Nicolas Cage Arrested In New Orleans; TMZ Claims Taunted Police

Funny thing. While famed Actor Nicolas Cage earns royalty money from movies like National Treasure, which was just on the USA Network today, he was in a New Orleans Jail and is now out on bail for $11,000.

How he got there is a story.

According to TMZ.com, Cage was really drunk, hammered, so much so that he was seen by a cab driver loudly shouting at his wife Alice, and then, he says that Mr. Cage grabbed her.

The cab driver called the New Orleans Police, who came and tried to get him to go home. But Nicolas Cage wasn't having any of that; he asked them to arrest him. They refused, so he kept at them until they did.

He was booked for domestic abuse and disturbing the peace.

Cage wife is not a "complaining witness" and doesn't want him arrested.

Meanwhile, National Treasure played today and probably earned him the cash spent to get out of jail.

UPDATE: TMZ reports the two were arguing over a rental address and Cage tried to pull his wife to where he believed the correct location was.

Running News: Zazzle Bay To Breakers Office Visit

In this bit of running news, The Zazzle Bay To Breakers is coming May 15th, and as one who's ran it 19 times, I'm excited to be a part of the 7.7 mile road race again - as press. I've decided not to run it, in exchange for an equally interesting position. (Not telling, yet.)

(Oh, and for those of you who feel compelled to check my record because you have nothing better to do and just want to be nasty, forget finding an accurate recording online - you have to go to the Doe Library at Berkeley. Bay To Breakers Race Director Angela Fang, explained that the records have been given, and then given again, to so many organizations, that it's not possible as of this writing to find a clear record online past 2001; my first run of the Bay to Breakers was in 1988, when I posted a time of 1:04:30 - just perfect for having several of the 10,000 beers Miller put out for runners.)

The Bay To Breakers Office

The office of the Zazzle Bay To Breakers 12k is pretty much about what you'd expect to see: small, with cubicles surrounding a main gathering area, and a set of enclosed offices along the walls. It's perfect for collaboration, and that's what Ms. Fang and her staff do a lot of, as was evident that Wednesday. Because when I arrived, the organization was just 20 registrants away from a sellout, and Katie Harrar, who's the all-purpose Manager Of Event Sales and Logistics, was announcing the change in numbers as it happened. Pretty cool to be there for the countdown, and all unplanned.

I met the staff, from Katie, who I was on the race truck with in 2009, and produced this video:



..to Connor Spicer, who helps race registrants, Brain Ng who is in charge of marketing and employs a MacBook Pro, as I do. And there's Zachary, who is the sponsorship director, who makes sure that sponsor needs are met.

The one person I did not meet was the race producer, who was behind closed door working on making sure things were coming together for the race. (I think he wanted to stay off camera, anyway.)

The Plan For The 100th Bay To Breakers

It's easy to want to focus on the negative community issues of the past, but my desire was to move forward. And this year, there's a ban on alcohol for the Bay to Breakers, but that doesn't mean less fun - in fact, the reverse. So, Fang and I talked about the fun stuff, like their plan to give out, for the first time, "finisher medals" to every participant.

That means if you registered for the Bay To Breakers, you will get a commemorative 100th aniversary finisher medal just for crossing the finish line. There will also be, as Angela explained "some period music" entertainment. That means sounds of the 60s, the 70s, and the 80s, and the 90s too. Even, perhaps Disco, as Fang says "You will definitely see Groovy Judy out at the Conservatory of Flowers. A little flower power there." So, if you have a disco ball around the house, bring it to the running race.

In conjunction with the new rules there will be a "significant amount" of fencing, but on them will be photos from Bay To Breakers of the past. "There will be a visual experience that hasn't been there in the past," Fang said. Plus, Footstock, the annual event that serves as a gathering point after the running festival, is in a different place for 2010.

"We have moved Footstock from MLK, this year it's going to be at Speedway Meadow," Fang said. And it's there that running race title sponsor Zazzle is going to be "doing some interesting activations," she added.

What's Zazzle?

