Slashdot Mirror
Google News Allowing Story Participants To Comment
Jamie found this analysis of Google News's foray into community commentary. They are starting it off by only allowing people involved with the story to comment — and participants must first be authenticated by email. The article rounds up other bloggers' views on the game-changing nature, and the possible dangers to Google, of this new feature. Here is a sample of comments to a Google News story.
But I'm not involved in the story. So I won't.
Copying this policy could really work for Slashdot I think.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Yep, its me alright.. promise. See the email address K4r1@rove.info - how could it not be me. They'd have to employ a large number of, oh, say journalists to verify each and every participant.
meh
This is kind of a cool idea; it's a way for direct commentary from the people involved without a journalist's filter.
:D
Plus, it'll get really entertaining when they apply it to political campaigns and the press secretaries get into flame wars.
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
This is a lot better than simply thinking they're silent until they're quoted in a future article.
;d
No, it's not high-security. It's just giving you a false sense of confidence. Every Tom, Dick and Harry at Columbia could claim to be a professor there. And for big companies, we already have press releases and responses to the story right there in the article. For smaller or mid-size companies, plenty are using services like hotmail or gmail instead of their own hosted email. On top of all that, you also get people who work at companies who could fake up an "official" company response. Imagine a disgruntled employee from a @macdonalds.com commenting in a hilariously embarrassing way. Or, more likely, just someone at the company responding before it was cleared through their communications department.
That's a very optimistic view. The people that have the time and the resources to monitor this stuff are the big corporations though, so I think you're most likely to see comments made by a company spokesman trying to spin articles that are unfavorable to that company. The first comment on the sample article seems to be bear that out.
So, instead of the article followed by a separate press release spinning that article, you get the spin on the same page as the article itself. I'm not sure what's really gained in that case.
How insightful is this?
Evil Corp: we aren't evil, you are mistaken
Expert: oh yes you are, but i love those fries
But what if one side can't? Not everyone has net access. Not everyone actually knows about it being on the Google news page when he is involved, even if he has access.
Of course, large businesses, governments and the like who can employ someone to monitor such activities will benefit from it. But you and me? Imagine you're getting into a legal battle with a large company. You have your hands full, meeting with lawyers and trying to keep from going under, do you have time to react to Google News? Hardly. Does the company you're suing (or that's suing you), on the other hand? With a few 100 to a few 1000 people working for them, most likely.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not only does it specifically state that an e-mail address needs to be verified, TFA links to the Google Help page which states their policy.
http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?
Your comment
A link to the story you are commenting on
Your contact details: your name, title, and organization
How we can verify your email address.
For example, if the Tooth Fairy wanted to comment on a recent story about dental hygiene, she might sign her comment:
"Sincerely, Tooth Fairy.
Verify my identity by losing a tooth and placing it under your pillow. I will leave you a business card along with a small payment for your tooth. Alternately you can call 1-800-TEETH-4-ME and speak to my assistant, The Tooth Mouse, who can confirm my email address and comment." Yes, that really is the example Google uses.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The big corporations have to pay big bucks to their PR firms to keep tabs on this sort of stuff. Average technologically-literate people, which is heavy on students, probably make up the bulk of Google News' audience.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This is great - we will not longer have to rely on the mass media journalists to decide what comments make it in a story, and in what context. I'm sick of seeing stories that ignore or downplay one side or the other by skewing the comments of the person that doesn't meet their agenda.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
The $11,000 spent in one year for that one smoker can parlay into much, much more money for the tobacco company. The average smoker spends approximately $1600 per year on cigarettes directly. This means they'd only have to be a smoker for 6.5 years for the company to make a profit off of them, and most smokers smoke for much longer than that.
Multiply that over 1.1 million new smokers each year and you can see how profitable it really is. They wouldn't spend that much money if it weren't really so profitable.
But yes, I agree their advertising targets more than just children.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
Okay, but what's the adoption rate? And is that 3000 unique kids per day, or can kids try/begin smoking multiple times throughout the year?
$11,000 each assumes 100% of them. If you discount those that never turn into buying customers, that figure would go way up.
Looking at $1,600 per year, and assuming (what, 12-to-70?) something like 58 smoking years for these kids, that's almost $93,000 per kid. And please note that we're ignoring any costs of any kind...
It would take one in ten for that to work, and those would have to be LIFETIME smokers. Optimistic at best. Closer to delusional...
It is not that hard to get reasonable confirmation of this kind of thing, or quoting people would be nigh impossible. Can anyone who actually works in a news room say how they verify things normally? I'll bet a simple phone call is all most major newspapers require and it won't kill Google to have a dozen people on the phone. Personally I can't wait until someone comments something really dumb, and then claims it wasn't them. Google may become my only source of news at this point.
Everyone knows that comments on news stories are either trolls, flamebait, or offtopic. Just look at the moderation on this for proof.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
>>> I think you should look more to slashdot and digg for what the comments will look like.
Good call, And I think the webcomic XKCD summed it up with this post
I run a news site that is indexed by Google News. As much as I'm anti-copyright and for open access to information, this move by Google really bothers me. This commenting feature really crosses the line. If Google is going to allow people to comment on stories from our service outside of our service, I want a cut of the money that Google makes off of using our content for free. This is only fair if Google is allowing people to comment on stories in a way that is outside the control of our website.
Do no evil? Google is really turning out to be the next Microsoft. Greedy and determined to control everything at any cost.
This will probably create a flurry of new lawsuits by larger news services.
I know its unpopular to fellate google as much as I'm about to, but a lot of /.ers seem to be missing the mark. This is an interesting move by google, and I predict it will add a lot of value to their news page. Think about the tremendous public service news.google provides; A quick-loading, easy-to-find, free-as-in-beer virtual newspaper...it attempts to neutralize political spin/bias by linking to multiple sources for each story, and by using the web it is capable of pulling from tons of lesser known, local newspapers that you would not otherwise know about/hear from (more sources also helps remove bias). This new addition is a step forward because it attempts to get information straight from the source (those involved in the story), removing the middlemen (remember the 'whipser down the lane' effect?). At the end of the day, all of google's actions seems to be aimed squarely at improving the quality of information available to the public, and making available to them as quickly and easily as possible... and did I mention, for free? This is a huuuggee asset for keeping the general public informed about the state of the nation/world/etc. I know a lot of people think google is the next m$, but google has done nothing to break my trust so far.
happy 4:20!