Love Twitter AND Google?

Well, now your Christmas has come early, as the micro-blogging site is about to be integrated with Google Friend Connect.

Basically, this means that when you join a friend-connected site, you can choose to use your Twitter profile and discover who you might know has also joined. You can also Tweet to the world about what’s going on.

Friend Connect lets webmasters add Google social features like chat to their Web sites with just a few clicks. Announced in May, it was launched this month, but isn’t a particularly new idea, as Facebook and MySpace have been running this for a while. (Facebook Connect and MySpaceID).

Interestingly, MySpaceID went live in the early half of the same month that Google annouced it’s Friend Connect concept. And Twitter was a partner with MSID. Even more confusing, Google partnered with MySpace to challenge Facebook.

Confused yet? This is like some social version of the whole Google-Yahoo-Microsoft saga earlier this year…

Big brands are being stalked by MySpace to attract support for its ad-funded music service, MySpace Music, which will apparently be the social network’s biggest launch to date.

MySpace has joined forces with four major record labels, offering millions of UK consumers the opportunity to stream their entire back catalogues for free.

The site is also topped to be the biggest ad-funded music service in the UK, when it goes it goes live next year… The likes of McDonald’s, Toyota and Sony Pictures are all being hassled by the social network giant, as it offers them a variety of ad spots including a skinned player, pre-roll and in-video ads, playlist sponsorship and old-school display.

Agencies seem to be making little worried noises about the fact that the rates are likelyto  rise – but I’m more bothered about the fact you can’t download anything. On top of this, especially with Amazon’s new MP3 download service, online music seems to be getting increasingly competitive. Which hopefully means either cheap, or free…

In case anyone missed it, the US intelligence agencies – CIA, FBI, IBM – announced that Twitter means terror.

A rough report that somehow (as usual) found its way onto the internet gives a fun list of online and mobile apps – including MySpace, Facebook and Twitter – that apparently terrorists could be using. (As an aside, if I worked for a security agency, I’d be more worried about how a report like that got out onto the internet).

I won’t deny that social media has been – and still is – used by people to post extremist ideology, racism and the like, but when this happened, it’s totally unacceptable and is more often than not removed very quickly, with often nasty reprocussions for whoever posted it.

I think though, what they’re panicking about is that certain media is practically in realtime, therefore seemingly a great tool for the tech-savvy terrorist. Which, to be honest, is possibly pushing any boundary of common sense; I personally doubt such people would be operating openly on social platforms - and what about all the other technological advances since the carrier pidgeon? Email, SMS - even a phone call - seem more likely to be used by the social-conscious terrorist.

I suppose, for arguments sake, that social platforms could be used for grooming and recruiting into that kind of thing, but I’m fairly sure we’d all notice if al-Qaeda was on Bebo.

Now our wonderful Government seems to be calling for the likes of GCHQ and Mi5 to be able to monitor mobile and internet-based systems, storing details of ALL phone calls made and websites visited for up to two years in some kind of storage-super-computer. The wonderful Jacqui Smith seems to suggested this, but even top anti-terror experts are saying it’s nuts.

At least makes Google’s ideas on data storage look like a nice option, for once.

Right, well, it’s not often I get confused online – being a total geek, I can practically see binary code as a oil painting. However, I’m not fully understanding the concept behind The Second Web.

It says it will be launching in November and seems to be, at it’s most basic, a web-browser within a web-browser. Fundamentally, not a bad idea – especially considering it’s apparently been dreamed up and built by a 16-year old – but huge problems come with it. Second Web has been built with the intention to find a new way of selling advertising space online, and already it’s become a nice little earner: With the option to buy .com-domain names (that already are being used in the REAL internet) for only $5, more than $25,000 has been made before Second Web is even online. This causes a real headache legally, as it can easily break copyright laws and potentially damage brands. For example, if you put www.google.com in the Second Web browser, you’re faced with a page that says nothing but “REMOVED FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT”. What I can see here relates to an earlier post on this blog, where I commented about the ludricous amounts of money domain names can bring to their owners if they ever sell them on. It’s very likely that users have been snapping up big internet brands the (Myspace’s, Ebay’s and MSN’s of the digital world) in the hope that they can sell them back to these companies at an inflated rate.

I might have this totally wrong – maybe companies are happily buy up their domains for a second time in order to re-serve them on this second-level internet browser. In my opinion, it seems unlikely, as all sorts of issues arise; the fact that I doubt the sites will be indexed very well by search engines; the fact that to access this second-level, you need to have the browser-in-a-browser open; the fact that you could possibly be hounded by commerical lawyers for using someone else’s legally owned name. 

I’m also failing to see any solid advertising opportunity, due similar reasons that relate to what I’ve already mentioned – How would paid-search ads for a second-level-site be displayed in the top-level internet?! How (if at all) would top-level sites be advertised, second-level?! It seems to suddenly have a lot of issues and get very confusing when we start to talk about advertising. I’m also worried, it seems to have no relationship to any of the relevent monitoring bodies – eg. the IAB - nor does it appear to be a registered online business.

I might have this totally incorrect (can anyone enlighten me?) and I’m categorically NOT stating solid facts or making accusations. I honestly admire the thought and effort behind this project; there’s no denying it’s in the entrepreneurial spirit, but I can just see so many potential problems and pitfalls with the idea. It seems quite likely to me that established internet users, companies and advertisers will want to protect themselves as much as possible - probably through legal means and actively avoiding the site, but I’m happy to say that I could be totally wrong. All I can really say at this point is, let’s see what happens?