Why Australia Doesnt Need Another Google

So this week, when taking a call from a 2.0 Money Man, I got asked the question I had been practising the answer to since 1983 or near enough : "How do you compete against Technorati ?" (either launching in Australia, or Australians using technorati.com)

The question I've got the most from people with secure incomes in the technology field, who are used to no major new websites being built here and just accept google is omnipotent and they themselves cant change the world, is "Why wouldnt consumers just use google, technorati, flickr, youtube, delicious, digg, podshow, pointcast.com ?"

I'll use a million examples of media (TV, newspapers, online) that are a combination of local and global. I might throw in the retail perspective : That most consumer transactions are done close to the home, and so on. More recently I prefer to not say much at all. Why help educate ? :))

Sitting here on the first coldish Friday night on the Peninsula for months, the real answer to how gnoos.com.au (please add your aussie blog if you havent't - thankyou for reading this public announcement) and any other local service we are involved with, will not be some subdomain of marginalised content, is by having a kick ass bunch of all the Aussies that are saying fn kewl stuff on the net, and making it very easy and fast to search and find great, new stuff, that helps start answer some of the questions you had when you decided not to rely solely on g-evil. g-noos. g-evil. g-noos. Do you see my subliminal Jedi Mind Trick controls here. You want it. You know you do :))

A RANDOM FRIDAY NIGHT READING AUSSIE BLOGS

Andrew Delin, StickyNotes, is deciding whether to pay ten times more to his local photos shop or give the business to Harvey Norman. You cant read this on a global search engine :) "Now, Harvey Norman will print 8" x 6" digital prints for $0.99c each, which is a good deal. But not much use to me because I couldn't get either of my media to work in their system. So I went down the street to James Place Cameras, a local business. I asked about printing at 8"x6" and the young man said, "oh yes we do those, they're $9.95 each". I gulped and checked the price with him -- yep, 9 dollars and 95 cents each. I said that was a lot of money to which he replied somewhat defensively, "It costs a lot to print them you know".

Podcasting may one day kill the radio star, even if the radio star is podcasting who is killed by the radio star. So DMG Radio the global player, has setup local shop here trying to mix talkback with cockrock and classics. It aint working something shocking, and even those willing to give it a go are offering advice to the robotic algorithms. Bring back real DJ's, like Lester Biggs in Almost Famous. I want to hear The Specials followed by KRS1, then Tom Waits and Erykah Badu. Paint the Tiger Carve the Swan on Nova 91 : "I mean, come on. You needs to smoke shit-loads of drugs to forget the songs that played in the last three hours. And it wasn’t just one or two, but more like all of them. Are the programmers so lazy they only program half a night worth of music, and just play it all twice?" - I did a google search for "nova91" and got some ebay results, global spam and then the radio station's site itself. I dont want the site's url (again) I want to read if its any good and they wont tell me that on their site, or ebay !

TripleJ are one radio station, through lack of commercial agenda, and thus getting kick ass podcast traffic. Their blogging is just as well written and Maya on Mondays hip hop show is, well, mmm, a 10. TripleJ Blog : "On occasion, a summers night brings a sweet breeze and I find myself opening my urban windows and playing Pearl Jam’s Ten… for me the quintessential pubescent summer album that never fails to elicit a tingle in my toes and a contented grin of coastal holidays past." Given Australia's season is the exact opposite to America, our ingrained cultural memory "coastal holidays past" means a local collection of voices in whatever media or form, will always strike through more powerfully. Their winter. Our summer.

Talk of an Australian A-List for blogs is totally redundant, because The Spin Starts Here is by far the best. Their deconstruction of Neighbours, will when Web 2.0 collapses, stand the test of time with the best Rolf Harris tracks. Seriously they rock. And do they get comments. "Her dad says ‘sure why not’, then he and Janelle make out. Wheel-of-Bree protests, so Janelle growl/barks at Kim and then runs to the bedroom. Ew? Before Kim and his semi can jump off the couch and follow Janelle, Wheel-of-Bree basically hands him a condom so he won’t impregnate Janelle. He cottons on, and runs to the pub. Fucking pussy, why doesn’t he just give Janelle a facial instead? You know she’s dirty-dirty." I aint getting no Neighbours love on Technorati eh, minus some English blogs talking about meeting Harold at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow in St Kilda near where the real criminals used to live.

