The “Like” button dissonance

The recent change of privacy controls on Facebook and the introduction of a global “Like” button are steering a lot of discussion all over the internet.  My friend Lokman has already left Facebook all together and keep hearing about “Leave Facebook Day” planned for May 21.

Many people, including those in major outlets are voicing their criticism of the erosion of privacy and introduction of the inverse Beakon.  For example, the Washington Post ran a number of articles on this subject and is reporting on a bill for privacy online being drafted following this outcry, ars technica writes about complains filed against Facebook at the FTC, Huffington Post posted some visualizations of how more and more of our information is exposed to more and more people on Facebook, and the Wired has recently posted a very opinionated piece from Ryan Singer criticizing Facebook’s behavior and calling for an alternative.  What I find amusing in this situation is that all these major outlets (and many others) have wholeheartedly adopted the universal “Like” feature and other Facebook gadgets.  When you come to read their articles, you are welcomed by familiar faces of your friends through some Facebook social feature.

To me it creates a dissonance.

I realize that in many cases these are journalists reporting on a piece of technology-related news and I realize that the opinions of the columnists belong to them and not necessarily to the news outlet. I also realize that the news outlets are involved in financial survival battle and using Facebook advertising and social platform may be an opportunity.  I even appreciate the fact these discussions are taking place and that the mainstream media, the blogosphere, and  even Facebook itself are hosting this debate.  Nevertheless, when I see that Ryan Singer’s super critical piece has two “Like” buttons and almost 3500 likes on Facebook, I understand why over at Facebook they feel so confident and comfortable messing with the privacy of their users.

And what do you think?

Demand for internationalized domain names

Once a year or so ICANN holds a conference called ICANN Studienkreis.  This is another forum where one can get updated with various ongoing internet governance topics.  The last meeting took place earlier this week in Barcelona, but unfortunately there was no streaming of the event and I could not find any records or transcripts from it.  The only available record is the agenda with links to a number of PDFs of various presentation.  These are of course not very informative, but there is still something we can learn from them.

One presentation that caught my attention was by Andrey Kolesnikov from the Russian Coordination Centre for TLD.ru, which he gave in a session on internationlized domain names (PDF).  It caught my attention because I got recently interested in the debate surrounding this topic and hoped to learn about how things are going in countries that have already applied for a localized top level domains (other presenters on the panel were from Egypt and China). There is only so much one can learn from just looking at PPT slides, but here is an attempt.

Russia is the only country I know of that has already auctioned localized domain names, even though the approval of the top level domain in Cyrillic is still in the works.   As such, Kolesnikov was in a position to shed some light on the actual demand for localized domain names, as opposed to arguments about their great potential.  And if I read his slides correctly, I think he did.  Here is what he has to show:

The early registration process, or the “sunrise” period, is still going on, but these numbers are interesting.   There are currently over 369K domain names registered in Russia and according to Coordination Centre for TLD.ru, there are over 2.6 million domains registered under the .ru top level domain (RU).  In other words. we can see that the trademark holders and Russian domainers are either careful with grabbing this opportunity or skeptical of the entire enterprise.  Of course this is a very early stage in the process, but if it is indicative of a trend, than at least in the case of Russia, the skeptics might have a point.  Of course the situation may be different in other parts of the world and in other cultures, but Russian industry does not seem to be too excited.

Am I overanalyzing this?  Am I taking these number out of context?  What do you think?

The Israeli TV industry: Some numbers

Israel is debating another reform in its broadcast TV industry, which allows an interesting peek on the numbers constructing the Israeli media market.

Currently there two private broadcast TV channels in Israel, which are supported through advertising (there is a government supported public channel as well).  Channel 2 started operating commercially in 1993 and Channel 10 joined the competition in 2002.  Both channels are operated through permits, which means that they have to be renewed every few years, which in turn is supposed to give the public body that monitors these channels, the Second Authority, the leverage to make demands for quality content.

One can debate whether or not the Authority is successful in imposing content quality standards, but the reform is aimed at moving from the permit regime to a license regime.  According to those pushing for the reform, this will allow to introduce another player to the Israeli broadcasting media market.  Since such a shift requires amending the law, the story starts with discussions in the Economic Committee of Knesset, the Israeli Parliament.

