On January 12, 2010, Google announced that a major attack launched against its network from hackers inside China (aimed at exposing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists) had prompted it to consider abandoning its Chinese operations and reconsider its 2006 agreement with the Chinese government to censor search results in the country.

“Google is failing in its mission to make the world’s information accessible and useful to Chinese Internet users”₁ was a line used by the Vice President for Global Communications and Public Affairs in 2006. Less than four years later in January of 2010 Google announced that due to “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on [their] corporate infrastructure originating from China… [Google is] no longer willing to continue censoring [their] results on Google.cn”₂ . Since then things have progressed. China has completely denied any involvement in the so-called cyber crimes ₃ and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland has said that he hopes “to apply some negotiation or pressure to make things better for the Chinese people.” ₄

So is this Google finally living up to its corporate mantra “Don’t Be Evil” or is it simply corporate positioning of a multinational corporation? The fact that Google entered the Chinese market in 2006 and agreed to censor their results demonstrates the willingness of the company to comply with the law in the countries in which it operates and simultaneously demonstrates its lack of concern for local politics, no matter how controversial. Could the so-called cyber attacks which Google claim were the final straw merely be an ideal opportunity to exit a poorly performing market?

“This wasn’t in my opinion ground-breaking as an attack. We see this fairly regularly,”₅ was a statement by Mikko Hypponen, of security firm F-Secure.  ”This goes on all the time. Of the Fortune 100 companies, all 100 are under some sort of attack all the time”. In fact evidence has recently surfaced that Google actively assists governments in democratic societies with access to its properties including Gmail (it’s online email client). Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and renowned technology author recently announced that “In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access.”₆ “Democratic governments around the world — in Sweden, Canada and the UK, for example — are rushing to pass laws giving their police new powers of Internet surveillance, in many cases requiring communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell.” So we must now question why did Google decide this particular attack was newsworthy and why take such a monumental step of pulling out of one of the largest potential markets in the world?

In 2005 Google’s market share was 33.3%1 The announcement to censor results in China published in February of 2006 was intended to slow the nose diving market share if not aimed to increase it. However according to Jennifer Li, Baidu’s chief financial officer, “Baidu’s market share for search in China was about 77% in the third quarter [of 2009], up from 75.6% in the second quarter [of the same year]. Google [she says], lost share in China, dropping to 17% in the third quarter, from about 19% in the second quarter.”₇

In summary I believe that Google’s response to China had little to do with their moral stance which has apparently changed significantly since 2006 when they entered the market and which the company seem to forgo in order to continue to operate in democratic countries and more to do with an excellent public relations strategy which took the focus from the company and raised a contentious issue before a public with growing anti-Chinese sentiment.

Related articles

• Schmidt Hopes ‘Some Pressure’ Will Make China See Things Google’s Way (wired.com)
• Google Vs. China: A Bluffing War Begins (slog.thestranger.com)

References

[1] Schrage, E. (2006, 2 15). Testimony: The Internet in China. Retrieved 2 2, 2009, from The Official Google Blog: googleblog.blogspot.com

[2] Drummond, D. (2010, 1 12). A new approach to China. Retrieved 2 2, 2010, from Official Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

[3] Hornby, C. B. (2010, 1 14). China defends censorship after Google threat. Retrieved 2 2, 2010, from Reuters.com: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60C1TR20100114

[4] Fraher, J. (2010, 1 29). Google’s Schmidt Hopes ‘Pressure’ Will Help Chinese People. Retrieved 2 2, 2010, from Bloomberg.com: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6.eNsTFNWSc

[5] Shiels, M. (2010, 1 14). Security experts say Google cyber-attack was routine. Retrieved 2 2, 2010, from BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8458150.stm

[6] Schneier, B. (2010, 1 23). U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google. Retrieved 2 2, 2010, from CNN.com: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/

[7] Mehta, S. N. (2009, 12 28). Google v. Baidu: Which company will win China? Retrieved 2 2, 2010, from CNNMoney.com: http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/12/28/google-v-baidu-which-company-will-win-china/

The design is drastically different and includes many more features you find on the full web app. The frustrating thing with version 2.5 is most of the items on the news feed were un-clickable (meaning pressing the screen!) and was begging for a little bit more functionality. Thankfully our prayers have been answered.

The first thing you notice is the home screen has a grid of icons rather than starting with the news feed.