Ok, you may be wondering by now what Zazzle is. Zazzle.com is an online company where you can go and design you own t-shirts or hats and other products in your brand or logo and buy them or have others purchase them. It's their first year as the title sponsor and seems really into the "fun" of the Bay To Breakers, calling it the "World's Most Creative Race."

Running News: Bay To Breakers Sellout!

The Bay To Breakers was at 20 registration slots to go, and as I was making the vlog, it sold out. The "bing" sound you hear in the background as I'm talking to Ms. Fang is the sound made when a registration is purchased. By the end of our talk, they sold out. Proving that the Bay To Breakers is still the "must-be-a-part-of" draw of years past.

Visit the website at Bay To Breakers.com. 

Palm Sunday Calm: Arianna Huffington, Reality Rocks, AdTech - Recaping A Week

Today is undoubtedly the quietest Saturday this video-blogger has enjoyed in quite a while. And since it's the day before Palm Sunday and Holy Week, it's fitting.

The idea of a visit to church is at least in my head; let's see if I will at least translate it to action. Frankly, the feeling of not being pressured to be somewhere at a certain time - for an event or a plane flight - is a nice one. I think God will forgive me.

If memory serves (and it should serve well, even after one-too-many glasses of scotch on during a fun Thursday evening I can still remember - can't do that anymore - and courtesy of my friend Mr. Tagami), two weeks ago, Thursday, I hit the ground, running:

1) Got off a plane from Georgia, where I was visiting Mom and has become my second home, and was off to a Flip Video Camera presentation meeting that I was told was cancelled via email, and as I was in the air. And we now know what happened to Flip Camera at the hands of Cisco. (Save Flip.)

2) Went to WonderCon the next day, Friday. If you're not familiar with WonderCon, it's a 25 year old convention of comic book publishers and artists, that's morphed into a pop-culture gathering of such size, talk is that it's going to expand to take up all of the space at the two main sections of Moscone Center, north and south. The event presents me with the chance to meet and interview people I've only seen on TV and the movies, like Jim Kelly, Cindi Morgan, and Celeste Yarnell, or who's work I've read, like MAD Magazine's Sergio Aragones. Cool guy.

WonderCon was three fun days of being around people who call themselves geeks and nerds, including me, but really now aren't any different than the rest of us, and because "geeks and nerds" have become so mainstream, it's time for another term. Now, I'm not complaining, because it's cool that the rest of the World's caught the fever. It's just that it's almost, well, you know, cliche. It's become a term for a demographic marketers target to push movies. But a deeper discussion of that - let's place on the backburner. Bottom line: WonderCon was a blast, and a good warm up to ComicCon 2011.

3) The next week, I interviewed Courtney Ruby, who's Oakland's City Auditor, and at a place called Disco Violante. If you're an Oaklander and didn't see the video, it's here...



Ms. Ruby's a fun person under a lot of pressure I think she puts on herself, and to maintain an office under the threat of a huge potential budget cut. Given all she's facing, I know Palm Sunday's welcome.

4) I'll get back to more local blogging today. But frankly, there's so much to blog about, that I'm considering adding guest bloggers - so if you're up for it, and don't mind my bugging you to use the Zennie-style of blogging, send me an email.

5) The next week, I was to be interviewed for NBC's Caught On Camera, and about my video called Fight On Fillmore. That was a fun time. Plus, the NBC people made me think about what videos "go viral," and it seems like we're attracted to either kids doing something funny or cute, or adults doing something bad. I don't know why that is, but the exception was the success of Susan Boyle. Perhaps because we expected to see a train wreck, and got a woman who sang like her life depends on it, and in a way, now it does.

6) Later that week, I also had it in mind to attend something called Reality Rocks, a first-of-its-kind expo of Reality TV, and thanks to a set of out-of-the-blue press releases from the good folks at Rogers and Cowan. R and C is the largest entertainment PR firm in America, and handles a lot of Hollywood's A-list talent. So, I figured a day trip to LA would be fun and profitable on a Saturday. Heck, I'm not saddled with dad duty, because I'm not a father (but would love to be one), and I don't have any relationship obligations (yet at this point) to keep me nailed down, so off to LA I went.

What a blast.

