Hitwise, which measures web traffic, found a jump in referrals from Facebook to Apple after the Beatles catalogue of music became available on iTunes.  SearchEngineLand uses that to compare the impact of Social Media with that of Search Engines.  In a post entitled “How Did The Beatles Sell 2 Million Songs On iTunes?  Mostly Facebook (Not Search)” they say…

Billboard magazine reports that The Beatles sold more than two million individual songs worldwide and in excess of 450,000 albums in its first week on Apple’s iTunes Music Store. (The Beatles’ catalog was added to iTunes on November 16th.)

According to Experian Hitwise, it was social media — not search — that drove a lot of the online interest and, more importantly, the online traffic surrounding The Beatles addition to iTunes. Consider this stat: On November 16, the first day Beatles songs were available on iTunes, 26% of UK traffic to Apple.com came from social media, about double the amount that came from search.

I don’t think the comparison is valid and I’ll explain why but before I do I want to explain why I think this comparison is a dangerous one.  People are framing this as a question of “Google vs Facebook” and then extrapolating dire consequences for Google based on that comparison.  Look at the language used by Read Write Web…

Before people ring the death knell for search, it is worth noting that search was up - 30% in the U.K. and 19% in the U.S. - for the Fab Four.

I wouldn’t even consider “ringing the death knell for search” based on this and here’s why... 

They’re comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended).  Social Media is an active medium which means it informs you of things you didn’t already know.  Search is a passive medium which means you go to it when you want to know more about something you already know.  With that distinction in mind let’s look at the situation surrounding this news item.

The news item was: Beatles Music is now available on iTunes

People could have heard this news in one of four ways…

* Heard the news in person from an acquaintance

* Heard the news from Traditional media (TV, Newspaper, etc…)

* Heard the news from New Media (Blog, Web based news, etc…)

* Heard the news from Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, etc…)

In at least two of the above scenarios the user would not be given a link to Apple.  So the question is whether they’d need a search engine to find the Beatles Music without a direct link to it.

That’s the invalidating point here: Why would someone need to search for information if they’re given “Beatles” and “iTunes” in the content of the news item?

The answer in most cases is “they wouldn’t” and that’s why I don’t see much merit in this comparison.  If anything the comparison is between Social Media and other forms of active notification but we can’t even measure that properly because we don’t know how many people went straight to Apple’s website or simply opened their copy of iTunes and searched. 

So this information proves next to nothing valuable as far as insight and certainly doesn’t lend itself to a comparison of Facebook and Google.

Amazon now allows authors to self-publish which is an amazing service.  But like any good deed it has not gone unpunished.   In this case someone has self-published a book called “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure” (and no I will not be linking to it).  Amazon has refused to take it down because they believe it would be denying the author freedom of speech.  So controversy has ensued…

Michael Arrington of Techcrunch weighs in with this…

We are very much in favor of free speech. But like Facebook’s obsession with Holocaust denial, that doesn’t mean Amazon has to condone something so clearly disgusting, and profit from it.

GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram chimes in with a similar thought…

If you want to test someone’s belief in freedom of speech, the easiest way is to bring up something morally abhorrent — topics such as the defence of pedophilia, incest, the denial of the Holocaust, and so on.

First Amazon is clearly in the wrong here.  The free speech argument is, at best, debatable.  The most on-point decision is Robert A. Viktora vs. The City of St. Paul.  In that case Mr. Viktora, a Nazi, had taken to burning crosses in front of the homes of African-American families.  This was in violation of a city ordinance that said…

Whoever places on public or private property, a symbol, object, appellation, characterization or graffiti, including, but not limited to, a burning cross or Nazi swastika, which one knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender commits disorderly conduct and shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

The Supreme Court did rule against the city in this case but of the 5 justices that made up the majority 4 of them did so only because they felt the ordinance was “overbroad”.  Since they specified that it must mean it is legal to ban some objectionable speech. 

Which leads to the question “Is there anything more objectionable than pedophilia?” 

But once you get to Holocaust denial I have to object.  Holocaust denial is dumb.  I mean…there are pictures for God’s sakes.  There are still Concentration Camps you can visit.  Not to mention the millions of missing people unaccounted for.  So really…kind of stupid. 

But once you start banning speech solely on the fact that it’s stupid or ignorant you establish a very dangerous precedent.  Who will be the judge of that?  Who decides what makes an idea too stupid to be legal?  Most partisan people feel those who belong to the other political party are stupid.  Does that mean they can legally ban that speech?  Can San Francisco make being a Conservative illegal?  Can Austin do the same for Liberals? 

Where exactly would it stop?

Forrester CEO George Colony thinks Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is overrated as a CEO and he gives a pretty compelling case to go along with that assertion. 

I agree with a lot of what he says but I think he underestimates Facebook (and in doing so underestimates Zuckerberg).  Particularly I disagree with this statement…

Now Zuckerberg may eventually earn all of these accolades, but it hasn't happened yet. His one big idea hasn't morphed far from its original form. The great CEOs in technology navigate their companies through product change, brutal competitive threats, shifts in architecture, and highly fickle customers. We didn't declare Andy Grove a great CEO based on Intel's domination of the dynamic random access memory market.

I’d suggest Mr. Colony take another look at that original idea. 

Facebook has grown from a few static pages into an advertising company, an application platform, an identity platform, a content management system and a social site.  All of these things were considered separate products before Facebook came along.

(For example Facebook demolished classmates.com as an after thought)

More significant though is they dominate most of those areas.  When you consider how important each is to the future of computing you see how much Facebook really has grown. 

Identity management alone could turn Facebook into the next Microsoft. 

So while Zuckerberg may not be the management messiah he deserves a lot of credit for moving the company consistently forward and leveraging the company’s assets in a way that creates successful new businesses.   Businesses of sizable strategic value. 

Until the company is made public and we see what’s going on behind the scenes I don’t think anyone can call him a great CEO.  But Zuckerberg’s already proven he’s more than a one trick pony as far as I’m concerned.