or worse, Google’s Hot Trends and other traffic-measuring tools are a glimpse inside the mind of the people formerly known as the audience (as Jay Rosen called them). Get used to it.
At a Google briefing with journalists following the company’s financial report, CEO Eric Schmidt said some interesting things about the company’s interest in journalism, although they showed up near the end of this Reuters story. Asked whether the search engine with the $150-billion market value might take a run at Dow Jones, he said:
“We made a decision to focus primarily on user-generated content, and not on businesses where we would own the content.”
But that wasn’t the really interesting part, at least not for me. Later during questions, co-founder Larry Page said that Google wants to “play a role in opening journalism up to more participants,” according to the Reuters story:
“There is some small number doing what you do. That number is probably too small, given the impact that you have on the world and the good that you do,” he said.
“How to get more people working on what you are doing and fund those things?”
Interesting questions, Larry. Maybe you guys should get together with Craig Newmark and Jay Rosen over at NewAssignment.net.
I'm a technology writer with The Globe and Mail in Toronto, and this is where I blog about the collision between media and the Web. I also have a Globe blog, which is here. Send me email at mathew (at) mathewingram.com, or for more info, click the picture.
It was a couple of days ago now, but Nat Torkington of O’Reilly had a great post about the kerfuffle (or was it a schlemozzle — or a brouhaha?) over Google’s Health blog and how the blogger in charge there took a run at Michael Moore’s movie Sicko in an attempt to sell the virtues of Google’s AdWords. If you’re interested in all of the back story, there’s a post at Search Engine Watch with details, and the blogger’s mea culpa is here.
Fair enough. Don’t get me wrong. There’s no question that people search for plenty of ridiculous stuff — and yes, the Trends include lots of stuff about World of Warcraft, etc. But still, I think dismissing Google’s 