I've discovered that I needed to meet, know, and be around entrepreneurs. What's cool about LA, even though I don't desire to live there (there's nothing better than a Georgia summer), is the number of people who are interested in doing deals and partnerships around entertainment. Plus, given the mistakes I made with Sports Business Simulations, namely learning someone's esoteric programming language and then being trapped by them - dumb, stupid, idiotic me - I needed to be energized again.

See, I love being creative, and I think what drives me to video-blog is that I'm both making something - each blog post, to me, is a program. And using it to meet and talk with people and help them get their message out there. But for the Tech side, I'm nervous about finding the right partners for my next venture - no luck yet.

But I digress.

Meeting Dallas Maverick's Owner Mark Cuban and FUBU Founder Daymond John, was part of the tonic. The energetic Guy Kawasaki and Arianna Huffington completed the process at AdTech, and that was to name just four of the many people I met who gave me new energy.

Then, I completed the week at the office of The Bay To Breakers, where another set of fun folks reside. Race Director Angela Fang was kind enough to open her working digs and let this video blogger in for a spell. Here's the video from that visit:.



Ok. That's enough recapping. Time for two more blog posts, then to pay attention to the National Football League and the NFL Draft. (Oh, and the President's coming to town.)

And unplug for a while.

Stay tuned - and happy Palm Sunday.

And for those of you who asked, my Mom's fine, thank you. I just have the duty of being the only child at 48 years of age. And while I may look 20 years younger, I'm at the point in life where spending time with her is of extreme importance, because I don't know how much time I've got with her.

Google Video To Officially End April 29, 2011

The email presented below arrived this morning from Google. It announces the official end of the Google Video division, which existed before Google purchased YouTube on October 6, 2006, and then existed along side YouTube until 2009, when Google stopped allowing uploads to the service.

For this blogger, having stopped feeding Google Video after becoming a YouTube Partner in 2007, the email is just a formality.

But for those of you who have videos on Google Video, and you want to get to them, read this and act fast:

Dear Google Video User,

Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content. We've always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide.

On April 29, 2011, videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the video status page, so you can download any video content you want to save. If you don’t want to download your content, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)

We encourage you to move to your content to YouTube if you haven’t done so already. YouTube offers many video hosting options including the ability to share your videos privately or in an unlisted manner. To learn more go here.

Here’s how to download your videos:

Go to the Video Status page.
To download a video to your computer, click the Download Video link located on the right side of each of your videos in the Actions column.

Once a video has been downloaded, "Already Downloaded" will appear next to the Download Video link.

If you have many videos on Google Video, you may need to use the paging controls located on the bottom right of the page to access them all.

Please note: This download option will be available through May 13, 2011.

Thank you for being a Google Video user.


Sincerely,

The Google Video Team

Ok, now, go do it. 

Stay tuned.

Flip Video Camera: Cisco Action Shows It Fails At Social Media

Cisco's sudden and really awful decision to end production of the Flip Video Camera brand and fire 550 people stunned not just this blogger, who went on a rant...



But the media and the Internet. On the day of the announcement "RIP Flip" become a Twitter trending topic, and "flip camera" was one of the top 20 most searched keywords on Google Trends.

That fact should not be lost on marketers, because it means The Flip brand hit the mark of engagement with the key demographic that is most likely to use social media and micro-blogging services, like Twitter.

Most of these users employ Twitter to talk about products and events, and Cisco's sacking of the Flip Video Camera is but one example - but a big one.

So big that it shows Cisco failed at getting digital and social media. If Twitter, or that group of people called "The Twitterverse," would cry out about the Flip, why didn't Cisco have any kind of marketing activation that featured a comprehensive, coordinated Internet and social media campaign for the Flip?

I said that Cisco lacked the passion for the product, which is in the hands of two million people (give or take folks like me who have more than one Flip), and this finding buttresses that take.

Now, Cisco will obviously bristle at my claim, and because it would point to its social media effort. But the problem, as clearly evident from reading a Cisco blog entry on its social media guidelines, is that the company's use of social media is defensive.

Read this from Cisco Social Media Guidelines, Policies and FAQ:

We take social media seriously at Cisco.