And dont forget the One Million Australians on MySpace. Even if Kylie's current mood is melancholy, she wants to get outside and do something, with someone, close. Not bloody 24 hours away. "Where the bloody hell are you ?" says the banned ad. "Who fkn cares" says me. Kick it Kylie : "I will go for bike rides in my skirt, I will go fishing and NOT take a book, I will go on the flying fox when we go to the park, I will go to the gym and lift weights even at the risk of looking like Arnie (EW!) and if you fall off a bridge into the river and hit your head, I will jump right in after you, shoes and all. If you ask me to, I will go."

Mercedes Royce on LiveJournal is busting it even harder than her MySpace peers downunder : "saw spod last night. it was good except. no one danced. and he kept his pants on. quite tame. im used to sydney gigs with flowers and sparklers. no trousers and having people remove their pants too and geting to go the grope on tronixxxxx. come on adelaide. disco down fuckers. me and ruth did shoulder shimmy. i think thats as bad ass as it got. still hes cool he wore the white suit. i cannot not be madly in love with him. oh la la. i still want to give him all my stds. and have him function my privates." Gotta love the vicarious living. Dont expect global search engines to mine the dark genx geny web feeds for the always online-social networkers on this c(o)ntinent.

Words and Things on Blogspot, is just as funny in a middle class (this time harmless) repressed Australian vegemite family way : "When I was in primary school, my brother and I occasionally went to visit friends of ours who lived in a nudist commune. When I related this recollection to my mother recently, she frowned, and said that it wasn't a nudist commune, just a commune where a lot of people didn't wear any clothes. This distinction didn't make much sense to me, but I think she meant that the commune wasn't based on ideals that included naturism - it just happened to include quite a few naturists." Google actually doesnt have many nudist search results with clothes on, so we might concede a point there. gnoos will be spam/porn free whatever that line is. ("you know it when you click it")

While the Hawksworth Family over in Adelaide have their own comedy involving renting Wheelchairs, and its not for some post YouTube/MySpace/Online Jackass streaming experiment : "What a delight she is thinking of me like that! Anyway in she comes pushing this monstrosity and into the room..... The look on my face must have given it away! What The.....!? I dont need a wheelchair, and I certainly dont need one where a large crowd of "blokes" will be on Saturday, I can heroically get around on my crutches thanks very much!"

There are at least 60 Food Bloggers in Australia, that are growing daily, and each write about their own meals, experiences, interests and downright obsessive passion about food. A splinter group is getting into Veggieblogging. Concrete Cafe in Pyrmont, reviewed in Veggie Friendly using a trusty Wordpress Theme : "I tried the grilled haloumi salad with asparagus, rocket, green beans, avocado and macadamia nuts with a summer lemon and oil dressing - so did 80% of the other female customers. The flavours were fresh and well set off by the lemon, although there was a touch too much oil for my liking." Google's best on this topic was something from a government website about nutritional food. Relevant, but you know what Google ? Boring, your name is not on the door. You are not coming in.

Delicate Genius Blog is Chicken meets Viet meets Tofu, this is deep weird foodo blogging not yet registered in Googleland : "Last night we went out to a Vietnamese restaurant in Newtown. It was a vegetarian restaurant but served meals such as chicken satay and basil chilli chicken. How? You Ask? Well, everything is made from tofu and has chicken (or beef) flavouring. Bizarre eating satay chicken that looks tastes and feels like chicken but is not chicken."

If you arent Veggie and aint on the harbour, how's this for a bit of unstructured, structured blogging for any of my hReviews friends out there. (even the Fitzroy hCalendar posse word) From the Silent Speaking Blog, which has got the groove and minimalism thang "I remember sitting in some old, long-forgotten pub in South Melbourne. There were no customers. The barman was drooping. This jazz band turned up to play, its musicians as old and creaky as the pub's wooden floorboards. I remember thinking sarcastically to myself, 'great, some garish trad-jazz will really brighten up my day.' Well, that old jazz band rocked my jocks off like few bands ever have. Man were they good. I like unexpected surprises." Very Jazz.

