While Sherk points out that the list of organizations isn’t meant to be comprehensive (really, as expansive as news is on the Internet, how could it be?), what’s revealing about Sherk’s study of the data is that he didn’t originally include the total +1, shares, and comments in his data. After a suggestion from a member of Breaking News, though, Sherk went back and included the data in his analysis. Below are the results of his original data compilation, which you’ll notice has some very noticeable shake-ups in the rankings when compared to the more comprehensive table above.

In case you were wondering why I included the top eleven Google+ accounts in the first table, now you probably see why: New York Times went from ranking #1 in the first table to falling all the way to #11. Actually, most standard news organizations like The Times, NPR, BBC, Le Monde, and The Atlantic all fell in ranking while tech-oriented news sources all climbed in ranking.

If your name’s Lamar Smith, primary sponsor of SOPA, the final option is the one you’d most likely adhere to. Just ask the New York Times. In yesterday’s online edition — 1/9/2012 — Smith “wrote” a letter to the editor, in an attempt to clarify some apparent misunderstandings concerning SOPA, or at least, that’s the way it started.

After a couple of paragraphs of reassurances that SOPA won’t pursue domestic sites — does this mean American web users can infringe at will now without worrying about any potential recourse? — and discussing the various entities supporting SOPA, Smith turns his sights direct at Google, as if to say the only reason Google is opposed to SOPA is because they make money “directing consumers to illegal foreign Web sites,” which sounds an awful lot like passing the buck to me.

In other words, don’t worry about how bad SOPA is. Look at Google’s business practices. It’s their fault the entertainment industry is failing. Here’s Smith’s statement in its entirety, which appeared in the NYT:

“The Danger of an Attack on Online Piracy,” by David Carr (Media Equation column, Jan. 2), unfairly criticizes the Stop Online Piracy Act, which I introduced, but it does not point to any language in the bill to back up the claims.

SOPA targets only foreign Web sites that are primarily dedicated to illegal and infringing activity. Domestic Web sites, like blogs, are not covered by this legislation.

The SOPA debate is not just between the entertainment industry and high-tech companies. SOPA protects intellectual property of all kinds, which is why it’s supported by more than 120 groups and associations across diverse industries, including the United States Chamber of Commerce.

We need to examine the real motives of the “big Internet guys,” like Google, that oppose SOPA. Google made huge profits by directing consumers to illegal foreign Web sites, so its opposition is self-serving. In fact, Google recently paid half a billion dollars to settle a criminal investigation because of its promotion of foreign pharmacies that sold counterfeit and illegal drugs to American patients, possibly endangering their health.

We need to protect American consumers and businesses. The illegal theft of American intellectual property and the counterfeiting of goods like medicine, automotive parts and even baby food pose a serious threat to the health of American consumers.

LAMAR SMITH
Washington, Jan. 6, 2012

Now, let’s look at the section where Smith calls Google out again, with emphasis added:

We need to examine the real motives of the “big Internet guys,” like Google, that oppose SOPA. Google made huge profits by directing consumers to illegal foreign Web sites, so its opposition is self-serving. In fact, Google recently paid half a billion dollars to settle a criminal investigation because of its promotion of foreign pharmacies that sold counterfeit and illegal drugs to American patients, possibly endangering their health.

As for the first bolded section, is Smith honestly saying sites like the Pirate Bay contributed to Google’s vast financial coffers just by being listed? In other words, did the Pirate Bay pay Google to stay in its search index?

Um, no, they did not.

Perhaps Smith is talking about all the AdWords ads that appear when someone conducts a search for “bittorrent” or “The Pirate Bay.” Oh, wait. There aren’t any. In fact, as of January of 2011, Google turned off Auto Complete when those and other related searches are conducted. Apparently, Smith missed that memo, or completely ignored it since it doesn’t fit his criticizing agenda.

As for the Canadian prescription drug flap, while Google has indeed been monetarily punished for their role, even though the rogue advertisers themselves played as big of a part as Google’s advertising network did. Furthermore, Smith is only defending a broken system, in this case, prescription pills in the United States, one that forces people to look elsewhere for cheaper alternatives. Seeing how this very subject has been covered extensively since before the turn of the century, it’s curious that Smith suddenly tries to paint Google as the bad guy, even though they’ve already been punished for their previous actions, and they no longer allow that kind of advertising.