The first issue I came across was the fact that videos show previews but the they haven’t been converted to MP4 for the iPhone to play, so you get a very helpful alert box!

The other big additions are Events, video uploads, pages (in addition to just friends) and a much improved inbox. There are some subtle additions too, like a new icon.

Overall the app is very well put together and has some extra touches that just make it classy, even down to the way you can move icons on the home screen just like the actual iPhone home screen, as shown in the screenshot below.

Download it from the App Store

But why has this happened?

What happened?

The impression from tr.im’s homepage and blog post seems to be the following 3 things:

1. No-one wants to buy or invest
2. No-one wants to advertise or see adverts
3. No point in developing the site further

It is pretty conclusive, they are pretty screwed. With the service being popular it was always going to have high costs and no income, which is just a massive spiral that you don’t want to be a part of. They only way they could save themselves would be to get investment, but investors want to know how they will get their money back.

Advertising with short URL services

There are 2 ways that you could do advertising with short URLs. Both of them are intrusive and would most likely push users to another service.

Interstitial
Showing a whole page of advertising for a certain amount of time before redirecting to the target page, this obviously means that the user experience is degraded and with sites like Twitter being a “now” network, who wants to wait 30 seconds before getting to a site they just clicked?

Bar
We all know what has happened with sites that use frames and bars. But what if the bar had a line of Google ads instead of other buttons and info? If it was a small enough ad then I personally wouldn’t care about it. The problem would be getting targeted ads, Google would need to be given info about what the page content is (as its sat in another frame) or using a private ad network.

Custom shortening services

I think these are the way to go. By custom short URL services I mean the way TechCrunch uses tcrn.ch for their short URLs (built on top of awe.sm).  The problem with really popular short URL services are that they aren’t short anymore! Some of them still have a 4+ letter domain name plus 5 letters after. Just look at is.gd or bit.ly they are getting longer. The benefit of a custom short URL  service is the URLs are actually short, you can collect all the stats you like, you can do whatever you like with the URLs. Be it adding advertising, bars/frames or simply collecting details stats. As long as the service does a 301 (or possibly 302) redirect sites like Google and TweetMeme can index sites correctly. So all round there aren’t really any downsides. Obviously this solution is just for businesses, every day users would still need a service to use.

The end of smaller services?

Of course its not the end of URL shortening services. Sites like Bit.ly obviously have the backing from Twitter since they swapped to them from TinyURL for their shortening service of choice. Bit.ly also has a large amount of investment. But what about other services, that are large, but not as large as major shorteners like bit.ly and tinyurl?

My personal opinion is that they will have a tough time staying afloat until they can get investment and make money, and as I have written above, it will be hard for them to find the “correct” way to get money.

I’m really interested in your thoughts so please post your comments below.

Most celebrities just tweet about them selves and use the whole platform for plugging the hell out of their stuff. Almost seeing $$$ signs. I know that is still the case with most celebrities who use Twitter as they have to publicise their stuff somehow, but when you follow someone and you don’t realise its all marketing? For me that’s a good person to follow.

So how does Imogen utilise the power of Twitter? Well I’m writing a blog post about it? So clearly this is only going to work in her favour. I doubt she would ever read this though. But this post is more about good ways or marketing youself on Twitter. So what has Imogen done?

Video blog

I haven’t seen another artist video blog their album creation in so much detail, down to the people who helped out, previews of songs and when she is meeting her record label and what they are going to discus. It’s not giving the album away but its enough of a tease to make me want to learn more about the album and most likely buy it. See the video blogs on her YouTube channel.

Get followers involved

This was done in conjunction with her video blog, twitter and her site. She asked everyone watching/reading to send in ideas for album art for her new album. After users sent theirs in she looked through them all and found someone with the right style and invited them to her house and they would then create the artwork for the album. What a great way of getting people involved?

Have a tweetup

Get your followers to gather altogether and discus the one thing they all have in common, the love of Imogen Heaps music. But don’t forget to turn up yourself! What artist do you know that would get fans together locally and just have a fun evening of chat and music?

Download tweet exchange

By this I mean you send a tweet out from twitter.imogenheap.com publicising the album and get a free HD copy of her “canvas” video (not a single, just a cool video). The system uses OAuth to it makes sure the tweet is actually send and then redirects to the download page. What a neat little way of publicising a free download. The only thing that is missing is downloading a free track or something along the lines of what Coldplay have done.

