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| People tend to change their operating system (OS) even less frequently than they change their banks. And that’s not surprising. OS install is a big hassle, and potentially an even bigger risk. Better the devil you know, as the old saying goes. But what if the devil you don’t know could blow the old one out of the window? That’s the kind of claim Google are making for Google Chrome OS. If they’re right, people will be flocking in droves to change their OS. Let's have a look behind the hype and counter-hype. First, those claims. Google Chrome itself is a web browser, which in its nine months of life has attracted an unremarkable market penetration of less than three per cent. But on the back of that, Google says: “We are announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome: the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to rethink what operating systems should be.” One part of that rethink is that Google Chrome OS will be free. This year-end, Google plans to release the code behind the system and make it open-source. According to Google, its OS will be basically having the Web itself as your operating system, allowing you to store documents, spread sheets or Excel sheets on the Internet. In many ways, this looks like a logical extension of what’s already happening elsewhere, in the “computing cloud”. All well and good. But Google is a commercial enterprise, not a charity, and it needs to make money. How can it do that from an open-source OS? One way round that is the definition of “free”. Londoners who commute are used to “free” newspapers, for example. They are free to the users – but not to the advertisers. And that might be the way Google plans to go. Ads on your operating system could be annoying or distracting. Or they could blend into the background, as the ads tend to do on some email systems. Nevertheless, there would be problems. Would companies sign up to an OS that runs recruitment ads for a competitor, for example? Would Google start to charge a fee to switch off the ads, as some services such as “free” online games sites do? We don’t know what Google has in mind, and they’re not saying. Their strategy and tactics may well be dictated by the take-up of Google Chrome OS. But if it does take off, it certainly could be the shape of things to come. Watch this space. |
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| In the old days, everything was done in a way that now seems quaint and clunky. Take PR, for instance. The classic PR campaign involved briefing a PR company who would then go off in a huddle for a while, have a cocktail or two and return with a campaign. Typically, key media would be targeted, with the aim of reaching your chosen audience through ads and other opinion-forming means. But the Internet is changing all that, as it’s changing the greater part of the world. There’s now online marketing, online advertising – and online PR. This looks like a brilliant idea. With the Internet, the world is literally your oyster. You can reach thousands, millions or potentially even billions through an online presence. That’s opinion forming on a scale that even George Orwell’s Big Brother would have been impressed by. It’s also cheap. It can cost next to nothing to get online: small pennies indeed compared to hiring an expensive PR outfit and keeping them in gin & tonics. But just because it’s cheap and offers great potential doesn’t mean to say it’s easy to achieve. Those very advantages mean that millions of voices are clamouring to be heard. And only the most strident are going to be. To stand out from the crowd, you have to be original, intelligent and witty. You have to shout loud – but what you shout has to be true, verifiable and rare. Because it’s easy to compare sites. People have even been known to post negative feedback on their sites to hobble competitors who are racing away from them. Even when this feedback is untrue, mud often sticks. In short, what you need is some expert help. At LimeTree, we’ve been doing online PR (and lots of other online things) for a very long time. We know that the voice of millions is not the voice of the few; that there is no single channel that will reach your intended audience all of the time. But we also know how to get the right message to exactly the right people, and have a range of weapons in our armoury to do so. Interested? Then contact us today. |
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| Spam is everywhere, and it’s very hard to keep out. Lock your door and it seeps through underneath, through the hinges, even through the keyhole. So the news (on April 1st) that ProBlogger was launching a service called PayPerTweet gave us food for thought, as it were. Twitter is no stranger to controversy. A teenager on work placement at Morgan Stanley made national news in July this year when he wrote a report about how teens use social network. Teens don’t use Twitter; it’s for old people, said 15-year-old Matthew Robson. This and other “revelations” seemed to shock some of the great and good at the investment bank (which might suggest they should get out more). But leaving that aside, millions of people do use Twitter: and ProBlogger looked as though it was trying to cash in on that fact by announcing their new service. PayPerTweet, said ProBlogger, “delivers online word of mouth marketing, brand building and traffic generation” by getting people to tweet for money. OK, we quickly realised that this was an April Fool. So did many other people. But what is interesting – or alarming – is the number of respondents who thought it was a good idea. PayPerTweet won’t be happening; but something similar might. If not now, then sometime in the not-too-distant future. Perhaps from one of those who thought the spoof was a good idea. And this raises other questions. Is it too easy to spam Twitter? Will it become spam central? And how will Twitter make money in the future? Twitter, like all other social presences on the Internet, is changing, evolving before our eyes. Maybe, as Matthew Robson thought, it will just die away as its “old” users die themselves. Maybe it will become something different. But we think it’s worth keeping an eye on. |
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| Facebook must be feeling very pleased with itself. Especially when it looks at MySpace. In June 2006, MySpace was the most popular social networking site in the USA. Less than two years later, Facebook had overtaken MySpace in popularity, based on monthly unique visitors. MySpace is still out there. But in June of this year it laid off 30 per cent of its workforce. Thus passes the glory of the world, you might say (especially if you think in Latin). If there is a hint of smugness on the faces of Facebook’s mighty, it might be sensible to temper it with another hint of caution. Because the short history of the Internet is littered with great ideas that came to a sudden stop. Take the early search engines, for example. eXcite, Hotbot and the like. They were the first, but none of them will be the last; because Google found the right formula and they suddenly looked like dinosaurs confronted by faster, smarter mammals. So, is Facebook a Google or another eXcite? It seems incredible that Facebook would ever not be around (although no doubt people thought that about the Roman Empire once). It’s popular with a wide spread of people, of all ages. But it does face concerns: about privacy, for instance. Will Facebook strike the right balance on privacy, or will they get it wrong? More to the point, the very novelty of some Internet inhabitants can work against them. Once they stop being a novelty, people don’t want to play with them any more – particularly if a newer novelty comes along. Now, we’re not saying that Facebook is finished. Far from it. At the moment, it looks to be in rude health. But it is worth remembering one lesson: Internet creatures have to reinvent themselves for every age, or their days are likely to be numbered. |
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