So, what can we learn from these debates?

• According to Menashe Samir, the CEO of the Second Authority, the annual income of the commercial broadcasting TV stands on NIS 1.2 billion (around US $320 million), while operating a channel costs about NIS 400 million (around US $70 million).  Eran Pollack, from the Ministry of Finance, provided some more specific data, saying that in 2008 the commercial broadcasting channels had incomes of NIS 700 million for Channel 2 (US $187 million) and NIS 400 million for Channel 10 (US $107 million).

• Eran Polack also said that in 2008 the overall TV industry in Israel had an income of approximately NIS 5.5. billion (US $1.47 billion).   The break down is really interesting.  The commercial broadcasting TV channels account only for a small portion of that pie; the Israeli cable and satellite TV providers account for almost two thirds of it.   HOT, the cable company had an income of NIS 2.085 billion (US $559 million) in 2008, and YES, the satellite company had an income of NIS 1.415 billion (US %378 million).  Also, the public channel accounted for about NIS 350 million of income (US $94 million).

• As to the viewers, according to Yehuda Saban from the budget department, an average Israeli views 225 minutes of TV a day – over 3 and a half hours.  Children watch TV even more than that.  All this in spite of the fact that the costs of cable/satellite TV in Israel are relatively high; at the bottom 20% of the income group, people spend as much as 1.2% of their monthly income on TV.

It is f course also interesting to see how both supporters and opponents of the reform justify their positions through claims for greater societal benefit, but I won’t torture you with this now :)

Google is a media company

I was listening to a recent conversation between Siva Vaidhyanathan, the author of “Googalization of Everything” and Matt Brittin, the newly appointed CEO of Google UK.

While I found the overall conversation interesting, one particular phrase caught my attention.  When he was defending Google against allegation of being parasitic (i.e. they do not produce content, but only provide access to it), Matt Brittin said that it is an: “easy criticism to level, particularly in a really tough downturn, which is affecting media companies all over the world including Google” (emphasis added).

Of course this is not a trend (yet?), but I find it really interesting that Google high-level executive  talks about the company in terms of media.  I think it further contributes to our growing realization that information and communication technologies (ICTs) as social factors are becomming more and more amalgamted with content.  This is a really interesting contribution to the argument that it is important to consider content related aspects when we talk about technology or in other words that we are talking about media, information, and communication technology (MICT) and not just ICT.

Just a note I wonted to take and to share.

… and even harder…

Now it looks like Gmail is getting folders (via VentureBeat).   They call them “multiple inboxes”, but, unless i am missing something, it is just a smarter way of working with folders – you can view a number of them open at the same time.  I was missing some combination of folders and labels in Gmail, so I think it is a positive development.  Combined with an option of working in an offline mode, it makes it more and more attractive.

I wonder though, with the offline mode, is it now possible to backup Gmail the same way one could back-up an Outlook PST file?  Also, what about Google calendar?  Is there an offline mode of working with it too?  Coming soon?  Could be great!

Now it’s even harder…

Veronica just shared with me the news about Google introducing an option for offline Gmail.  Now it is even harder to resist Google.  I wonder if google. calendar is also going to be avaialble in an offline version any time soon?

At least I am not alone…

Just to follow up quickly on a little confession about Google I posted a couple of days ago.  Apparently I am not alone.  David Carr of NY times put it in much better words than I did in my post, yet the idea is stunningly the same: “If Google owns me, it’s probably because I am in favor of what works.”

(Article via The Googalization of Everything)

Can’t… resist… Google… can’t… resist…

I think I’ve been somewhat hypocritical about Google.  On the one hand, since I started blogging, I voiced occasional criticism of Google, concern about it collecting all this information about us, and the fact that its search algorithm is turning into a lens through which we comprehend reality.  On the other hand, I am using many of Google’s services, because, what can you do, they create great products.  The result of this self search – I am not really doing what I preach.