From Google’s AdWords FAQ:

Online pharmacies
Google AdWords prohibits the promotion of online pharmacies and prescription drugs.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers
Google AdWords prohibits the promotion of branded drug names by pharmaceutical manufacturers in the ad text, website, visible URL, and keywords.

Notice how Smith ignores this very simple rule while he’s placing Google on the chopping block? If it doesn’t fit an agenda, apparently the Washington way is to completely ignore it.

Looks pretty legit to me. It was even sent from nytimes@email.newyorktimes.com, which is a pretty valid sounding email address. There’s even all that legalese small print at the bottom. But… I don’t subscribe to NY Times. I have an account with them so I can occasional comment on articles, but I am on the cold side of their paywall so I wasn’t really sure what to make of this email. I almost wondered if I was supposed to be mistakenly receiving the New York Times while on someone else’s dime and so I immediately strategized how I might take advantage of this mistake. Three seconds later, however, I ignored the email. Then it became clear that lots of other people received this email too much to other recipients’ confusion. Of course, mass confusion amounts to speculation that The Times’ database got hacked.

In other words, nobody knows what’s going on and so chaos is on our doorstep.

Three hours later, however, The Times posted an explanation of the whole snafu in which they own up to being the authors of this spam.

The New York Times said it accidentally sent e-mails on Wednesday to more than eight million people who had shared their information with the company, erroneously informing them they had canceled home delivery of the newspaper.

The Times Company, which initially mischaracterized the mishap as spam, apologized for sending the e-mails. The 8.6 million readers who received the e-mails represent a wide cross-section of readers who had given their e-mails to the newspaper in the past, said a Times Company spokeswoman, Eileen Murphy.

“We regret that the error was made, but no one’s security has been compromised,” she said.

At nearly the same time, The Times issued the following email to the recipients of the confusing email from earlier today:

Intriguing!

Actually, it’s not intriguing at all. It’s the anti-intrigue: turns out that it was a Times employee that accidentally sent the email, which resolves the question of whether it was Epsilon Interactive, the service used by The Times to interact with subscribers, that got hacked. I’d hate to be the poor intern (I’m presuming it’s an intern) who accidentally emailed millions of people that has to answer for this anti-event. It may be the employee’s fault that the readers got an erroneous email, but how hard is it for readers to dismiss a strange email and send it to the Trash bin? Are people really that easily perplexed by questions for which they already know the answer? No, you don’t subscribe to The Times, then you probably still don’t subscribe to The Times. Yet people got so confused and ensnared on the mystery of whether or not they could actually remember if they were subscribed to The New York Times in the first place so, as if victims of a bewitching goblin spell, they could not bring themselves to snap out of it and simply click Delete. And we’d never have to think about this moment ever again. It would’ve been so easy and yet, here we are at the end of the work day and people are still talking about it. Like me. So it goes.

In addition to the statement outlining the changes, a fuller description of the process of becoming a trusted commenter was also provided. Requirements for the program include “a lengthy history of comments that are thoughtful, discuss the issues politely and address the topics covered in the article or blog post.” Those who receive invitations must also connect their NYT commenting proflie to their Facebook accounts in order to verify their name and location. Also, as one might expect, the Times reserves the right to revoke users’ trusted commenter status if it sees fit.

Other changes were announced as well, though they are somewhat more minor. Comments will now be on the same page as the article they are associated with, and commenters will have the ability to respond to one another in threaded form. Social media sharing options have also been added to comments.

Though the reaction to these changes has been generally positive, not all users are happy. The largest sticking point is Facebook integration. Several users – some of them already with the “trusted commenter” moniker – expressed their displeasure in the comments section of the NYT announcement.