Overall I think Imogen (and possibly her management, not sure) have done a great job of using social media properly and getting some buzz around her album. I wouldn’t have written this post without it! See the video of “Canvas” below.

They are encouraging hundreds of employees to handle online customer service and company promotions using Twitter. Basically Best Buy employees can use the @twelpforce account and their own Twitter account to register for the service. From then on tweets from the registered account will be displayed in a single stream on the @twelpforce account. All they have to do is append the hashtag #telpforce to tweets on their account.

But what does this mean for general customer support via Twitter?

Why is it effective?

The reason these corporate customer support accounts are run is to help their image on Twitter. As communication via Twtter is so fast they need to have people who know what they are doing and don’t need a script to follow, like a normal call centre. So the people running the account are normally experienced or a few levels above the standard CSO (Customer Service Officer).

The chances are that when you ask one of these accounts a complicated or unusual question it will get answered properly by someone who knows what they are talking about. This was the case with BT (British Telecom). I asked their account about canceling my service and instead of me waiting in a queue on a phone line I simply direct messaged my phone number and account number and they rang me back! No more wasting money ringing a so-called “freephone” number on my mobile/cell and it costing an arm and a leg. I was incredibly impressed with the service I get, despite the fact I was canceling their service.

But what was the secret to that? Well there are a few things that made the service really good:

1. They knew what they were talking about
2. The number of tweets with questions is a tiny fraction of the phone calls they get
3. The CSO’s are higher up and therefore can command people ring back or do things that aren’t in the script. Like using common sense.

What will happen when it gets popular?

As you can see with Best Buy they are now letting their own employees answer questions. This may be wise as they aren’t reading from a script but as soon as they get popular their support quality will deteriorate.

So what is most likely to happen is if the amount of questions to twitter increases corporations will then have to create proper support software in place and that can only lead to more scripting and “dumb” CSO’s. This basically means that if their Twitter based support gets popular they will have to integrate it into their overall customer support strategy, which can only be a bad thing.

How can we help?

They only thing we can do is be selfish! If we have some excellent support don’t tell every single person about it, the more popular it gets the faster the deterioration in support.

Please let me know what you think and I am open to any suggestions you may have. Even if it’s to say I am being totally cynical!

So it is now clear that I need some convincing that 3D video is actually something worth looking at. I have therefore split this article into a few sections. Feel free to add your comments. I am totally open to your suggestions about what it can be used for.

Video quality

Video quality is really important, the ability to see all colours of the spectrum is a must. Sitting at my desk with green/red glasses watching what then looks like a grey video doesn’t fill me with excitement. It really needs to be full colour and not blurriness.

Webcams

There are now webcams being sold that can record in 3D. They have 2 lenses that are a few inches apart, it therefore knows the distance and can work out the angles and produce a live stream of 3D video. So lets say you want to watch a 3D stream, you have to find the stream and get the right glasses. These could be cyan/red, amber/blue or polarising etc. You would then have to buy glasses that matched the stream and hope that other videos are in the correct format.

YouTube

YouTube have the right idea. One of their developers is doing a project to add 3D video. What they are doing is allowing the user to swap how the video is viewed. So you can swap the format the video is in, colours and views all in real-time. This is obviously the way to make the video compatible with all kinds of glasses and viewing techniques. For istance see the video below. You need to view the video on YouTube to see all the viewing options for changing colours and aspect ratio etc.

View the video on YouTube

Digital TV

This is interesting to me. The Sky network in the UK has been testing 3D broadcasting this year and says it might have some programmes out at Christmas. I would love to see how this works and the technology behind it. Does it require 2 simultaneous streams of the same programme for each “eye”? Will they supply viewing equipment? I will definitely expand this post when I find out more.

Please let me know your feelings on the subject. I think that there could be a place for 3D but it needs to be standardised or open to different viewing techniques.

So now that we are all caught up on the news we can start analysing what we actually think of the idea of the Chrome OS. Obviously baring in mind that it has barely started development and won’t even be seen until next year. So lets start with comparing it to Android.

Chrome OS vs Android

So Android is Google’s mobile OS that allows developers to create apps, mainly in Java, that are installed onto the system which means that they don’t need necessarily internet connectivity to be used. These are quite often specialised pieces of software that utilise some of the devices hardware like a bluetooth, 3G, GPS and camera.