We look at it as a collaborative tool to help better serve our customers, our partners, our investors and our employees…and to LISTEN to them as well. There, of course, have to be guidelines and employee training around the use of social media. Within our company culture of transparency, we thought we’d make our newly updated internal Social Media handbook available for everyone. We don’t claim to know everything about Social Media, but we do know that the wisdom of the crowd is generally better than the wisdom of the few. With that in mind, we welcome your thoughts, observations and viewpoints on our Social Media Policy and Guidelines

Look at the words: "collaborative tool","better serve our customers","guidelines", and "employee training," and it all ads up to one word: boring. Where are the words "buzz" and "excitement" and "product" and "marketing" to make a "fan" base?

And it leads to the slide presentation of a document that's a set of bureaucratic guidelines - do's and dont's. There's nothing about using social media to generate buzz. What's good is that Cisco wants its employees to engage in social media. What's bad is that there's nothing that shows the employee how to use social media to generate buzz about Cisco products.

If Twitter is a great place for crowd activation - getting a ton of people to do something - and Cisco has its own "crowd" called its employees, getting them in the game of buzz building should be part of this document and the Cisco social media process.

It's not there.

Credit goes to Cisco for taking the passion out of social media. It's no wonder the Flip Camera's history; Cisco lacked the feel for it, and for the culture that embraced it.

Save Flip!

Meanwhile, Cisco needs a social media expert with passion and smarts, like Pepsi's Director Of Global Digital and Social Media, B. Bonin Bough:

Zennie Abraham To Be Featured On NBC Caught On Camera

Viral videos have made for Network TV content for sometime now, and it was only a matter of time before one of this blogger's videos saw the light of television day.

Well, that's excluding my old television show, The Blog Report With Zennie62, that was on ColoursTV. What was great about that show, which aired in 2009-2010, was that it allowed the direct use of the videos made with my Flip Video Camera right onto a TV format. It's still something that's not been done before or since. I'd like to do it again, if the business details can be worked out.

But I digress.

Without any contact from this blogger, NBC took notice of the Zennie62 video Fight With Bouncer At SF Fillmore Jazz Festival: doing job with patron. If you've not seen the video before, here it is:



This video was originally made as part of a ColoursTV segment that never made it to the screen. But that's the reason for the introduction you see. The video itself was and is a kind of study of human nature, and there are stories within the overall story of the encounter between a patron who had a little too much to drink and a bouncer just trying to do his job.

The video has drawn over 3,000 comments and over 700,000 views - actually closer to 800,000 views. And it drew the attention of NBC. I met the crew for the show Caught On Camera where we filmed a segment talking about the video.

Does the almost three-year-old video put the Fillmore Jazz Festival in a bad light? No. It doesn't. By just holding the patron until security arrived, the bouncer may have prevented a really ugly melee in front of a storied establishment.

Moreover, the bouncer's actions have been the catalyst for a number of emails from former police officers, bartenders, and other bouncers, who explain how hard that job is, especially during a large-scale event, how they believed the bouncer did his job well, and how the situation should be prevented in the future.

Here's one such email from 2009:

Dear Mr. Abraham,

I just watched the video from the Fillmore Festival. As a retired police officer(Commander of Police) with 32+yrs experience with the SFPD encounters like this are common place in and around nightclubs in the City. Violent confrontations are taking place daily. The SF Entertainment Commission which oversees the Clubs have not taken a proactive approach to minimizing these actions.

Bouncers, doormen, security staff, and floor persons need training. Training should include but not limited to:powers of arrest, use of force, conflict resolution, how to call the police, handling emergency situations, etc.

In this case I agree with you additional staff should have been called and the police should have been notified immediately. The Bouncer could have place Number 3 under arrest for disturbing the peace(threatening to fight). I do think he used reasonably objective force to detain him. But once the Bouncer used any force Number 3 should have been arrested

If you decide to pursue this issue I would be available to provide additional information re: nightclub security.

Thanks and I enjoy your articles.

To the credit of the Fillmore Jazz Festival, the next year, 2010, the area where the event occurred was more 'controlled', patrons stood in a line to the side, and there wasn't the room where someone could stand and confront a bouncer, and great care was taken to make sure that Harry's Bar didn't get too crowded inside.