One user commented yesterday afternoon that “NYT personnel should not be placed in a position to filter… screen comments,” apparently forgetting that comments to the site have always been subject to moderation anyway. Another user complains that privileging the comments of those with “trusted” status “will… reduce the quality and range of comments that you receive.” Yet another user responded with what has become the battle cry of disgruntled users after any website changes its format: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Twitter reactions were a bit more even-keeled. Some expressed concern over the required Facebook integration,

While others were enthusiastic about the idea.

Though the backlash seems extreme, it is likely another example of users’ frustration with changes to any site they use, much like the reactions that were everywhere on Facebook after its most recent redesign. Despite some users’ threats to take their ball and go home, it seems likely that most aspects of the redesign – including the “trusted commenter” program – will ultimately prove beneficial.

What do you think? Will offering trusted commenter status cut down on trolling? Should Facebook integration be required? Let us know in the comments.

“By now I’ve seen many ways people have chosen to remember Steve Jobs – posting his amazing Stanford commencement speech, describing how Steve inspired them personally, etc. Thinking about it now, I most admired the way Steve’s drive for perfection and willingness to boldly critique led to world changing products. It seemed like I might be able to honor Steve in a small but unique way – creating a tribute in the New York Times crossword puzzle.”

It should be noted that another puzzle was scheduled to run today, and was already set up. Will Shortz, crossword puzzle editor for the New York Times, was sent the tribute puzzle at 11:21 last night, and after thinking about it overnight, decided to run with Der’s puzzle. Here is Shortz’s account of how it went down:

“Making a last-minute change like this isn’t easy. The puzzle that had been previously scheduled for tomorrow was already at The Times, laid out on the page, ready to be printed. The Arts section closes at 5 p.m., so the new puzzle needed to be edited, typeset, test-solved by three people, polished, and then sent to The Times before then.

When all is said and done, I think the extra effort was worth it. Kevin made an outstanding puzzle honoring a truly great man.”

If you’d like to give the puzzle a try, you can obtain a PDF version here.

Before we get into the Twitter aspect, the article in question, “Chicken’s Attraction Is Truly Skin Deep,” discusses the the intake of chicken skin. An example of the article’s content:

And then there are skin people. They are the ones who cannot help themselves around roast or fried chicken, ripping off the crispiest bits of skin before the bird makes it to the table.

But as other have pointed out, the image of the posing chicken has completely stolen the article’s thunder. So much so, in fact, the “sexy chicken” is now a legitimate viral phenomenon, complete with its own Twitter feed, and some silly backlash from PETA, which helps maintains their awesome record of drawing even more attention to the things they disapprove of.

An example of PETA’s reaction:

“When I saw it I just couldn’t believe that an editor of The New York Times would find it acceptable,” PETA’s founder and president Ingrid Newkirk told The Atlantic Wire. “It’s downright offensive, not just to people who care about animals but almost to everyone. It’s a plucked, beheaded, young chicken in a young pose,” she said.

I’m not sure what Newkirk expects, but apparently, she’s never purchased a whole chicken before — or a Cornish hen, or a turkey, either. Nevertheless, the Sexy Chicken is a hit, at least for now.

As indicated, it has its own Twitter page now, something I seriously doubt PETA members will be apt to follow. Nevertheless, there are 800 (as of this writing) people who do. An example of what you’ll find from the NYTChicken:

As a lover of chicken breasts, this makes me happy to read. The fun continues:

Needless to say, PETA didn’t respond to the levity, instead choosing to promote its safety for animals agenda. Who knows? Maybe they’ll address this issue in their upcoming pornography site, because nothing says animal safety like pictures of naked women posing with food. I mean, objectifying women worked so much with their banned Super Bowl ad, right?

Digression aside, all this attention means is it’s a win for the sexy chicken. While I’m not one of its Twitter followers, I’m definitely on the side of something that has such delectable breasts.

Of course, yesterday was the 10th anniversary of 9/11. And that’s probably why Krugman’s blog post, entitled “The Years of Shame” became such a hot button issue. That’s not to say that the piece would have gone unnoticed if published on a regular day, but the timeliness definitely stoked the fire. And no doubt, that was part of Krugman’s decision.

