We can say this: traffic flows along links that we click. For a few years—before google—we could even say this: a link is not a link until we click it.

But now that is wrong because google made links really something else—meaningful signals, not just infrastructure. Links have a deeply important role in pagerank, the backbone of google’s mighty search engine.

Thus the giver of a link tells google that the recipient of a link is notable or significant or worth your time and attention and consideration or engagement. This is authority—on average, at the very least.

Links are signals for authority. That authority is distributed throughout the network, and given Igon values, google built a magnificent business detecting, computing, and centralizing that authority.

* * *

We are not entitled to our own understanding of facts, which take root in the universe. Thus we call facts objective. But we are entitled to our own appreciations of authority. Indeed, appreciation for authority can only take root in ourselves as individuals and groups of individuals. Thus we call authority subjective.

There are very many facts that I will never need to learn or remember. I will rely on google to detect those answers. Like just-in-time inventory, I will have answers only when I need them, when I borrow them, avoiding the mental costs of carrying them in my jammed-up memory.

Likewise, there are very many authorities that I will never need to appreciate. I will rely on google to detect those signals. But unlike facts as stored in someone else’s inventory, something changes about authority when I don’t carry it with me. Something’s lost when I borrow authority—just in time.

Google delivers facts. And facts are facts. But google doesn’t really deliver authorities. It co-opts them.

Maybe this is why Clay Shirky calls it “algorithmic authority.”

So if I were settling a bar bet, I might well say, “Yes, you can trust me. I found that claim by clicking on the top google search return.” The page on which I found the claim doesn’t enter my justification. “Dude, I googled it” might not work for very many justifications today, but Shirky’s quite right that there’s “spectrum” and that “current forces seem set to push [algorithmic authority] further up the spectrum to an increasing number and variety of groups that regard these kinds of sources as authoritative.”

The authority belongs to the algorithm that found the source, not the source itself. Traffic flows along links out to the edges of the network, but authority pulls inward to the center.

* * *

And this is why it seems unfair for folks like Jeff Jarvis to make claims like, “The recipient of links is the party responsible for monetizing the audience they bring.”

News sites should certainly be trying to establish engagement and trust and authority with users who come from google. But insisting that this task is an imperative of the link economy seems to under-appreciate that algorithmic authority centralizes authority. Google pushes the traffic but keeps the trust—or much of it, anyhow.

Maybe the best answer to “What Would Google Do?” goes something like this: build an algorithm that detects and hordes an elusive and highly diffuse resource distributed across a network.

* * *

So Danny Sullivan can jump up and down and yell about WSJ and google and bing: “Do something. Anything. Please. Survive. But there’s one thing you shouldn’t do. Blame others for sending you visitors and not figuring out how to make money off of them.”

Sullivan can exhort newspapers to see google referrals as an opportunity. And they are. Moreover, I have little doubt that many newspapers should be optimizing their pages depending on the referrer, whether that’s google or facebook or twitter or stumbleupon or whatever. But let’s also remember that google changed links. A different kind of traffic now flows along them. And that traffic is fickler—and, yes, less valuable—than we might first imagine.

Don’t tell News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, but technology news aggregator Techmeme is raking in profits.

Source:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/11/techmeme.html

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Google responds to Murdoch like they did before: If they tell us not to include [content], we do not; http://j.mp/3LgU1w

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The Puma Press blogs aggregation web site sports a new design for displaying the highlights of the weekly blogs posted by the journalism students at Paradise Valley Community College.

More coming, soon, on blog aggregation web sites.

Murdoch: News Corporation will probably remove its sites from the Google index; http://j.mp/3PhND7 (via @jayzon277)

Netzeitung: Aus wirtschaftlichen Gründen wird das Konzept der Internetzeitung mit Redaktion aufgegeben; http://j.mp/8UF8

Google introduces a new enterprise product: Google Commerce Search, focusing on bigger retailers; http://j.mp/2FOQrk

I’ve opened up a new category on the blog today. It’s called Ideas for the future of news and here I’m going to start collating good, tangible, positive, innovative ideas on how journalism can move forward. With ‘entrepreneurial’ the hot-word of the week in #futureofnews circles, more people are starting to put some great ideas out there.