But recently some developers (not Google) have managed to port Android onto a netbook (Chrome OS’s initial target market) and use most of the apps (except GPS and camera etc). So already we can see an overlap with their two operating systems but as Google haven’t done this themselves we can be sure that they won’t be doing it in the near future.

Many people have been asking the question “Why have Chrome OS and Android?”. Well I feel the answer is pretty simple. One uses local specialised hardware and one doesn’t. Chrome OS is very likely to have desktop with links to lots of web apps that make use of HTML5/Gears technology and use the cloud extensively. Whereas Android has apps installed on the device that require a completely different language, UI design and marketing.

Chrome OS vs Windows/OSX

So these two popular desktop Operating Systems obviously make use of the local file storage for everything from the users documents to programs they have installed. Will this way of computing change when Google Chrome OS comes out? No way. You can’t run Adobe Photoshop in a web client unless it is a full Java Applet, which to me isn’t a true web technology.

Google Chrome OS wants to use the cloud, which doesn’t require any local storage other than the local OS and any cached files for offline working. This won’t be extensive as it is more likely to be documents and spreadsheets that get stored rather than large media files. Even thinking of a large movie file, how is that handled? When a file is streamed there is a local cached copy placed on the hard drive. I’m interested to see how will they over come this?

I really don’t think Microsoft or Apple have much to worry about. Microsoft may feel that XP (which almost 8 years old) might have some competition in the netbook market, but Chrome provides a completely different solution to the problem and it would be up to the consumer to see which solution suits them better. Cloud computing and web apps or using installed apps and local storage. Obviously there will be a small overlap and is not to be taken literally.

Apps

The apps that will be built for Google Chrome OS are going to be totally different. For starters they will be using different programming languages to the installed apps on other Operating Systems. There will be minimal overlap between desktop programming languages and those that are used on the web (apart from .NET and ASP.NET).

The web apps that are created for the Chrome OS are said to work on all standards compliant browsers. For a starters we know that all browsers are different and that IE should die a painful death. So this must mean that the browsers on other operating systems must be able to accommodate some small local storage for caching of files and small databases. Therefore they need Google Gears or an HTML5 compatible browser. At the moment it seems only Opera, Safari, Firefox and Chrome support a couple of HTML5 standards (like video and audio tags, Safari also supports local database storage without Gears). So by the time Chrome OS comes out all these browsers need to support HTML5 which IE9 most certainly won’t support all of them.

Will Chrome OS take over the world?

Errr…. no! I don’t think it will take over the desktop OS world, though it will have a pretty good stab at the netbook market. It could change the way we work remotely (without a laptop). This is Google, everyone knows them so no matter what they do they will have some traction in any market they choose. I just don’t think the world is ready for complete cloud computing, especially the security aspects of it keeping you personal documents on a server somewhere else on the planet.

Most people don’t realise they use cloud computing. Do you store photos on Flickr/Facebook? Do you use GMail/Hotmail? They you already use cloud computiong, so the change to using pure cloud computing isn’t as great as you think. But still I think Google have a lot to prove and I really look forward to seeing what they come up with.

Please leave any questions of comments below.

I would like to start with my apologies for not writing to this blog for the past month or so. I have been busy with exams and the last few weeks of university fun. As I write I am sat in a bar in Spain piggybacking off the free Wi-Fi and sipping San Miguel.

I am posting a rare personal message today. In the past I have used this blog merely as an outlet for my musings on the financial, business and online world however I have big news which may affect my future perspective and so I thought it relevant. I would like to start writing more personal entries anyway and so I am breaking the ground so-to-speak with this.

My biggest news is that I have been accepted to spend a year at City University in Hong Kong for which I applied several months ago. I embark on the 20th of August and plan to continue with my management course which I started at Lancaster. I applied to study in the Far East because of the paradigm shift we have seen over the past few decades which has seen China, once a country which chose to isolate itself from the world seek the industrialisation similar to what we in Britain experienced in the 1800’s. 1.2 billion people now seek the same level of wealth and status as we in the west have enjoyed for centuries. In 1950 the average Chinese person earned $454 per capita (calculated at 1985 values) at sharp contrast to Western Europeans who were earning $4,902. Since the cultural revolution and Mao’s death however China has been on an unprecedented mission to catch up and has hurtled forward at breakneck speed causing many economists to predict that by 2040 China will surpass the US as the world’s largest economy. Experiencing business in an economy growing so quickly (even in the current climate) will undoubtedly be an invaluable experience.