And after Naomi Robson's week with the Supergrass Coke/Mokbel fiasco, how kewl that an Aussie blogger (BowlingBall) has found that video we wanted : "I've finally found it! The recording of Naomi Robson's famed 7 'fucks' in 34 seconds extravaganza! Amazing." Google brought back a 'relevant' link to seven.com.au (not yahoo7 hehe) and technorati gave us the mokbel/supergrass but neither delivered the video, the most recent (and best) post. The devil is in the detail in all media of course.

Aussie Blogging's not all tweens and vids though, Kayoz is narrating her pregnancy, now in the second trimester : "But, my body is pushing on - it and the baby. A few days ago I was relishing the second trimester and wishing it would last for longer. Then Monday and Tuesday my pubic symphasis problem really started to play up, and now I have some lower back ache as well (related, I'm sure - it's right in the sacro-illiac area). And I'm starting to get more tired again - I've been feeling pretty energised for the past few weeks. Still, there are compensations - less than 8 weeks to go till maternity leave kicks in. Yippee!!!" Damn first hand writing of real life experiences in real time rocks. I wont even waste my time searching for 'second trimester' on any search engine, as they will never bring back a relevant result with 28 million sites like technorati has or the tens of billions google does. (it will be equally hard for us with 50,000 :)

I'm not sure Kayoz has got out and got a XBox 360 yet, but there is a kewl downunder blog, which shows the right level of corporate, fan, and users obsessed about every detail, down to the controller and dropping out of uni but being an expert in XBOX360 : "Today was notable for several reasons aside from dropping a dull and asine university course; My 360 had its first crash, and my wireless controller ran out of batteries. Certainly not a memorable or noteworthy day on the list of Gamerscore achievements I agree. It got me thinking MS really ought to include such hardware notables for the 360: 50 points for your first console-stopping crash, 100 for a disc-ruining scratch, and maybe even 1000 consolation points if your console is DOA or kicks the shiny white bucket in the first month." Given Australia had a different time release for this product, we should not even have to use search engines which have users watching movies or buying/playing with hardware that isnt even released here yet. If the powers that be want us to be in a coccoon, then fine, just dont expect us to use your UMD.

And of course us Aussies want to talk about footy now we have 5 days of Round One Matches while the Grand Prix is also on. They're blogging West Coasts' Win at the Soaring : "I mentioned it Wednesday, Dean Cox is a freak and he dominated whenever he was on the ground last night. He was possibly our most influential player in the Grand Final (see here) and was again last night (26 poss, 8 marks, 24 hitouts, 2 goals). Very impressive. Smoky for the brownlow perhaps?" Others are joking about John or Jack Elliot and Eddie from Everywhere to Nowhere McGuire. Punk and Blanket writing about what noone else in the world (or even Sydney cares about :) : "Our first recording is of our friend Jack Elliot whom we 'discovered' singing in Florentino Bistro the night after the Melbourne Cup last Spring Racing Carnival. After lunching at Jack's penthouse in Carlton, we knew that he'd be wonderful to work with as he is a very keen singer who charmed us through all 3 courses. It would not be an understatement to say that Jack is an extremely confident man - even his lewd comments seemed 'right', so as soon as we decided to launch the record label we called Jack straight away."

Ukulele is happy she isn't kissing John Howard : "Please take a moment and be thankful that you are not Libby Lenton". A Voice of Dissent, which Google had a huge warning before visiting goes one step further : "A Indonesia newspaper has depicted Prime Minister Howard and Alexander Downer as two fornicating male dogs. The depiction of two male dogs also suggests homosexuality with Downer being on the receiving end and Howard in the mounted position."