Harry's and the Fillmore Jazz Festival are great San Francisco traditions. This was in no way intended to harm them one bit. Indeed, it's a complement to the staff and to the bouncer.

Fitness Model Megan Avalon's Fitness Workout With Bowflex

If you've ever wondered how to get the most out of the Bowflex Fitness Machine, watch this video with Fitness Model and Personal Trainer Megan Avalon who hovers between Gold's Gym centers in the SF Bay Area.



Megan, who's becoming a famous fit model and is a regular in this space, shows us how to do lat pull downs, and how to work both the front chest area, and the back muscles as well.

But them, Ms. Avalon shows us why the Bowflex is a really special device: she uses it to work her triceps in a way you'd not expect unless you were an expert user.

Watch for Megan Avalon in upcoming female bodybuilding contests.

San Francisco City Clinic: 100 Years of Stamping Out STDs

This year, the euphemistically named San Francisco City Clinic celebrates 100 years of diagnosing and treating sexually transmitted diseases. That's 10 decades of inspecting orifices and creating cutting-edge new media, from all the way back when old media was shockingly new. And City Clinic did it all while making sexual health sound fun and, well…sexy.
In honor of the anniversary, the San Francisco Department of Public Health circulated this historical document, with the headline "Our Nation's Health Endangered by Poisonous Infection." Reading it, the shocking thing is not how much things have changed, but how much they haven't.
You might not believe that sexting and new media have anything in common with the way the world worked 100 years ago, back before the days of either antibiotics or birth control. But get a load of this quote from Dr. Julius Rosenstirn, chairman of the advisory committee, in the 1913 pamphlet wherein he passionately defended the work of the clinic, then called The Municipal Clinic: "The taboo that educators have put on the theme of sexual relations, on a thorough instruction in the origin of human life and its procreation, has resulted in the profoundest ignorance among the laity of these most vital matters."
He added, "Do these same good people really believe they can safeguard the fiercely dominant sex call of awakening youth with mild and vague precepts?"
So what was it that threatened the very existence of the fledgling clinic back in those days? What forced Rosenstirn to come to its defense? Was it simply talking about sex?
Noooo. It was more, much more than that. The thing that got the clinic in deep, deep trouble was a program to teach women how to diagnose themselves. And not just how to diagnose, but also how to act on that information, an approach that would resonate today with e-patients all across America.
Read more...

Was Barry Bonds Verdict For Being Uppity Black Man?

Frankly, the Barry Bonds Trial and Bonds Verdict held little interest for this blogger because, given the jury makeup, and the fact the trail was in San Francisco, anything could happen. Plus, AdTech was the order of the day, and Reality Rocks and WonderCon before that.  The Bonds issue, for anyone who wants to think the best of America, is just plain depressing.

But, it's fair to say Barry Bonds got his reality rocked yesterday and by a big-mouthed jury, where some said told Channel Five (KPIX) news they were Giants fans, and one 19-year old blonde jurist agreed with the Channel Five reporter that she thought Bonds was arrogant, even though he didn't even take the stand.

I was disappointed she said that, but not surprised.

Here we go again.

It looked, to me, like, once again, Bonds was being tried and convicted for being what some in America still hate: an uppity black man. The idea is that a black guy should not present himself as better or smarter than anyone, just stronger and faster.

Barry Bonds wants you to think he's better, smarter, stronger, and faster, and over the years, the mainstream media has crucified him for it. Now, it looks like the jury was contaminated with the same idea - except one woman of color.

That woman, again on Channel Five, was saying she was sure Bonds was not guilty of obstruction of justice. Again, that she was of color should send alarm bells going off. But remember, some major media sports writers have wanted to see Bonds 'get his' for some time.

Of course, that too has changed, which is why I can say "some" and not "all" or even point to one group of white male writers - America's changed.

But all of this casts an ugly light on the judicial system. For jurists to come out and allow themselves to be recorder saying that they thought Bonds was arrogant, and they were Giants fans, means he didn't get a fair trial at all.

Bonds should file an appeal and indeed, the judge should order the case retried based on those comments. It begs the question of what was said during jury deliberations. If the judge looks back and finds that racism played a role, a new trial can be ordered at once.