I’ll report on as many as I can. And here is number 001:

Idea: Climate Pulse, the news aggregator

By: Headshift & evectors

I was very excited earlier to read about a new venture, currently in alpha-testing, which promises to put theories on the clash between journalism, social media and user generated content into practice.

London based developers Headshift have teamed up with Italian company Evectors, and produced a new form of content management.

It’s best left to Headshift’s Robin Hamman to explain more:

…[it] basically monitors and aggregates blog posts, news websites, twitter tweets and a wide range of other sources we’ve configured in the backend. An editor can then curate this content and display it as they wish – for example letting the flow appear as a raw feed, tagging or geo-tagging content, featuring the best stuff, etc.

In other words, content is aggregated around a single topic – but then edited by a professional. They decide what is quality and what isn’t.

They’ve created a test site, called Climate Pulse, to try this out ahead of the COP Copenhagen meeting. Check out this diagram:

What’s particularly fantastic, is their method of sharing content, through 3rd party widgets:

we can easily build widgets of the flow from the page, and enable site owners interested in a particular issue, for example deforestation, to create a widget that displays, on their own site, that content. Social features could then be made available, meaning that the audience on third party sites could participate on the sites they choose to visit, rather than visiting Climate Pulse itself…

They see it as a move away from the journalist as moderator of UGC, to a curator.

Pros:

• it uses the power of crowd sourcing around a topic
• it shares the results through a widget
• potential for multimedia, mashups, interactives
• has potential to satisfy niche groups

Cons:

• is it fulfilling for the ‘curating’ journalist?
• if paywalls go up, mainstream news content may be limited
• revenue generation not mentioned

I’d like these idea posts to be a place for constructive positive feedback on innovative new ideas. Many might not be completely thought out yet, but everyone gets top marks for actually putting new ideas out there. Stick your comments about Climate Pulse in the box below!

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1/3 of all netizens visit MSN monthly: time for a relaunch and integration of Facebook and Twitter; http://j.mp/lOguV

Technorati, keeper of the Top 100 Blogs list, raised new venture capital and relaunched its site; http://j.mp/19oZ1L

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The goal of Tracked.com: to gather, organise, analyse business information and make it trackable; http://j.mp/LxCjW

Jai Singh, Managing Editor of The Huffington Post, with NYU MS in Publishing Students

On a cold and wet Thursday, a small group of publishing students packed into the SoHo office of The Huffington Post to learn about one of the most heavily trafficked websites on the internet. Personally, I was excited to visit the office as the site has achieved what I think is the “holy grail” of websites: it not only survives, but thrives primarily through advertising revenue.After being treated to pizza and sodas, we were introduced to Jai Singh, managing editor of The Huffington Post. He first gave us some background on the site: it was founded in 2005, and its co-founder and Editor-In-Chief is Arianna Huffington. The site receives roughly 30 million unique visitors per month, and last month they surpassed WashingtonPost.com in uniques ; The Huffington Post also had 2 million comments posted. Their main office in SoHo has roughly 35 people in their editorial department, with about 75 people total on staff. Elsewhere, they have a D.C. branch staffed with ten people who report on various parts of the government; a California branch has five staffers.

The Huffington Post’s focus, Singh told us, is on “journalism done differently:” while original news reporting is part of their content, opinion, curated material and smart aggregation are the major components. The HuffPo, as it is called, also provides a platform for bloggers of all kinds, including politicians, celebrities, and authors. The editors operate under the concept of “P.A.C.T.”, which stands for professionals, amateurs, community (or crowdsourcing), and technology— all of which are essential components of the site.

When asked how front page headlines are chosen, Singh told us the editors serve up different versions to see which receive the most clicks. They also change headlines three to five times during the day. We learned that many comments are moderated at the discretion of editors, and that blog posts are moderated by the Blog section editors. While all bloggers are invited to submit posts, the editors choose what will be posted. Clearly, high profile bloggers may be granted more freedom and access to The Huffington Post’s content uploader.