Lucy Tartan may have figured out the raison d'etre of blogging : "I held my breath, heart beating, and peered through the neighbor's garden. And I saw it - I saw by what I was being hunted. Even now my pulse races as I recollect that moment. Hands shaking, I raised the digital camera." (If you want to go to this post, do not read further, it involves BLOG POST SPOILER : A cat is involved. Why are cats so popular in female blogging in Australia ? There seems to be far more blogs on a per female capita and per post ratio versus the militant BlogHer O/S cohorts)

When you read the first paragraph from Catherine Oneal - Philosophic Dreamer - you cant help but know how badly it's going to end and feel sorry : "A close friend of mine met a chap a couple of years ago. A nice boy, from a foreign country. They had met in Australia where he was studying at post-graduate level at a prestigious Melbourne university in order to obtain permanent residency. He had been given some dodgy advice by some dodgy migration agent that obtaining post-graduate qualifications in Australia was a sure fire way of gaining permanent residency here. This wasn’t strictly true, therefore my ever-helpful friend sourced some legitimate migration advice for her beau (although not betrothed at the time) and he was advised to leave Australia (seven months after his initial arrival and not before popping “The Question” to my friend) to return to his country of birth, where he would remain for the next 15 months whilst making an off-shore visa application with the Department of Immigration." Read the rest if you want to see why no-one should be passive in their life. Or active in their own pillage by others. (its ok to pillage yourself just not to encourage others to do it to u)

MelbourneHumanFemale, a totally kewl blog, has a similar but funny story and touches on SMS Suicide Messages, which is a growth market I havent yet covered or been asked by a client/prospect to analyse. "A casual friend (ie, we’re not BFFs), broke up with her long, long, long term partner (she’d been going out with him for around 7 years). She sent an SMS to everyone telling them that they had broken up, but want to remain friends. Considering how it was worded, it was a pretty classy move, which meant people who don’t often see her (like me) wouldn’t put their foot in it and ask after him next time we hung out. I thought it was good of her to do that. (But you know I couldn’t, because it’d end up a melodramatic semi-suicide note. And an SMS suicide note? Far too modern for my tastes)."

And where else do you get Beat (the streetpress magazine), Dave Graney and the idea of a Beatles Free Day, all in the first sentence, but from Toolybird : "Young Dave Graney is interviewed in Beat this week and puts forward a marvellous idea of a Beatles-free day. Most sensible thing I've heard in ages, but perhaps we can extend it for a week, or longer. Boarding the bus steps would be more pleasurable secure with the confidence that, at least for that 24 hours, I would not have to endure Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da or All You Need is Love on the bus radio. Of course, these are probably not the worst offenders, Yellow Submarine is up there, Norwegian Wood and the dreaded eternal fade out of Hey Jude (which as a child I thought was about my sister Judy, but to be fair I was three and also thought she was Nana Mouskouri. I also thought my sister-in-law Lyn was Cher). So think about it, contact your local members of Government, together we can make this work."

Finally, Andrew @ Under the Rotunda, mentions the published by B+T for a short period of time on their website, which is probably a hoax, but may not be as well, that Mitchell and Partners has been bought by Sensis. (2nd time these 2 dots have been connected this week, strange) Which would make no sense for a media seller to buy a media buyer in typical corporate strategy. All they have to do next then is buy the advertisers and they can own the full marketing channel - From manufacturing to advertising to media. Not to mention competing with Omnicon and STW. The text went thus which I'm sure the Corporate Comms guys will have to contend with Monday Morning (finding it anything but a April Fools Day joke if it is) :"The man who would never sell…sells! Perhaps hoping everyone would be at the pub by now, Mitchell & Partners just sent out the following release announcing that Sensis has completed the acquisition of 100% of Australia’s largest media buying agency. The deal will see Sensis take full ownership of Mitchell & Partners from 30 April 2006. The final acquisition
price is yet to be disclosed."

Oh yeah and did I mention this from the Hitwise.com blog : "The Hitwise Blogs and Personal websites category increased by 178.4% week ending March 18, 2006, compared to the same week last year." Now I know you'll say that's coming off a small base... But the above isn't even near to 1% of the Aussie Blog Audience. Not near. Anyway, it's 12:29am, Friday night over... time to go out.. joking ;) Time to podcatch the latest podcasts...