In the post, he blames “fake heroes” like Rudy Giuliani and George W. bush for using 9/11 for political reason immediately following the attacks. He says that the memory of 9/11 “has been irrevocably poisoned.” The post is pretty short, so here’s the whole post for your perusal -

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.

The post quickly ignited both the blogosphere and Twitter, with many denouncing the post as “vile,” “treasonous,” and worse. The conservative blog Big Journalism called the posts “venom,” saying it was “sanctimonious and self-righteous.”

Mr. Krugman couldn’t contain his vindictive hatred of the President and had to rush to the “blog of record” to let his venom flow. The sanctimonious and self-righteous tone of Krugman’s post is something we’ve grown used to by now: “and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not”. But this use of the 9/11 memorial as an occasion to accuse President Bush and Mayor Giuliani of political war profiteering is beyond the pale, even for Krugman.

This tweet from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld drew a lot of attention -

On the flip side, Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald defended Krugman on Twitter, comparing his remarks and the reaction to the Dixie Chicks’ attack of then President Bush’s Iraq war decisions while overseas.

Columnist David Weigel also defended Krugman in a post on Slate –

On a day when everyone else was flashing back to 9/11/2001, I was flashing back to the days and months later, when criticism of the Bush administration returned, and the practioners of it became, briefly, Emmanuel Goldsteins. Remember Susan Sontag? Remember the Dixie Chicks? Remember the campaign to “revoke the Oscar” from Michael Moore? There hasn’t been much criticism of the substance of Krugman’s remarks; denying that 9/11 and counterterrorism strategy became “wedge issues” is denying a few years of political history. The criticism is of Krugman for expressing it.

Krugman posted a follow-up article of sorts about an hour ago on his NYT blog. In that post, he didn’t back down for his previous post, though he said that he should have made some things clear –

Now, I should have said that the American people behaved remarkably well in the weeks and months after 9/11: There was very little panic, and much more tolerance than one might have feared. Muslims weren’t lynched, and neither were dissenters, and that was something of which we can all be proud.

But the memory of how the atrocity was abused is and remains a painful one. And it’s a story that I, at least, can neither forget nor forgive.

Many feel that Paul Krugman was correct in his characterization of political profiteering following 9/11. Conversely, many feel that his comments were completely untrue and baseless. If you agree with Krugman, do you think that the 9/11 anniversary was the proper time for the comments? If you disagree with Krugman, how has what he said affected you, and your relationship with the New York Times? Let us know in the comments.

[Lead Image Courtesy Forbes]

AR brings a depth to local search that goes way beyond looking at placeholders with various reviews attached to them. An example of the augmented reality technology in action:

The story came about from a New York Times report. In it, the growing affliction of local businesses finding their Google Maps entry as being closed. The article uses the owner of the Coffee Rules Lounge, located in Kansas, as an example of what Google calls “spammy closed listings.”

Apparently, the owner discovered his business was listed as “permanently closed” on their Google Maps listing, even though the coffee shop was not actually out of business. The Times article expands on the concept:

On Google Places, a typical listing has the address of a business, a description provided by the owner and links to photos, reviews and Google Maps. It also has a section titled “Report a problem” and one of the problems to report is “this place is permanently closed.” If enough users click it, the business is labeled “reportedly closed” and later, pending a review by Google, “permanently closed.”

That’s not a bad tool to have if you’re trying to bury your competition and you want potential consumers to believe the competing businesses are no longer operational.

As a direct response to the Times’ article, Google posted an entry on their Lat/Long Blog, titled, “Combatting Spammy Closed Listing Labels on Google Maps,” and in it, they promised the situation was being addressed:

About two weeks ago, news in the blogosphere made us aware that abuse — such as “place closed” spam labels — was occurring. And since then, we’ve been working on improvements to the system to prevent any malicious or incorrect labeling. These improvements will be implemented in the coming days.

Of course, Google doesn’t actually explain these improvements, much like the Times’ article discussed Google’s lack of information concerning their review process:

“Google was tight-lipped about its review methods and would not discuss them.”

