China's information potential is too delicious to resist. Even for Google

Turns out that Google is now diverting Chinese users' search through Hong Kong is a telling statement of how lucrative the Chinese search industry is and how reluctant the internet giant is to close its business prospects here.
In the middle of January 2010, the internet giant said it was considering pulling its operations out of China after it alleged that it was a victim of a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack originating from the country.
At that time Google said on its blog that the cyber attack which targeted information on Chinese human rights activists, resulted in a loss of its intellectual property. And China responded saying foreign internet companies may do business there "according to the law".
However, immediately reacting to the alleged attack, Google threatened to leave Chinese market completely and experts said its competitors including Microsoft and China's local search giant Baidu.com are set to benefit from Google's back-out plan.
Perhaps Google imagined other American technology companies including Microsoft to follow suit but as that did not happen on a mass scale, Google has sought a perfectly legal way of diverting traffic to its servers in Hong Kong.
Its latest plan comes just days after advertisers wanted clarity on Google's business plans in China.
When Google launched in China in 2006, it agreed to abide by China's regulations and to operate a censored site. Besides the company abides by the rules in different countries within the EU too where it operates.
That's why Google's decision seems to be far from being a true stand against Chinese censorship but instead a smart and legal move to hook on to China's vast potential of internet users by adopting a middle ground. It demonstrates Google's aspiration of having its cake and eating it too. An information business decision one can only empathise with.
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On a different note altogether, can't wait to see how Britons reacts to News Corporation's plan of erecting a pay-wall this June on the digital version of UK national daily The Times and sister publication The Sunday Times. Under this move, readers will have to pay £1 for a day's access and £2 for a week's access to Times newspaper online.

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Twitter's ad plans bold but boring

It is no surprise that Twitter is considering to introduce advertising into its service. But why has it adopted the traditional model of advertising - an umbrella model affecting all of its half a million users?
In 2009, just three years since its launch, Twitter was valued at $1bn (£630m). Even before it had made any substantial revenue strategy, it was close to securing $100m funding from a consortium of investors. We knew advertising plans would soon follow.
The micro-blogging site has started addressing the issues that stopped it from accessing advertising revenue which is derived out of data on its site. The company's tweet said it is developing its own tools to provide features on the site that are currently provided by third party desktop clients.
Third party services include features such as geolocations- crucial to advertising and is now offered by service providers such as Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop and Echofon .
Twitter has decided to go down the Google way of displaying ads with its search results and not by incorporating them into actual feeds. This means for instance if you do a search on laptops, it would feature Sony or Dell deals ads. The adverts will follow general Twitter principle of 140 characters.
What is surprising is its choice of traditional advertising model. Before securing funding, in May last year, the site said banner advertising was not of interest. Later on, it said it was open to advertising.
While, it is a relief to know that the actual feeds would be free of ads as of now, it is likely that its investors could put further pressure on the site to generate more revenue through banners, user feed-based ads and even meaning-based behaviour-targeted ads. What worked for Google may not work for Twitter- people used Google primarily for search hence, its advertising on search was spot on.
It could have subjected advertising to specific product enquiry tweets. It could have accessed revenue from large businesses by allowing them to post their updates- for instance a Lufthansa tweet that a London-Frankfurt flight is delayed. Followers get their information and Lufthansa communicates effectively but pays a price. Or even a product inquiry tweet by a user asking whether Virgin is better or Sky? There can be a million ways rather than going down the Google lane.
The beauty of Twitter was its neutrality and the ability to post data real time using mobile devices. The popularity and use of the site was so overwhelming that the US has allowed army troops to use the feature and it is now used by corporations and businesses for corporate communications, e-learning through social web and even raising help for natural disasters.
Move towards traditional advertising may have come a bit too soon even before the service is fully explored and exploited. Some enterprises and sensitive groups are likely to back out while it is mulling advertising plans and Twitter for information's sake would be a thing of past.
-Archana Venkatraman