crikey – Page 29 – Stilgherrian

26 November 200926 November 2009

Is social media killing the web (as we’ve known it)?

If Google Trends’ statistics are to be trusted, it looks like there’s been a significant decline in traffic to websites over the last year — not just news, but everywhere. Except social network sites.

Following a blog post by Nicholas Moerman, a planning intern with Proximity in London, I checked out the figures for Australia sites. It does indeed look like there’s been a significant drop in daily unique visitors — which is what Google Trends measures, rather than the more common monthly uniques.

I’ve written more, and provided more graphs, in a piece for Crikey today, Is social media killing the web as we know it?

Oh, and I was also in Crikey yesterday, Baffled by Murdersoft? Making sense of Murdoch and Microsoft, where I look at some of the numbers behind the rumoured deal between News Corporation and Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

18 November 200918 November 2009

Links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009

Stilgherrian’s links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009:

See what happens when you don’t curate your links for ten days, during which time there’s a conference which generates a bazillion things to link to? Sigh.

This is such a huge batch of links that I’ll start them over the fold. They’re not all about Media140 Sydney, trust me.

Continue reading “Links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009”

11 November 200911 November 2009

Murdoch’s wrong about Google

Crikey logo

I reckon Rupert Murdoch’s plan to block Google from indexing News Corporation stories is daft, and I said so in Crikey yesterday with a piece they headlined Dear Rupert, this is how the internet works. Google it.

In brief, my commentary is that people don’t really get their news in a monolith any more, neither the daily newspaper or the nightly TV bulletin. Instead, they gather it from all over in little pieces. If you want people to find your stories, those stories need to be in the indexes.

Crikey editor Jonathan Green has also pointed out the stark difference between News Corporation and Google. I reckon News needs Google more than Google needs News.

Jason Calacanis has a different theory, that News will do an exclusive deal with Microsoft’s Bing.

“Want to search the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and 3,894 other newspapers and magazines?

“Well, then don’t go to Google because they don’t have them!

“Go to Bing, home of quality content you can trust!”

Which might work if News Corporation were the only supplier of general news. Which it isn’t. And which point I make in my Crikey piece.

12 October 200913 October 2009

Why AFACT v iiNet is important

Crikey logo

Oh, in case you’re wondering, this legal case AFACT v iiNet is about online copyright infringement — that is, illegal file sharing — and whether ISPs do enough to stop it. Its result will set important precedents for the entire telecommunications industry, as well as your expectations of privacy online.

I wrote a backgrounder for Crikey last week, which is free to read.

If iiNet loses, all ISPs could be hit with similar claims worth millions of dollars. That cost, and the cost of additional monitoring, would be passed on to customers. The hearing is expected to last until mid-November. Judge’s rulings are expected early next year.

12 October 2009

Links for 30 September 2009 through 13 October 2009

Stilgherrian’s links for 30 September 2009 through 13 October 2009, gathered automatically but then left to languish for two weeks before publication.

There’s so many of these links this time that I’ll publish them over the fold. I think I need to get over my fear of the link being published automatically without my checking them first, and my concern that my website won’t look nice if the first post is just a list of links.

Maybe I should just stick these Delicious-generated links in a sidebar? Or do you like having them in the main stream and RSS feed?

Continue reading “Links for 30 September 2009 through 13 October 2009”

30 September 200904 November 2009

“Do Journos Do it Better?”

The reprobates in the photo are me and my fellow panellists at forthcoming the Media140 Sydney conference, where we’ve been given the topic “Do Journos Do it Better? Journalists in SocMedia Communities.” Look out, folks!

From left to right, that’s freelance journalist, columnist and blogger Mia Freedman; new media consultant and recovering journalist Bronwen Clune; Valerio Veo, who heads up online news and current affairs at SBS; social media consultant Laurel Papworth; and me.

Now I’m hoping the discussion doesn’t degenerate back into those tedious bloggers versus journalists arguments from last year. Certainly by year’s end they seemed to have faded. And we do seem to have a more switched-on panel. But we’ll see.

Actually the full conference program looks good, with everyone from ABC managing director Mark Scott and Crikey editor Jonathan Green to… oh, look for yourself.

Media140 Sydney is on 5 and 6 November 2009 at the ABC’s Eugene Goossens’ Hall in Ultimo. Early-bird bookings at $145 ~~close today~~ have been extended to 5 October.