Why journalists eventually do themselves in
He goes and describes the act of collecting data for the purposes of advertising as "sinister". First of all, this assumes that users want crappy ads for products they aren't interested in since no data on the user interests equals no targeting. Second of all, no targeting means that advertising revenues go down or even more crappy ads in an attempt to keep revenues up. Either way, the user experience goes in the toilet. This will be less money to pay journalists for these "free" content services. Sinister? Hardly. As someone in the industry, it'd be so much easier if everyone just paid directly for the content they consumed, but everyone wants it for free and most will give up a little data to keep content freely available.
On another note, I believe this journalist is being overly simplistic about why Google felt it needed to compete with Facebook and creating Google+. He said it's because of the growing time spent on Facebook and that means less money for Google who makes the majority of their revenues in advertising. Ok. Where's the insight that social is replacing search in the content discovery game? More time is being spent online in general so there's plenty of advertising revenues to go around. The real issue is that social is a direct attack at the core utility of search: finding content.
Still, Terri Gross is one of the best interviewers on the planet.
Podcast/Article:
NPR: 11-03-2011 Fresh Air
URL:
http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/13/142006579/npr_142...
Description:
Stories: 1) The War Between Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple 2) Kelly Clarkson's Vocals Keep Getting 'Stronger' 3) A Critic To Remember: Pauline Kael At The 'Movies'
This content comes from:
NPR Programs: Fresh Air Podcast