Recently, The Huffington Post launched a nonprofit initiative, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, to finance investigative reporting that will look into important untold stories often ignored as other newsrooms contract or close. The goal: instead of what Singh calls the “autopsy” reports done after a major story has broken, The HuffPo hopes to conduct “biopsies” that will call out stories before they become major issues that  negatively affect  the public. The Investigative Fund is an open source project, and all news outlets will be given access to the reports at the same time as The Huffington Post.

Another exciting initiative is a new book section focused on giving authors a platform they can use to interact with The Huffington Post community. The site will not be reviewing books, but will partner with The New York Review of Books to provide reviews and will also link out to other review sites.

Inevitably, the question of free vs. paid content came up, and Singh said that The Huffington Post was not going behind a pay wall any time soon.  Their growth and expansion plans include the launching of local city sites, with Chicago and New York among the first.  We were also told a Sports section would be launched soon.

Section Editors (l-r): David Flumenbaum (Managing Blog Editor), Hannah Ingber Win (World Editor), Ryan McCarthy (Associate Business Editor), David Weiner (New York Editor), Katherine Goldstein (Green Editor), Danny Shea (Media Editor), Alex Leo (Comedy Editor), Katy Hall (Associate Entertainment Editor)

Following our discussion with Singh, we were introduced to a number of the section editors, many of whom had come to the Huffington Post with journalism degrees. For the most part, there is one editor per section, though entertainment has two. I left the offices of The Huffington Post feeling positively, as I had seen firsthand how the future of how publishing may look.

Amanda Ng

This afternoon I’ve been playing with and testing Flavors.me, which was pointed out to me by designer Simon Ianson.

The service is currently in private beta but once launched aims to help you create “an elegant website using personal content from around the internet”, ie. help you bring a selection of your social media presences under one roof and for it to look nice. The latter I think is the point as much as the former. The company are citing possible uses as:

• personal home pages
• life streaming
• splash and microsites
• celebrity fan pages
• commercial promotion
• brand marketing

From what I understand the service is being built by Jack Zerby, designer director at Vimeo and his partner in crime Jonathan Marcus, but I should emphasise that the project is not affiliated with Vimeo.

Pages on the site aren’t yet public and unfortunately the demo video (also see it here) isn’t shareable, not sure if that’s purposeful, but I can share this video made by someone else who has tested things out:

And here’s a pic of my test, which took me about 30 minutes to put together – but only because I decided to play with the font colours and background design, and was enjoying things a bit too much. In reality you could get something functional up in about 2 minutes and something more to your tastes up in about 5-10 minutes.

During my experimentation I came across a few minor bugs and the team were impressively quick to respond. From Simon’s experience as well, they seem very keen to get the service right, which is fantastic.

What I like is that it’s simple, brings things together, and does what-it-says-on-the-tin as the results generally look good (although some of the pre-selected colour schemes don’t work for all content). I can see how it could be popular as a personal webpage or the starting point for a celebrity fan site, gathering all the pieces of social media presence together.

However, at the moment there are only six social media services that can be added to your Flavor.me site – Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, Tumblr, Facebook and Last.fm. Whilst these do cover a wide variety of possible intents and users, it will be interesting to see how the team balance the design of Flavor.me with the desire of users to have more services included.

Simon also pointed out, and I agree, that being able to add your own domain to the service would add great value to the proposition (although, noted, this does add technical complexity). So instead of the URL http://flavor.me/user/kcorrick it could resolve to kathryncorrick.co.uk (or whatever).

I’m not also not sure that as the service currently stands would be something that could withstand the rigours of brand management and marketing: the fonts – whilst funky – are still fairly limited, and only one image can be uploaded, which for a brand would introduce interesting questions regarding logos (it still always comes down to logos, unfortunately).

But I’m sure there is much to come, given that the service I tried is in beta and de-bug mode put together with the obvious keenness by the team to get things right.

UPDATE 19/10/2009: Jack from Flavors.me has been in touch and responded to some of my queries above. Watch this space.