Danny Whatmough.com

A report today in TechCrunch reveals that the Associated Press is using their Twitter account to push followers to their Facebook page. Rather than linking directly to news pages on their website, they are linking to pages on their Facebook profile which also features the news.

Techcrunch critises this move: “maybe they think that by hosting the content on Facebook, they’re being impartial with the tweets. But again, why not just use their own site?”

But, I think Techcrunch misses the point here. This isn’t about impartiality. It’s about building communities and it’s a smart move. I’ve written recently about the war that is brewing between Facebook and Google as both networks seek to become the social media (and email/messaging) dashboard.

Facebook is moving from the ‘walled garden’ network to the more open, ‘first port of call’ that, in many ways, Google has been to date. And with its user base soaring, it is perfectly poised to capitalise.

Facebook is also envious of the success that Twitter has had by embracing businesses and news outlets and has taken big steps recently to mirror this. It is a move that seems to be working, with recent research showing that Facebook is becoming a major driver to news networks. Outlets like the NYT has realised this and AP seems to be catching up on the action now too.

AP should be able to make the most of this, open digital world that media organisations now find themselves in. They are all about content. Monetising this content is a challenge. But embracing and building communities and new distribution networks is vital. By distributing their content directly to an engaged user base on Facebook (and Twitter), AP has much more control of how it uses this audience.

The traditional ‘website as a destination’ is beginning to decline. Fast forward to the ’site-less’ web where rather than engaging with audiences on a corporate site, media outlets (and indeed brands) need to go to where the audience is. This is a big challenge for Murdoch et al but is already happening and is happening big-style.

As Steve Rubel says: “The AP is now changing the game for news by not only going where attention spirals are taking us but by also using their content to curate a conversation there and – above all build relationships.”

Monetisation is certainly an issue, but if AP can build up a significant user base on Facebook, the money will come.

As the power of Google News dimishes, can Facebook take over as the web’s news curator? AP seems to think it can…

hat tip to Ben, picture credit

There’s been a mad rush in the last 24 hours to blog and tweet about the latest social media craze – Google Buzz. It’s rarely possible to objectively comment on something this new until you’ve tried it and lived with a for a bit, but such is the pace of social media…!

I always try and take a step back and avoid the urge to blog immediately but, as the day has gone on and as I have read more and more about it, there are a few initial thoughts that spring to mind that I thought I’d jot down.

A few caveats. Firstly, I haven’t really tried Google Buzz in anger yet. I use Google Apps for my personal email and it hasn’t been switch on there yet. Secondly, I reserve the right to change all of these views and opinions in the future!

• Aggregation, location/mobile, social search – these are the three elements of social media that will be big this year. And to a certain extent, Google has made a start to confront each one. Google Buzz is yet another step in this direction, but they aren’t the only ones. Facebook in particular is also making big strides
• This is not a Buzz v. Twitter debate – I see Twitter much more as a data store rather than a destination. This is enforced by Twitter’s willingness to encourage API usage etc. Twitter.com as a destination is likely to become even less important, it’s the tweets that matter. Therefore Twitter and Google could happily co-exist
• It’s Facebook v. Google for social dominance - Facebook and Google have their sights on the big prize: they both want to become social media dashboards or the destination for all our online social (and even non social) activities. Facebook took a big step with the acquisition of Friendfeed and Google has moved into this domain today. Facebook’s announcement this week about it’s new email platform also adds fuel to the fire. It’ll also be interesting to see how software like Tweetdeck and Seesmic responds to this move
• But what if I don’t use Gmail? – this could be a big issue for Buzz. I can understand why they wanted to integrate Buzz into the Gmail interface rather than create yet another destination, but what about those of us that don’t use Gmail regularly? It makes more sense for Facebook to bring an email client to its 400m users than for Google to bring Buzz to its 140m users
• It’s more proof of the power of social – most of us now appreciate social media is here to stay, but this brings further confirmation from the biggest online player. Brin was on stage at the Buzz announcement which I think is a telling sign that Google has big plans for this in the future
• What does this mean for Google Wave? - we all got very excited about Wave when it launched last year, but this has fizzled out to some extent. I just wonder if Google sees Buzz as some sort of link between Gmail and Wave. I still think Wave is potentially very interesting, but it is a big jump for most. Buzz is more palatable and could just possibly bring a middle solution

I started the day quite enthusiastic about Buzz but, having used it a few times I’ve become less convinced. I can see that it would be great for those that spend a lot of time in Gmail and use their Google address book etc., but that’s not me. Buzz is definitely one to watch, it has to be. But, I hope for Google’s sake, there is more to come…

Over at the always interesting Econsultancy, Chris Lake has a great post looking at how Google is ranking real-time results in its search pages – i.e. what tweets does it feature and why.

I’ve been thinking a lot about real-time search recently so this post really stood out; this is a huge development and will grow in importance throughout 2010.

Chris references a post by David Talbot which quotes Google’s Amit Singhal, who says about real-time rankings:

“You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone–then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers. One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation. As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well”

Chris has put also together a comprehenisve list of possible ranking factors that Google might be using for real-time search results.

But I’ve got another question which I think is potentially very significant – what if Google started attributing reputation to sites linked in real-times social networks and using this to influence positions of normal search engine rankings?