Does Google’s lack of specifics trouble you or is the fact that Google is addressing this very powerful anti-competition attribute enough for you? Or would you like to see Google be more open about the processes they employ in both reviewing whether or not a business is actually closed and how they plan to counteract these “place closed” spam? Let us know what you think.

The emails were requested by many journalists during the 2008 Presidential campaign, as Palin was obviously a big player as the Republican VP candidate. The release of the emails has been delayed on multiple occasions, with Alaska officials saying they didn’t have the proper technology to accommodate the requests.

But in January, the Alaska attorney general directed that the emails should be released. And tomorrow, at 9am local time in the capital of Juneau, 24,199 emails will be made public. The emails will cover Palin’s time as Governor, spanning from the beginning of 2007 to September of 2008. Current Alaskan’s Governor Sean Parnell is keeping some 2,000 emails private.

Many of the major news outlets will have people on the ground tomorrow to begin to go through and analyze the emails for possible stories. Two organizations are requesting the help of amateur journalists to comb through the massive cache.

The Washington Post, on its blog The Fix, has a post today entitled “Help analyze the Palin emails.” They are limiting the participants to 100, who will be working in small teams to uncover any important information:

That’s a lot of e-mail for us to review so we’re looking for some help from Fix readers to analyze, contextualize, and research those e-mails right alongside Post reporters over the days following the release.

We are limiting this to just 100 spots for people who will work collaboratively in small teams to surface the most important information from the e-mails. Participants can join from anywhere with a computer and an Internet connection.

Here’s what their request form looks like:

The Washington Post has also set up a Twitter account simply for this purpose. @PalinEmails went live yesterday.

The New York Times is also getting in on the fun, asking readers to help investigate the Palin emails on their politics blog The Caucus.

We’re asking readers to help us identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight. Interested users can fill out a simple form to describe the nature of the e-mail, and provide a name and e-mail address so we’ll know who should get the credit. Join us here on Friday afternoon and into the weekend to participate.

If you requested copies of the Palin emails, they will cost you three cents a page. That adds up to $725.97. They will come in five 55 pound boxes.

Palin herself has commented on the email release, saying that everything there is to know is probably already known. She does have some worries, as she told Fox News host Chris Wallace:

“A lot of those e-mails obviously weren’t meant for public consumption,” she said, and people who read them will “never truly know what the context of each one of the e-mails was.”

This story is bound to become pretty political, and fast. Judging by the comments over on Politico, there is plenty of opinions coming in from both sides regarding the release. Some say that this is an example of the liberal media continuing to hound someone they don’t like. Others say that a transparent government is essential to democracy, and if Palin has nothing to hide, she shouldn’t be worried.

Thoughts?

As you probably remember, The New York Times rolled out a semi-permeable paywall on March 28th.  The paywall allows up to 20 pages views for readers who access the site through direct means.  After that, readers are prompted to pay for a subscription service.  The paywall also includes social media and search exceptions, allowing articles accessed via sites like Google and Facebook to not count towards the “20.”

Hitwise crunched the numbers and compared traffic for a 12 day period before the paywall with traffic 12 days after the paywall was erected.  Both total visits to the site and page views have dropped dramatically.  Below is the chart for percent change in total visits between the two 12-day periods.  Note the only increase is Saturday, April 9th which Hitwise suggests was “likely due to visitors seeking news around the potential government shutdown and ongoing budget discussions.”

The paywall’s negative effect is even more prominent when looked at in terms of page views.  The same 12-day period shows negative changes of between 11% and 30%:

Hitwise also notes that the social media and search loophole discussed earlier hasn’t done much to increase traffic to the New York Times website from those sources:

“While using these sources could be a clever workaround for a reader hoping not to pay, to date there has not been a significant difference in the share of upstream traffic from both search and social networks to NYTimes.com before and after the launch of the paywall.”

Traditional journalism is struggling to compete with the rise of internet reporting.  Information is plentiful, and mostly free.  While these statistics aren’t a comprehensive comment on the success or failure of paywalls, they do suggest the New York Times’ system might not be optimal.  It will be interesting to see if they are simply slow out of the gates or whether it will become a much larger failure for the news organization.