Also: Crazy iPhone rumour | We love widgets | Universal plays hardball with Apple | EMI signs music download deal with Snocap | Is MySpace losing out to Facebook and Bebo? | How private is Facebook? | The French Web 2.0 wave | David Black now Trinity's group digital director
Pity Lauren Turner, hapless blogger for Google's health advertising team, who has incurred the wrath of The Bloggers after daring to slight Michael Moore's new film.
Turner's post on Friday referenced the buzz being created by Sicko, which opens this week in the US. The problems start when she says:
"Moore attacks health insurers, health providers, and pharmaceutical companies by connecting them to isolated and emotional stories of the system at its worst. Moore's film portrays the industry as money and marketing driven, and fails to show healthcare's interest in patient well-being and care."
The criticism might be fair enough, but then this is on a corporate blog which supports Google's health advertising services. It gets worse:
"We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message. We help you connect your company's assets while helping users find the information they seek."
So - has Michael Moore's hard-hitting documentary into the ethically redundant US health industry caused your company a few problems? Don't worry - Google ads can help cover all that up with some well-placed banner ads. Nice.
Turner posted something that is quite far from being a retraction, but it was too late.
Mike Arrington on TechCrunch: "There is no way anyone who's blogged or worked in PR for more than, say, a week would post something like that on a corporate blog. Millions of Americans have a serious problem with the way health care is handled in this country, and such a polarised topic is hardly one in which a company like Google wants to take a stand. And if they did take a stand, it would be with Moore."
Matt Cutts, Google's head of Webspam and general all-round sensible web thinker, blogged his own summary of the episode with some tips for corporate bloggers. He said novice bloggers should run posts past someone more senior and should practice on forums, never post when angry, only respond to the most important stories and don't clam up if you make a mistake. Lastly, he said, it is a hard and fast rule not to criticise other companies or people.
"I'd rather be communicating a lot and sometimes get scalded than not be blogging. I think Google realises the importance of communication/blogging and tries hard to get it right. Sometimes Googlers mess up, just like anyone else. But I expect more Google blogging over time, not less."
This being Google, people will delight in gaffes and cock-ups. But even Arrington said he doesn't want Google to reign in its bloggers because that will ultimately mean more policy inside the company and less insight for the rest of us.
Crazy iPhone rumour: UK 3G version today!
If you thought that iPhone hitting the shops Stateside might quash any more gossip about the device, you're wrong. The latest is a mumour about iPhone in the UK seems a bit too good to be true. Mike Butcher on tbites cites reliable sources saying that a 3G version will be launched today in a joint promo between Vodafone, T-Mobile and Carphone Warehouse, with the latter offering the iPhone through a standalone MVNO - a kind of branded mini operator. This is all quite a stretch from the story to date that iPhone will launch late this year and Vodafone is the rumoured supplier, but we'll have to wait and see. Not a sniff from T-Mobile, which is busy pushing other things this week.
Meanwhile, some of the 500,000 Americans that have bought iPhones since Friday might have problems importing phone numbers and activating the new handset. And comScore data puts the number of US iPhone-related searches at an average 274,000 every week this year, generating about two million page views for the Apple website.
We love widgets
More on widgets, which are the latest next big thing. Research by Alloy Media in the US found that 9-17 year-olds don't like interruptive ads or banners, but like relevant advertising and tools on widgets within social networking sites. Advertisers might not like the fact that they can't control the content adjacent to their ads, but kids love them: one in five has added a widget from a marketer or advertiser in the past month. (Wall Street Journal)
Universal Music plays hardball with Apple
Meanwhile Apple is supposedly about to suffer a blow from Universal Music, reports the New York Times, who is likely to refuse a renewal of its iTunes contract in favour of a step-by-step agreement that would allow it to pull artists and tracks if it could not agree favourable terms or pricing.
Universal and Apple have apparently been at a stand-off over the new contract, but Universal's position will be backed by those in the music industry that resent what they see as Apple's stranglehold over the digital music market. Universal represents as much as one-in-three of iTunes downloads, and would be a serious blow to Apple if it pulled completely. On the other hand, digital music sales account for around 15% of Universal's revenue, or $200m worth. (New York Times)
EMI signs music download deal with Snocap
EMI has signed a deal with music distributors Snocap (the firm that provides the music download service for MySpace in the US) to sell music directly through social networking sites. The deal will allow US artists to sell tracks for $1.30 each using Snocpa's MyStores technology. (Wall Street Journal)
Is MySpace losing out to Facebook and Bebo?
Are we seeing a MySpace backlash? Neilsen//NetRaings claims that the site's traffic dropped during May 2007 - only the second ever drop since November 2005. The site is still the most visited social networking site in the UK, but Facebook and Bebo could catch up by September. Facebook has seen 523% growth in the past six months while Bebo has grown 49%. MySpace has only grown by 28% in comparison, and also lags behind the other two in terms of user engagement. MySpace users spend around 96 minutes on the site each month, compared with 143 minutes on Facebook and a whopping 152 minutes on Bebo.
Facebook's UK penetration has now overtaken that of the US, with 10% of UK web users signed up compared with 9% in the States. Bebo, meanwhile, is used by 12% of UK web users but only 1% in the US.
Nielsen says that almost half the UK's web population visited all three sites during May, which I find a little hard to believe; one, maybe, but all three?
And more Nielsen news: mobile research firm Telephia is being bought by Nielsen, giving the research firm a major stake in the mobile measurement space. MocoNews say the buyout price was around $400m. (MocoNews)
How private is Facebook?
A US security researcher has found what he says is a flaw in Facebook that makes "hidden" details appear in search results. Users have to change their privacy settings for both their profile and their search results, otherwise their name and photo will still be accessible to anyone who searches the site. At worst, it might mean that Facebook's privacy settings could be a bit clearer but what this doesn't do is make full profiles public. (ABC News)
The French Web 2.0 wave
On Giga Om, entrepreneur Jerome Archambeaud explains how an extensive broadband market, free wiki zones and a lively blogging culture has created a wave of new technology businesses in France. The country has 15.3m broadband users, a fifth of the country writes their own blog and video has become "an essential part of daily life". Video-sharing site Daily Motion claims 35, unique users a month, with the French spending more time watching web video than the UK, US and Germany: the French spend 13% of their online time watching video compared with 10% in the UK, 9% in Germany and 6% in the States. The financial infrastructure is in place to support tech entrepreneurs, says Archambeaud, with 25 venture firms in the space and people like Criteo founder Jean-Baptiste Rudelle and Loic LeMeur, who led the European arm of blogging company Six Apart before decamping to the US a few weeks back. (Giga Om)
David Black now Trinity's group digital director
Trinity Mirror has promoted David Black to group director of digital publishing. Black has been at the company since 1999, most recently as director of digital media for regionals. The new role will involve developing national digital strategy for Trinity and driving joint initiatives.
