Archive for culture

User reviews into Adwords??

May 1 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, critical approach to online media, culture, feedback
1 Comment

What’s Google doing adding reviews to Adwords listings in search results?

For some time I’ve been thinking that the anonymous user review + the competitive environment of Google search = a disastrous formula for all concerned.  Why? Because anonymity pretty much guarantees that reviews end up being used to ‘game’ the market. This isn’t me being negative about human nature, this is just pragmatism.  If 97% of all email sent everyday is spam…well, you get what I’m saying.

Now, Google is going to put user reviews into the search results beneath paying advertiser’s ads. But which reviews? Apparently, those that come from a ‘closed’ system provided by a partner,  Bazaarvoice.com.  According to this report, review information will only be added from a review system if the organisation using it agrees.

(picture from Earthblog News)

So who’s going to want truly open and potentially critical reviews turning up in the search results next to their carefully crafted, paid-for Google ads?  Er, no-one. They’re going to want nice reviews that will make their ads look more attractive. Bye bye transparency.

All of which continues to make a mockery of the noble ideas about feedback and transparency that social media pundits like to talk about. The true value of feedback in business (as in life) is its role in driving learning, development and change but Google – like every other business dealing in ‘user generated reviews’ – is only interested in feedback as a commodity it can trade to businesses seeking competitive advantage.

So what’s Google doing adding reviews to paid ads in the search results? Just more of what it’s always been doing from the start: converting human knowledge into cash via the technology of the ‘keyword’.

Don’t be evil? Don’t make me laugh. I can’t help think that Google has been nothing but – and that we’ve colluded with it every step of the way ;-)

Drugs: evidence that Professor Nutt is talking sense

Nov 1 | by Sam Deeks | culture, what do you think?
3 Comments

Evidence that harm-reduction and Government revenue don’t mix

addiction1Photographed round the back of Tavistock Post Office yesterday, this is clearly the staff ’smoking bucket’.  It looks awful to people who have never smoked.  It looks awful to those of us who once smoked but have since given up.

If I remember my days as an addicted smoker, it would have looked awful even while I was still smoking but, insanely, I – like the Post Office people – would have carried right on doing it.

It’s a powerful symbol of a drug that is so clearly destructive that no-one (not even a smoker) would argue otherwise.  More than that, it stands for a form of cultural suicide: death by self-medication.

The same, or worse, situation exists with alcohol.

One day, we’ll look back at these times without the fog of this cultural self-medication intertwined with its mass denial and political revenue generation.

And we’ll see that Professor Nutt was right.   These two drugs are far more damaging than all the illicit drugs put together.  The problem is simply that most people don’t want to look at their relationship to them.  The Government is only to happy to benefit from that.