What’s to say if your blog post is retweeted by a ton of people why it should not gain some sort of reputation increase despite not being ‘linked to’ by another website?

I don’t claim to be an SEO expert, but I think there are some really interesting potential developments here for those of us that work with social media and search engine marketing.

picture credit

If you were in any doubt as to where Google’s big new focus is, then the advert above in the Metro last week should give you an idea. Google has been relentless in its advertising of it’s Chrome browser across the UK and abroad. Google even suggests you give your loved ones the (gift-wrapped of course) browser for Christmas.

Following my post last week about the new Chrome advert, it seems Google is determined to really push the browser out to a mainstream audience.

Is this final frontier for Google before world domination?

Despite having control of most of what we do in the browser, Google knows that for full technological control over our lives, it needs to own the one thing we need to link the offline and the online – the browser.

And with Google Chrome OS set to launch next year, the rewards for getting this right could be huge.

I’ve been using Chrome on my work PC and it is prett fast, I like the new extensions too (the only aspect that until now was forcing me to cling onto Firefox).

If cloud computing really is going to be a major trend for 2010, then it looks as though Google – and Chrome – is well placed to take advantage. How will Microsoft et al respond?

This is a great little advert from Google to publicise it’s Chrome web browser (which I love btw and have been using for a while now).

The ad, which was made by the company’s UK team and conincide’s with the launch of the brower’s Mac version, has a wonderful slick and creative feel, reminiscent of something from Apple themselves. It’s also achieved an impressive 200,000 YouTube views in a few days…

Facebook’s new privacy policy has been met with a fair degree of hostility, and rightly so. The changes are clearly designed to encourage users to open up more of their updates to the wider world.

So why the change?

Simple. Facebook is worried. It’s worried about the rise of Twitter and, in particular, it is worried about the impact that the recent addition of real-time results to Google searches.

As I’ve said already, the Google changes have the potential to have a big impact on the popularity of Twitter as Twitter updates are put front of mind for the general internet public in millions of searches.

This is a problem for Facebook, because by default, activity by their users is private and shielded from the search engines.

The dangers for Facebook

But the one thing that is worrying for Facebook is the thing that it’s users like and enjoy about the service. It’s the reason why so many of them prefer Facebook to Twitter, or at least use it in very different ways.

I use both services, but I wouldn’t share or reveal the sorts of things I reveal on Facebook on Twitter. I like that and it allows me to use the services in specific ways for certain audiences.

Facebook’s move potentially changes this and I wonder if it is in danger of diluting the key foundations of what it stands for and what it’s users want.

picture credit

I’ve already discussed what Google’s new real-time search means for PRs over on the Wildfire blog. But I make no excuse about covering the subject again here as I think it is such a major development.

I’ve been mulling over some other possible permutations that might be triggered by this move:

Putting Twitter firmly front of mind

This move could bring yet another surge in the popularity of Twitter. Think about it; Google deals with around 300 million searches every day and a big proportion of these will soon see real-time results (the majority of which seem to be Twitter at the moment) towards the top of the listings. This will really propel services like Twitter into the every day online world of a large proportion of the internet population.

Google encroaching on newspapers (again)

Traditionally, if something big happens, consumers flock to traditional news outlets (formerly TV and then the web) to get the low-down. This year, Twitter has started to take on the role of a source of breaking news. But Google’s move here gives consumers another choice and another way to bypass the breaking news service provided by traditional media.

What’s next? Social search

At the moment, the real-time results in Google are a bit messy. Search for something like Le Web and you end up with a very busy stream of content, most of which is fairly meaningless. But these are early days and I think the functionality will develop in two interesting ways. Firstly, Google will offer the ability to rank real-time results by ‘influence’ to try and reduce the amount of noise this way. The other option that I fully expect to see is the ability to view only real-time results from your ‘friends’ or social circle (e.g. Twitter followers or Facebook friends). This again will reduce the amount of noise and make results more relevant.

Reduced importance of SEO?

I’m not certain about this one, but the introduction of additional real estate on search pages, in some instances, further pushes traditional rankings down below the fold. SEO will survive, but in many ways, this reduces it’s influence. Ciaran and others have some interesting thoughts relating to this over at Econsultancy…

Like every good tech geek, I’m a bit of a magpie when it comes to shiny new things, especially online. So you can imagine my glee when (via Drew) I came across Feedly today.

I love it!

I’m pretty addicted to my feedreader. And my weapon of choice has been Google Reader ever since I started reading blogs. I’ve tried and tested every pretender to the reader-throne, but I haven’t ever been really tempted to migrate my RSS feeds. This is partly due to the inconvenience of moving; the new features would have to be very convincing.

And this is part why Feedly is so great. Its not really a feed reader itself – it’s a Firefox plugin. It simply sits on top of Google Reader and acts as an alternative skin or dashboard. You can still share or star items, add or remove feeds and even change categories. But, in addition, it makes it easier to add posts to social networks and email or tweet interesting snippets.

And it plugs into your existing networks to recommend and suggest content.

You can also use Feedly mini – a little pop-up overlay that appears at the bottom right of every webpage you visit to inform you about how socially-connected the page is and it also allows you to tweet or email content quickly and easily.

All-in-all, a great little tool.