The more historically or globally aware amongst you may observe that Hong Kong is in fact not a Chinese state. After the British surrendered the colony as recently as 1997 it became a ‘special administration district’ of China and as a result holds a unique position as an anchor between east and west making Hong Kong  - I hope - an ideal place to study Chinese culture without being uncomfortably detached from my own. English is also the second most spoken language (behind Chinese Mandarin).

I plan to continue with all my current obligations (such as the podcast – despite the time difference) and write more on this website perhaps about Hong Kong itself as well as my web-related interests and business observations.

In the old world businesses would make it as difficult as humanly possible for consumers to move from their service to a competitors. This makes economic sense, after all… people are less likely to want to move if it involves effort, if they don’t get the equivalent service elsewhere or if something (such as a blog entry) is lost. So why, in the last few years have we seen a sudden move towards ‘openness’ and transparency. Everything from social networks such as Facebook and MySpace to new blogging platforms such as ‘SquareSpace’ now preach that the users own their data… not the companies.

The answer is simple, it’s what the customer demands. Free and easy movement of information is a fundamental principle of the web and we are now in a position both technically and socially where we as consumers can demand this from our applications. However if indeed sites suddenly become democratised we appear to start on a slippery slope. Where does consumer input stop and the needs of the business start?

Facebook recently asked its users to help rewrite their ‘terms of service‘ after a controversy that hit the web hard. The legal agreement proclaimed:

Although the founder of Facebook responded to the event and said it was simply to cover the company legally, users were quite rightly outraged and Facebook was forced to change the agreement.

This flip-flopping not only demonstrates how passionate users feel about the sites they use but the power they wield over website owners. This therefore leads me to ask at what point sites can act autonomously and wonder whether this continued democratisation spawned by the wiki way back in 2001 will result in a much more open web and a changing model of business for companies now entering the internet arena.

One thing Facebook has learnt in the last few days is the importance of incremental updates rather than one large revolution in design. In a recent survey 94% of Facebook users said they disliked the new site design and Facebook for the first time ever announced that they were listening to users and are going to change the site based on feedback. So what can we learn from this experience?

Most people don’t like change. Generally change is confusing, it’s scary and makes users feel stupid when they can’t find the things they’re used to. Small changes people can cope with. Users won’t like them but if everything else looks the same they can quickly figure out what they want to do.

Warning that changes are coming is a good step for getting your users prepared as well, providing a preview or telling people what will change reduces alarm and thus keeps people happy. Although Facebook probably wont have lost any users from its recent changes it loses goodwill and this is something difficult to regain.

Affluence.org has been proclaimed ‘Facebook for rich people’. Every niche demographic seem to have their own social network and Affluence.org has been designed for rich people who like to talk to rich people… exclusively. It aims to bring ‘the members-only country club‘ mentality to the web but whilst this may sound like a good business model (think how much you could charge for ads that exclusively target rich people) I struggle to understand what these so called ’socially elite’ gain in return. Not making $300,000 a year or having a net worth exceeding $3 million I am (unfortunately) unable to join the site, and so this is a rather unbalanced review however I am interested in what we can learn from the business model.

Scarcity has always been a valued commodity and Affluence.org sells exclusivity.  No social network works if you’re on your own and the site is reportedly gaining about 400 to 500 new members each day. Although this is nothing  in comparison to Facebook’s 700,000 new users each day (as of Dec 2008) it is a fair rate of growth for such a site. From an advertisers point of view every member of Affluence.org  is worth far more than an ordinary user whose average salary (in the US) is $21,350 each year (a minimum of 14 times more in fact).

The site promises free access to a dedicated concierge, ‘invites to the most exclusive events and parties in the world’ and ‘priority access to the world’s most exclusive nightclubs, hotels, and restaurants’ as well as the usual social networking features. However many of these individuals will already have access to many of the above services.

The site really plays on a persons vanity. Everyone likes to feel like they belong to an exclusive club and this is what Affluence provides.This sort of scarcity creates the real value in a site and was something Google utilised in the growth of its GMail service, every member had to be invited and each of those members had 5 (and only 5) invites to pass on. Recipients of invites felt honoured and understood the scarcity which created a demand. The last thing the world needed was another webmail service but Google Mail utilised the value of scarcity to gain huge growth - and we can see this process being emulated by Affluence.org.