A few weeks ago I wrote ‘Newspaper paywall panic’ where I gave my thoughts on The Times’ doomed paywall scheme.  Well in the last week or so the results have started to be released and as expected they don’t make good reading, well not for Murdoch anyway!

So let’s cut to the chase, the number of people willing to pay the money regularly is 15,000, yep your eyes are not deceiving you and yes the general consensus is that this is a rather poor figure;  oh, but the bad news doesn’t stop there, the online subscription is a mere £2 a week which is pricing itself well below what is needed to counter-act the steady decline of the more expensive print product, not to mention the loss in advertising revenue they will undoubtedly be experiencing.  (Am I the only one that saw that coming, surely not!)

Okay, so there is the bad news; hang-on is there a glimmer of hope on the horizon? No! Apparently the iPad application has 12,500 subscribers paying £10 per month which in contrast to the web figure is quoted as being positive, this is due apparently to the relatively low number of iPads in circulation which interestingly contradicts Apple’s recent announcement that the iPad is now outselling its Notebook range with three million sold so far, sounds like wishful thinking by News Corp if you ask me.

I suppose I have been a little hard on The Times’ attempt to make money, I just find it hard to believe that the Industry in general still thinks it is because banner supported content doesn’t work; yet a high number of other websites and ad-delivery networks are experiencing good levels of user response with less intrusive and more importantly static support adverts.

Put simply, this is print minded executives trying to control the web which is the root of this problem; in my opinion, unless radical change takes place certain sectors of the news print industry are heading for the end.

While checking my Twitter feed I came across a post from Smashing Magazine that said ‘DuckDuckGo: a nice new search engine, useful for programmers and designers’, so I checked it out, ran a few searches and was pleasantly surprised with the results, it was that good I may consider making it my search engine of choice.

Before I go on I would just like to talk a little about Google which may just clarify why I am considering moving away.  Google has been the search front runner for such along time it seemed unlikely any other service could mount an effective challenge, even with Wolfram Alpha and Bing hitting the scene Google just kept on going.  Recently however, Bing started to take a bigger share of the search market and weirdly Google instead of leading the way changed its search results page to feel more like Bing’s; combine this with the increasing advertising that haunts Google could they just be starting to lose their way?

DuckDuckGo (strange name I know!) offers a more streamlined search facility meaning more appropriate results,  so to test the theory I ran a few simple searches both in Google and DuckDuckGo; in most cases it beat Google on appropriacy giving me only useful links and more importantly no advertising.  As a web designer trying to find those useful little code snippets or tutorials can be a chore but since I have been trialing DuckDuckGo things have felt just a little more direct. So far the only draw-back I can see is speed, sometimes DuckDuckGo lacks the immediacy of Google when clicking through to an appropraite result.

I don’t think Google is under threat yet, I have fallen for the false promises of other search engines before and always go back to the comfort of Google; yet I do feel it is time for something new and maybe DuckDuckGo is it?

I recently read Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook written by Dan Yoder, and as with all articles I read it thoroughly before passing judgement, though it did feel paranoid and biased even with the little disclaimer at the beginning.  So after taking some time to absorb his opinion I realised mine hadn’t changed, I didn’t disagree with all the points but did feel it certainly wasn’t a balanced view.

In this post I am not going to analyse each of the ten reasons individually or too closely, this will just be my opinion as a user, consumer and social being.  Just in case you haven’t read Dan’s full article (link above) I have listed the ten reasons here for easy reference.

1. The Facebook application itself sucks
2. Facebook doesn’t (really) support the Open Web
3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account
4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted
5. Even your private data is shared with applications
6. Facebook is a bully
7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch
8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy
9. Facebook’s CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior
10. Facebook’s Terms Of Service are completely one-sided

Firstly, I am going to cover the repetition of reasons five, seven, eight, nine and ten.  Basically these five reasons are at the centre of the ‘paranoia’ I spoke of earlier; they state between them that Facebook is changing its terms of service so that it can share your data, making it publically available while at the hands of some unscrupulous overlord (when you say it like that you can see why I use the word ‘paranoid’!).  My issue with this perception is that Facebook is a business that offers a service for free, obviously they need to monitise this and as user data is a growing market I think they would be foolish not to focus on its potential.

So let’s take the supermarket Tesco for example, they have been collating shopper buying habits now with their ‘Clubcard’ points system for some years and I suspect they aren’t just collecting this data for the fun of it; surely it stands to reason that if they know what you are buying  they can target you more effectively and increase their profits.  My point is that either Tesco get our data and hit us or another company collects the same data and sells it to someone else, one way or another they will find the information they want.  In addition, if this data is being used for the hard sell of products then doesn’t the user simply need to become more aware and less gullible.  In addition to this, who is to say that collection of user data is a bad thing, companies selling you things you need so you don’t need to shop around may not sound that bad to some shoppers, or am I missing something?

We should also bear-in-mind that Facebook is a huge brand, like Microsoft if it steps out of line or tries to monopolise the market it is big enough to be noticed by all the authorities that matter, and they are not stupid.

Can Facebook be trusted technically and does it really support the open web?  These two views seem to me to be biased as I am pretty sure there are many other big brand names whose websites are like Swiss Cheese technically, and i don’t think it is alone in its fear of the open web, just look at the newspaper industry, the fear of not making enough money will always win unfortunately.

For balance, I do think the interface could be more intuative and stable, and if account deletion is as difficult as Dan states then this is a negative.  However, I do have a number of friends who have decided to leave Facebook for different reasons than Dan states but they didn’t seem to have any problems leaving at all!

In conclusion, Facebook has been a revolution for people in all walks of life.  It has helped millions communicate with family and friends from all around the globe, it has broken down barriers and given those who can’t get out a window into a social world; if it wasn’t Facebook offering this service and sharing the data it would be some other organisation and many already are.  Even in the last few days Facebook has announced a new simpler way of checking the privacy settings on all accounts, that certainly sounds like a company trying to do the right thing to me!