Google pushes journalists to create G+ profiles
Wednesday, Google announced that GoogleNews now links to Google+ profiles (if included with an article), and displays not only name and photo but "how many Google+ users have that person in their circles."
- The announcement came via the GoogleNews Blog:
Google News Blog: Highlighting journalists on Google NewsPosted by Eric Weigle, Software Engineer Great journalism takes more than facts and figures -- it takes skilled reporters to knit togethe...- Not surprisingly, their example was a tech journalist. When I looked at GoogleNews this morning, the only profile showing was a tech journalist.
- At 4.10 pm Pacific, when I should have had my mind firmly fixed on my 6 o'clock class, I posted this short "worry" to Google+. The only thing I had read was the Google blog post, which I saw because of a TechMeme entry in TweetDeck. I had no idea that there was a deep discussion about to begin over on Twitter, but I was uneasy when I read the release:
Kathy Gill - Google+ - Google pushes journos to create G+ profiles, news orgs to…Google pushes journos to create G+ profiles, news orgs to link them, for GoogleNews permalink:…
Google pushes journos to create G+ profiles, news orgs to link them, for GoogleNews: - Good/Bad/Indifferent? is.gd/vdKQ7K- First Ethan Klapper and then Emily Bell raised the issue on Twitter:
Big: Journalists’ Google+ profiles to be integrated into Google News klapp.me/vvHjCF- Emily Bell got the most Twitter discussion:
sycophancy of some journos to google+ explained! Platform coercion bit.ly/vENxtC 'showing the human side of journalism'- Those who responded, in the main, shared her concerns:
@emilybell Oh, dear. But in a year or so it will probably seem normal. Unless it vanishes, out of embarrassment.
@emilybell there is only Google. Surely if I'm active on Twitter, or on my own domain, they'll link those too right? ;)
RT @emilybell Forcing journalists onto Google + by linking it to Google News. Am I wrong to be quite so appalled? << No. YouTube too.
@emilybell no - but then perhaps it might make a few journos & pundits who have pretty blind faith in Google hitherto, perhaps think a bit- One issue, of course, is that Google is privileging its own social network, ignoring others:
- @marshallk ...if the purpose is to 'show the human side of journalism' then yes, of course they'll link to those *ahem*
@marshallk @emilybell currently the 'show author photo' stuff requires a G+ profile, which is dubious; could use on-site rel=me and hCard- Alexander Howard (@digiphile) was pretty adamant in his support of the change, but Kevin Marks (@kevinmarks) agreed with Emily that this is a forcing action.
@emilybell "forcing?" Please to explain how linking a social profile to search results is a negative for journalists? Must we use Facebook?
