I read the article on the website of the Swedish newspaper SvD titled: ”Twitter-noviser missar väljare” [Twitter-novices misses voters]

Interesting how an article with such low quality can be posted on one of the bigger Swedish Newspapers. This clearly shows that traditional media has a poor understanding how social media works. It also shows the eagerness from traditional media to down-play the importance of social-media by releasing negative articles like these.

The aim of the article written on SvD was as a response to the recent employment of several social-media experts. The reporter wanted to test if there was a social-media presence from our Swedish politicians. The reporter decided to narrow down his research to one social media. The research that followed on Twitter was of very poor quality.

The reporter begins his research by starting up a completely new account on twitter. This new account he does not even take the effort to fill out completely. NO bio and NO picture. He continues by spamming out one message each to every politician on his list (81) within 3 hrs. The spam is only inter-punctuated by a few small tweets which the reporter probably believes are normal for Twitter:

Uppe med solen 12:06 PM Jan 20th from web
Tycker att det får räcka med snö nu 12:16 PM Jan 20th from web
Har ätit en god lunch med polarna 12:11 PM Jan 20th from web
Testar testar 12:27 PM Jan 20th from web
Haha 12:36 PM Jan 20th from web
Twitter ist fantastic 12:36 PM Jan 20th from web
tebax efter sen lunch 2:21 PM Jan 20th from web
mörkret faller, men vi går mot ljusare tider 2:31 PM Jan 20th from web
Lite tam riksdagsdebatt eller vad säger ni? 2:42 PM Jan 20th from web
Hej och hå teknikproblem 2:48 PM Jan 20th from web
Stopp på tuben 4:02 PM Jan 20th from web
På väg hem 3:07 PM Jan 20th from web
Börjar tröttna på survädret 3:06 PM Jan 20th from web

The only thing to notice here is the reporters poor understanding of what people tweet, the fact that the SvD reporter counts being up at 12pm as ”waking up with the sun” and that they apparently eat lunch twice at SvD:)

The list of politicians on Twitter that the reporters use contains 81 people, some of these not updated in a VERY LONG time!
E.g. last tweet: Jun 1st, 2009, May 27th, 2009, May 31st, 2009 <- not sure why he expects a reply from DEAD accounts.
He still sends these accounts a message to get his statistics inflated a bit. He later in the body adds his definition of an active account which he sets as active within the last month(!) Real-time social-media activity dies a lot quicker then that. When he subtracts his definition of dead accounts he ends up with 59 ”active” politicians.

A revised conclusion for the ”research” done by SvD’s reporter.
13/59 replied to a ”spam account” with no bio or picture. Seeing that it was obviously not a voter with serious questions  I believe the reporter should be happy with the response rate, especially when those 59 accounts are adjusted to only the ‘real’ active accounts instead of including all updated within the last month. For those 13 politicians who actively took the time to write a response the questions asked the reporter didn’t even reply back and thank them.

Social media is about discussion, don’t claim someone doesn’t know it if you clearly don’t know it either!

Google has always had a hard time in China but now they seem to have had enough and wants change. Google just announced on their official blog that they would start ”a new approach to China”. Google implies that Chinese governments might have something to do with the following three crimes:

1.  A cyber-attack in mid-december on Google and ~20 other companies
2. Google claims to have evidence that the main goal of the attack was accessing Gmail-accounts belonging to Chinese human right activists.
3. The follow-up investigation on the cyber attack by Google also revealed that several e-mail accounts used by human right activists in US, China and Europe has been continuously accessed by a third part that initially got login-information via phishing or malware on their target’s computers. [Thanks to @nikkelin for summarizing the points in Swedish.]

Google has because of this opened up their censoring somewhat, one example being pictures of Tianmen Square crackdown that were not available earlier.  They also say they might cease doing business in China if they can’t find ”a new approach to China”.

”These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Another important point that didn’t come out in the official Google blog post was revealed on Wikileaks saying that:

”gossip inside google China is gov hackers found infiltrating google source code repository; gmail attacks an old issue.”

The possibility of Google moving out of China becomes very interesting when you look at the Baidu vs. Google war for the Chinese search engine market. In China most people prefer Baidu because of them providing a better service for the Chinese. If google pulled out it would most likely mean that Baidu got almost all of those searches. According to Jennifer Li, Baidu’s chief financial officer, their share of the market for search was 77% in the 3rd quarter (+1.4% from 2nd) and Google’s share was at 17% in the 3rd quarter (-2% from 2nd). I believe these numbers are related to the stock market but it still shows a negative trend for Google if they are true. Democratic ideologies don’t stand a chance before financial capitalism.

Another market loss for Google would be the one in mobile phones. Google announced a partnership with China Mobile in 2007, China’s largest cell phone operator, to provide mobile search and has been dominating the mobile market. At the end of October Baidu announced signing a partnership with China Unicom, the second largest cell phone operator. China Unicom are predicted to grow to 50% of the market by 2011. This must affect Google’s part of the market share for cell phone searching negatively and should be evident to them at about this time. Source

Another factor that might be contributing to their new approach to China is the recent negative media coverage Google received in combination with Bono’s filesharing hypocrisy and praise of Chinese censoring. ”Google’s currency is user trust” ”Simply put, China is one of Google’s weakest markets”. The censoring might get worse if Google does decide to pull out of China, an example of what might come:

Go to baidu.com – Search for anything. Then search for ”google.blogspot.com” You are now totally blocked from Baidu (via @azaaza)

There are often a lot more reasons then the official ones if you start looking. This will be very interesting to follow with big changes to come if Google gets a change in their approach to China OR if they pull out and Baidu is allowed to have a ”monopoly” on the search market in China.

My blog will focus on the same areas as I do on twitter:

Transparency – Net Politics (piratpartiet), Copyright, Integrity
Social Media – Integration, Technology, Web 2.0
Cultural Patterns – Design, PR, Marketing

But who is this person blogging to you?
I’ll make use of some descriptions others made about me and my group-work

translated to English?

Flexibel Ifrågasätter ofta men är blixtsnabb på att anpassa dig till gruppens ståndpunkt (även om den är motsatt) och stött den stenhårt och entusiastiskt… ett riktigt grupproffs
Effektiv Skicklig på att arbeta smart och inte lägga ner jobb på onödigheter
Med God Självdistans Vågar sticka ut och går att skämta om dig
-Anonym

*Initiativrik och drivande i grupparbetet. Positiv med mycket tålamod.
*Upplever att du, som jag, ibland har svårt att ta kritik som vi tycker är obefogad
-Anonym

Du har alltid kritiskt granskat arbetet på ett mycket positivt sätt. Ditt kritiska öga har fått våra arbeten att bli mycket bättre! Du skriver bra texter och är en superkul person att jobba med!
-Anonym

*Otroligt kunnig
*Inte rädd för att säga vad du tycker och tänker
*En person som alltid gör ditt jobb och gör det alltid så bra du kan
-Anna