Barry Bonds Not Found Guilty Of Lying

Lost in all of this is the fact that Barry Bonds was not found guilty for lying.  That's what the whole deal was about.

As Dashiell Bennet points out in Business Insider, you can't find a person to have obstructed justice if you're saying they didn't lie. Giving answers that may be "evasive" is not lying, and the very idea that an answer is "evasive" is left to personal judgement, whereas lying is more concrete.

The bottom line is the Government failed, the jury was biased and arguably racist, and the Bonds verdict should be tossed.

Let's see if the judge agrees with the rising volume of voices saying this, and tosses the case.

Stay tuned.

AdTech 2011 - On The Apple iPad: Dave Gill Of Nielsen

One mention of the name "Nielsen," and you're bound to think about TV ratings, but as I learned at AdTech 2011, Nielsen's much more. Zennie62 talked on video with David Gill, the Vice President of Mobile Media for Nielsen.

As Gill says, it's no longer about ratings, but about multiple screens, "Nielsen historically has been known for the television ratings business and currency business. But we actually have two different parts of business, what people watch and what people buy. It's a big consumer part about looking at exposure to different parts of advertising across different kinds of platforms. And increasingly, I think advertisers want to know not just your typical brand lift metrics, but sales lift metrics - did it actually move the needle for people at retail."

On the iPad: Where Are We Today?

The Apple iPad was hyped as the tech that would change all media when it was first announced. But now that it's out, many media app producers suffer from dramatic declines in readership, even as sales for the iPad, and now the iPad 2, are through the roof. Where are we now with the iPad? "Literally speaking we're a year-and-a-half down the road, Gill said. "It is changing print media. We're looking at, pretty closely, cross-media consumption - watching television, and at the same time they are going to use another device to check Facebook or to shop or research purchases."

Gill reports that what VISA CMO Lucio said at Tuesday's AdTech Keynote holds: people buy via recommendations online, more and more. The iPad, coupled with TV, actually helps fuel that kind of purchase process. Nielsen is tracking that activity and Gill explain that the iPad reflects a "significant game-changer" in this area. He thinks the iPad is complementary to a number of media activities, like movies.

Niesen Products

At AdTech, Gill and his staff are talking about their audience measurement services for potential clients. Banking clients want to know about customer acquisition. Health Care is attractive because tablets present what Nielsen thinks is a big market.

For more information, just go to Nielsen.com.

2011 NFL Draft | Cardinals Larry Fitzgerald: No QB, But Newton Is Best One

This blogger has said the Arizona Cardinals don't need a quarterback, so taking one with the fifth pick at the 2011 NFL Draft isn't smart when the Cards have four young signal callers.

Now, Arizona Cardinals Wide Receiver Larry Fitzgerald enters the conversation, saying that the team should not draft a quarterback, a veteran one would be better, and that Auburn QB and Heisman Trophy Winner Cam Newton is "the best player in all of college football."

Yep. Better than Missouri Quarterback Blaine Gabbert, who's only ranked higher than Newton because of Gabbert's agent: Tom Condon. (Even NFL Network Analyst and former Kansas City Chiefs Quarterback Trent Green got into the act last night, saying that Gabbert was better because former quarterbacks coach and NFL coordinator Terry Shea was working with him. Well, Trent, why not just say it's because of his agent, Condon, who set the whole thing up. Trent didn't say Warren Moon was working with Newton, but he is. Think about it.)

At any rate, Larry Fitzgerald told Fox Sports Arizona's Jack Magruder...

I would doubt that we would draft a quarterback that high. I would doubt it. But, who am I? I'm just a player. Management hasn't told me if they are going to go in any direction. (My choice is) "Anybody that's going to help us win. That's really how I feel."

On Newton:

"If he didn't have to go through his little situation in college with his dad and all that, I think it would be a totally different ball game. I think a lot of his personal issues overshadowed his ability. We saw him on the field for 13 games this year, and he was hands down the best player in all of college football. When you are a player that talented at that level on that stage in the SEC, doing it every single week, it's going to be hard to deny what he is going to be able to do in the NFL. I think he will be a good pro...I think he'll do just fine. You look at guys like Donovan McNabb. He did a phenomenal job of adjusting. Even Michael Vick. He was a running quarterback in college and he has become a really good drop-back pocket passer with the ability to run, which even presents more challenges for a team to deal with."

