Tag Archives: google

Google vs Facebook (the department store vs marketplace)

  By netcrit | May 3, 2010 - 14:33 | Think
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Update: as evidenced by this report, on unique visitors to FB and Google, industry commentators still don’t get the difference between these two giant net companies. Equally, FB putting realtime search into its environment (acquiring FriendFeed) also doesn’t in any way demonstrate equivalence between the two. Both reflect a relatively simplistic understanding of the net as a place for searching and for getting lots of visitors. (Think, for example, of google search is embedded inside many applications and services – Google doesn’t need people to go to its hompage!) Ultimately, reflecting on some twitter comments (thanks @baym and @amuir_netecol) from my last post , I am drawn to the comparison between Facebook as the massive department store within which all wants and desires are collected, strucutured and offered: some of the ‘departments’ are franchises, essentially leased from the main store, others are owned by the store. Just like department stores are designed to lure customers in, and make it hard to leave, with astute physical environments that prevent ‘walk through’, so too Facebook acquires as much of a user’s attention as possible and then distributes it across several applications, engagements and the like. While much of what is there is … Click to read more →

Google vs Facebook vs the Internet

  By netcrit | May 2, 2010 - 20:27 | Think
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I commented recently on Twitter that Facebook = the new AOL and, not surprisingly, then discovered that many others (e.g. Kottke.org had already had my apparently novel insight! (This effect can either deflate one’s confidence or increase it – I am not the first, but I am as wise as the crowd – some examples from the crowd thanks to googlesearch). And, clearly, Facebook is trying to create an experience of online life / augmented reality / social and cognitive networking that stands apart from, or is potentially isolated from the ‘web’ within which Facebook exists – though it claims to be embedding itself into the web, of becoming a sort of underlying social networking of people, data and places throughout the web, I actually see the plan as one to enable its users to never leave the facebook environment except when prompted to do so by something in facebook, and then be returned to facebook. So, in this model of online behaviour, Facebook users would look out over the low walls of the garden and observe interesting things elsewhere in the jungle of the net; would at times scurry out into that jungle, but otherwise would remain safely inside … Click to read more →

Old Media, New Media, Not Media?

  By netcrit | October 9, 2009 - 23:54 | Think
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Micro-brainwave… Murdoch’s campaign on behalf of old media (for which read the Vulpine Empire and its allies) to extract money from Internet gigantors like Google rolls on; just in from the publicity front line, ‘Murdoch warns Google: it’s time to pay’. One of the things that puzzles me is our tendency to characterise these debates as old media vs new media, whereas I am starting to think that (given what Google is), we probably should see it as old media vs not media. While there are some Internet entities and activities that might be characterised as ‘media’ (in the social institutional sense – eg defined by our operating understandings of ‘the media’ which have developed in the 20th century), there are many – perhaps most – which are not. Moreover, Murdoch/Fox is new media or at least converged media. So, continuing a longstanding distaste for the term new media, can I suggest that the underlying dynamics of the current controversies of over payment for content are because new social forms, like Google, are emerging that are NOT media but which trespass into the economic fiefdoms of media. Google is not media because it operationalises a different mode of information. Perhaps … Click to read more →

Googlization of Everything… (keynote, AoIR Conference)

  By netcrit | October 9, 2009 - 04:06 | See
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‘The Googlization of Everything and the Human Knowledge Project’ Keynote presentation by Siva Vaidhyanathan Blogging, Tweeting and backchanneling… hm… Books about the Internet are a challenge because of the time from completion to publication and the speed of change in things Internet. How long can you go without using Google? – Some google product will influence most of your online activities. Despite the short time of the company’s existence it has a profound impact on our lives. Focus of concern is from the commencement of the Google scanning of millions of library books; worrying for Siva and, moreover, positive reaction from commentators (Kelly, Lessig) also worrying. Is this transformational? Why is it claimed to be? Does it realise librarians’ dreams for perfect digital information sharing? And yet it seems Google is positively viewed – partly because they give so much, and no money changes hands. We are not Google’s customers, however, we are their product. Google learns from us. Googlization – “processed, rendered and represented by Google” – knowledge, communication and us can be Googlized. [Link to the notion of content-generated user I am developing]. Note the massive array of applications and services within Google. Brin says : perfect search … Click to read more →