Demand Satisfaction!

It is hard to argue against the idea that conversation is the basic organizing principle of information on the Internet. Blog trackbacks and comments, Wiki discussions, peer-to-peer file-sharing, social networks and cross-linking in general have been methodically devastating the hegemony of one-way broadcasting for years now. The latest move by Google’s news aggregation service recognizes this and creates a narrowly defined conversation involving only the news sources and subjects, a potentially useful way to cut out the noise of an open discussion. PRWire reports:

The new technology allows newsmakers to comment on articles by submitting an e-mail to Google with their contact information. The tech giant then verifies the submitter’s identity through a labor-intensive process…The approved comments will appear - in full and without editing - on Google News…[It] limits feedback to those directly related to the story, their comments will maintain prominence and not get buried under the barrage of feedback from the public.

As the NYTimes reports, the usual naysayers (”Media professionals”???) have all kinds of reasons why it won’t work:

Media professionals characterized it less charitably as an effort by engineers who do not understand the impracticalities of such a project on a large scale — for instance, how do you verify a source’s identity or screen for inaccurate statements? — and the potential sensory-deadening impact of long-winded statements.

These, of course, are unconvincing objections, but not surprising from PR traditionalists used (and committed) to controlling a one-way information flow.

On the other hand, there are some good reasons to be skeptical of Google’s initiative, not least because they have historically been so ham-fisted with products that aren’t based on algorithms (Google Answers, anyone?). I particularly appreciated Steve Rubel’s comments:

“Obviously, it gives us a way to provide feedback on a channel that reaches millions of people,” Rubel said. “But I think the way they’re going about it gets them into very dangerous territory. They’re going from being an aggregator and being agnostic to being an editor. I’d really love to see them open it up to everybody, but delineate if somebody is a source in a story.”