On Gabbert:

"I saw a lot of him. I saw some tape on him. I really like Blaine. He's a talented player. He makes all the throws. He's got good mobility in the pocket, and he seems like a real cerebral guy. I think he is going to be a good fit wherever he lands."

Stay tuned.

Google Cuts Google Trends Again. Hot Topics Gone

Google, the giant Internet search company with the paranoid PR people, has paired down Google Trends, once again. Indeed, since 2004, Google had a trends analysis system called Google Zeitgeist, but at that point was slow to update it until bloggers screamed about the issue; Google started multi-times daily updates in mid-year 2007.

On May 22nd, 2007, Google rolled out "Hot Trends" which was to enable...

"users to see a list of the current top 100 fastest-rising Google search queries in the U.S. Users can also select specific dates to see what the top-rising searches were at a given point in time."

Over time, Google Trends grew to become a popular tool for bloggers to use to determine what topics were hot: a necessary tool in a new media environment driven by web traffic and revenue from ads placed on website, and affiliate marketing programs. Google Trends helped make it possible for bloggers to make money from their efforts, just by focusing on the popular trends of the day.

But, in September of 2009, Google shrank Google Trends from 100 words to 40, and some bloggers pointed to spam websites as the reason for the decision.

Then, the next year, 2010, Google reduced the list from 40 keywords to 20 keywords, and split the results between "news" and "blogs" or those results from the all-but-hidden Google Blog Search.

Now, Google's removed the "Hot Topics" section from Google News, and says it's been meshed in with Google Hot Searches in the Google Trends system.

But one look reveals that's not true. Google "Hot Topics" would give you the real-time updates, with the Twitter tweets of the moment, and even rank the most popular tweets, which is how the top presented became "hot."

That's gone. Google didn't move it to "Hot Searches," the real time search reporting system is just gone. Period.  And Google Blog Search, while comprehensive when you find it, is hard to locate if you don't know about it.

Google Blog Search is something one has to know exists to find it. In fact, my complaint about how Google News operates and how Google presents Google News is that Google places it at the top page of a search result, but doesn't do that for Google Blog Search.

That was a central focus of my complaint to the FTC about Google News last year, and just after what I called The Google Saturday Night Massacre of blogs off Google News . Google has consistently and openly worked to help "traditional media" gain revenue, but this has come at the expense of blogs and bloggers.

For example, do a search for "Zennie62" On Google. Do you see a list for "Blogs" on the first page?  No. You see a list for  "Web, Images, Videos, Maps, News, Shopping, Gmail, more." Blogs, are way down past the "more," and you have to think to click on "more" then scroll down a long list to see it.

It's almost a metaphor for how Google thinks about blogs and bloggers: as a group to be hidden and diminished in favor of traditional news, not next to news. This is done, even as more and more people get their news from blogs.

Bloggers are not the reason for the Google Trends malware problems of 2007-2008, website builders are. And bloggers have been the source for many news stories that Old Media players have then, er, forgot to credit them for.  Yet, Google protects Old Media, which should be forced to adopt, not saved from evolving.

At the rate Google Trends, and other trend services from the large search engines, are going, bloggers will not have a resource to determine who's searching for what.   That will eventually spell death for Google, because it opens a market that both Twitter and Facebook and smaller search companies like Blekko, can exploit.

Google's own "trend" of giving less and less data that bloggers and readers can use, also makes the public blind to the real search actions.  That should be against the law.  Google and all other search engines should be legally required to tell us, on a moment-by-moment basis, what's being searched for.  It's important to know because such information is the real key to what's happening in our society.  Moreover, it's not "fixed" news, and takes power away from news editors, some who want to dictate what you should read, and by extension, what you should think.

That's not democratic at all.  And in an industrial society being increasingly democratized by digital media, Google's search reporting moves over the last five years add up to a step in the opposite direction.