
Rupert Murdoch to Block Google = Smart = Twitter has changed it all. - Anon84
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/11/09/rupert-murdoch-to-block-google-smart-twitter-has-changed-it-all/
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minalecs
I think this guy misses Rupert's point entirely. Rupert doesn't want the
random people that are coming from search engines, or twitter to use his
sites. He wants the people that click on his news sites everyday to pay a
subscription.

And yes the writer highly over values the importance of twitter. Twitter is
good for trends, but to lead users to specific links or sites, like a search
engine does based on popularity or relevancy.. is not the same. When a event
occurs unless you're one of the first new sites to break it, you'll get
thousands of news sites links with the same content.

~~~
teyc
No, both of you miss the point. Rupert wants an audience. That is why he
bought myspace. He talks about loyalty, but no so much that people are loyal
to the newspaper, but he wants someone to stay on his properties the same way
that when you buy a newspaper, you'd pour through every page. By simply making
content premium, cognitively the reader is going to value the content more,
thus making the reader stay longer. You see this with biz opp ebooks etc. Most
information is freely available elsewhere, but the ones that get read are the
ones people actually paid something for.

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mustpax
Ok, as clueless as he is, not even Mark Cuban can believe Twitter and Facebook
live updates are going to supplant search engines. They serve completely
different purposes. Traffic from each source is almost completely independent
of the other. The traffic you lose from Google News _might_ be made up by
Twitter, but it is never going to make up for the loss of Google organic
search results.

It is also ironic how each news outlet is so enthusiastic about their
competitors blocking Google. They know they would just get their competitor's
traffic for free.

This jumping on the Rupert Murdoch saber-rattling bandwagon is getting old
really quick. I will believe the viability of their alternative business
models when I see one of these media moguls actually block Google in their
robots.txt file.

~~~
endtime
>Ok, as clueless as he is, not even Mark Cuban can believe Twitter and
Facebook live updates are going to supplant search engines.

He wasn't suggesting that! Just that Twitter is already a better source than
Google for real-time news...not a very new or controversial statement.

~~~
stingraycharles
His point basically is that, compared to Twitter, Google is unimportant for
News Corp, traffic-wise. Which I personally find hard to believe.

~~~
dotcoma
Plus, why does twitterpose no threat to News Corp? it still sends readers
directly to the article without losing time on the homepage. So, in what
really is it different from Google?

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richardw
Hmm. Call me when Twitter is sending most sites more traffic than Google.
Heck, call me when it sends 10% as much.

~~~
butterfi
hmm indeed! :-)

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pkulak
Eh. People who read sites like his aren't searching for news, they're
searching for their current views to be reenforced. Google news isn't good for
that anyway (though Twitter can be). Might as well cut off the accidental
readership.

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hyperbovine

      TWITTER POSSES NO THREAT
    

If you have to rant, don't SHOUT. And if you have to SHOUT, spell it right.

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jsz0
The point that both Cuban and Murdoch are missing I think is the shelf life of
news content isn't limited to only breaking news. For example I check a
particular news site everyday but maybe 30 or 40% of the content interests me
right now. I may be interested in the other 60-70% later but how am I going to
find it without Google? I'm obviously not going to individually search a bunch
of sites. That's why search engines exist in the first place -- no one wants
to do that.

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10ren
One thing that struck me about twitter is that the mainstream media pushed it
(e.g. Oprah). That never happened with Google.

I got the sense that the mainstream media felt that they could work with
Twitter, and so of course they promoted it like crazy. This article suggests
one reason why that might be: it's not a competitor to media, but more like
the word of mouth that mainstream media is accustomed to handling.

Whereas Google solved a problem (of endless masses of information of unknown
relevance) that had never existed before. It solved a geek problem, not a
mainstream problem.

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fjabre
I've heard it a million times and for hopefully the last time: FB/Twitter will
not replace Google. As much as the social networking fundies would love to see
that happen.

This is a huge blunder on Murdoch's part - as if Fox was reporting news in the
first place. Good riddens.

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SlyShy
Right, because you couldn't have users _both_ post news stories on Twitter
_and_ have the pages be indexed by Google. That's simply not possible.

~~~
endtime
The point is that he doesn't make money from Google's indexing of his content.
Did you even read the article?

~~~
SlyShy
I rather did read the article. If you can get traffic from Twitter, why would
you cut off getting traffic from Google?

"he doesn't make money from Google's indexing of his content"

How does he make money from Twitter users posting his content? The only way he
makes money from Twitter is traffic, and Google also drives traffic. Therefore
how does it make sense to cut off a source of traffic?

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toddh
What will Murdoch do when Twitter hijacks the links?

~~~
senko
Twitter references bring pageviews, while Google News brings .. nothing?

I doubt (have no proof though, would be interested in numbers) that a
considerable percentage of visits to a news site is from search engines. One
data point: I don't remember when I last googled my way into a news article.

~~~
onewland
You probably haven't intentionally done it, but let's say you're looking for
information on the arrest of Bernard Madoff or the Lehman bankruptcy:

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS345US...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS345US345&q=madoff+arrest&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g-p1g3g-m6)

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS345US...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS345US345&q=lehman+bankruptcy&aq=0&oq=lehman+bankr&aqi=g10)

While it's true that I probably wouldn't search for "xyz Wall Street Journal
article" I might be searching for xyz topic and happen upon a result in the
WSJ

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butterfi
hmm... delist my content from Google and instead rely on a company with no
business model and that crashes frequently...

hmm....

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Tichy
This makes me feel so tired. Why not just wait and see how it plays out in the
long run.

~~~
fburnaby
What makes me feel tired is reading words in ALL CAPS LOCK; this isn't the
year 1999, or 2004. Heck, it's not even 2008...

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steve_mobs
real time news is just a preference. The market segment for that preference
and for people who know how to get real time news from the various tools is
still very small.There are still millions of other people who prefer the old
way that google caters to.

News corp getting rid of google and using facebook and twitter instead to
drive traffic is dumb.They will block out millions of internet users in the
process.

The only thing I agree with about marks blog is that twitter and facebook are
not threats because they do not compete with newscorp news properties in the
destination site space.

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CamperBob
"The concept of “If the news is important, it will find me” works better by
the day. If it matters to me, chances are very good its in one of the twitter
feeds I follow."

As with most people who use the Internet primarily to reinforce their own
worldview, Mark Cuban must have the intellectual curiosity of a card-carrying
dittohead. He and Murdoch deserve each other.

~~~
CamperBob
Note, before downvoting further, that those aren't my words: I was quoting
Cuban. :-P

