May 2009

[Commentary] If the history of Internet policy were a movie, it would feature the public tied to the tracks before an onrushing train of corporate lobbyists. The villain, however, is not just the powerful phone and cable companies these lobbyists represent, but the politicians who tightened the knots and then stood smugly by as our interests were crushed. So how do we change this unhappy ending to one where the power of the Internet remains in the hands of the people who use it? One politician at a time. Our policymakers have a civic duty to keep the Internet free and open. Internet freedom is essential to our economic recovery, national competitiveness, public health and civic engagement. Special interests should not be allowed to set Internet policy. Congress and the FCC must protect the Internet's democratic nature. And people who care about their online freedom must let their elected officials know about it.

Google's co-founder, Larry Page, admits that the company has been losing out to Twitter in the race to meet web user's demand for real-time information. Instead, the search engine's chairman and chief executive, Eric Schmidt, hinted that it could become a partner of the micro-blogging site. Twitter has come from nowhere to become the third most visited social networking site in the US in just three years by allowing its users to broadcast their thoughts, actions and news instantly. Google's search engine, in contrast, can take hours or even days to update. While this is usually not a problem as accuracy of results is more important than speed of updating, as the Internet community comes to demand ever faster information Twitter has left Google in its wake.

The American Civil Liberties Union and its Tennessee branch sued two Tennessee school districts in federal court May 19, claiming that the districts are unconstitutionally blocking students from accessing online information about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues.

Social media has reached critical mass, with 83% of the Internet population now using it - and more than half doing so on a regular basis - according to new research being released today by Knowledge Networks. But for all the media industry's hype and buzz surrounding social networks, microblogs, and other social networking platforms, the genre has failed to become much of a marketing medium, and in the opinion of the Knowledge Networks' analysts, likely never will. The report, "How People Use Social Media," finds that social media is having a profound impact on the way people connect with each other, but that it's not becoming a very meaningful way for people to connect with brands, or advertising promoting brands. Among other things, the study finds that less than 5% of social media users regularly turn to these social networks for "guidance on purchase decisions" in any of nine product and/or service categories (see table below), and that only 16% of social media users say they are more likely to buy from companies that advertise on social sites.