I tried to think about all the Google products I use (from the most to the least used I think)…  Google, Gmail, Reader, Picasa, Youtube, Google docs, Google Calendar, G-Talk, Google Analytics… so whom am I kidding about being a careful user of Google’s products?  Just about a year ago, II used to log off my Google account when I did not need it, but I noticed that I am not doing it anymore.  So maybe it is time to stop pretending and simply embrace it?

What would it mean for me to embrace it?  I guess it would mainly mean dropping some of my clients and switching completely to Google application.  Today, I use Gmail with MS Outlook client and I refer to Google calendar or Google docs only for group projects.  “Embracing” would probably mean skipping MS Outlook and relying solely on the web applications.  I think I would also start using i-Google.

My main concern in this case is backup.  A while ago, I had a very unpleasant encounter with Google, when I got locked out of my Gmail account for almost a week.  There was nobody to talk to, because Google does not have a costumer support in a traditional sense and was really bad with getting back on the service requests submitted through its online support.  If that happens when Google is my main organizational tool, I will be in big trouble.  But maybe there are backup solutions that I am not aware of?

What do you think?

Paying to socialize?

Tech.blorge, one of the blogs on my RSS feeds, recently published an entry titled “Would you pay to use Facebook“.  They are echoing some of the ideas raised as a reaction to rumors that Facebook, which raised half a billion dollars less than two years ago, is running out of cash.  One of these ideas is subscription-based Facebook, meaning you will have to pay for accessing the website.

Right now this sounds more like a speculation, but it looks like the Russian social networking websites are actually experimenting with the subscription-based models.  I wrote in the past about the various ways Odnoklassniki.ru is monetizing on the social aspects of online social networks.  Recently, my father pointed out an item (RU) in the one of the Russian-language new websites, which states that Odnoklassniki is now requesting payment from new users asking to register.  According to this article, the registration now will cost between $1-2.  Those who choose not to pay will not be able to view other people’s profiles, contact other users, etc.  In other words the free registration is lacking any of the “social” elements, which is the main reason for people to join.

I looked a little bit around and there are more news items about that move in RuNet.  The official rationale stated by the Odnoklassniki management is that the paid registration is aimed at combatting spammers, who tend to open numerous accounts and use them for promotion of their products.  Some of the critics disagree (RU), suggesting this is just a way for Odnoklassniki to force the spammers to share their profits from the network.

In any case, it will be interesting to see whether or not the paid registration model will turn out to be sustainable.  Probably Facebook crew and others will be watching as they think about their next move. In the meantime, I do wonder if you would pay to socialize online?

Google’s roots

Recently Google published its quarterly reports, showing 26% growth in profit, which is particularly impressive in light of the escalating economic crisis (more here).  The primary reason for such growth is attributed to strengthening of Google’s brand among advertisers and its growing (advertising) market share.  For example, AdSense alone generated revenue of US $1.68 billion.  Very impressive!

Ironically, Veronica was reading the very first (and I don’t know if the only) article Brin and Page have published about Google.  It is available here and you are welcome to read it.

Why is it ironic you ask?  Well, if you go to Appendix A in the article, they write:

“advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers”

and they continue:

“Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries [Marchiori 97]. This type of bias is much more insidious than advertising, because it is not clear who “deserves” to be there, and who is willing to pay money to be listed. This business model resulted in an uproar, and OpenText has ceased to be a viable search engine. But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from “friendly” companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline’s homepage when the airline’s name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines. However, there will always be money from advertisers who want a customer to switch products, or have something that is genuinely new. But we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.”

So yes… very critical take on online advertising in 1998 (including siting Bagdikian!) and $5.54 billion revenue primarily from online advertising in 2008.  Ironic, isn’t it?  I am of course not suggesting that Google is taking money for promotion of companies to higher search results, but at the same time, I don’t think we can deny Google’s proactive role in shaping our current advertisement industry and commercialization of the internet.  In fact, this is a great example of the Structuration Theory, but that is for a different post.

P.S. Today in Google if you are based in the US and you search for cellular phone, the first thing you get are Google.news results, followed by a Wikipedia article, followed by T-Mobile website…

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