But the government was never going to win on this one.

If you’re in the digital creative business you’re naturally going to have anti-establishment tendencies; this is a digital revolution after all.

And if you profess to be one of the revolution’s “thought leaders”, it seems that the more radical your views on what the digital economy needed from the bill, the higher the regard from your peers.

But when Lord Carter came to Birmingham last June and spoke to a room full of such people about his Digital Britain report (the forerunner to the Bill), I thought he gave a good account of himself.

The report and the discussion covered the vast spectrum of issues lumped under the ‘digital’ banner. Everything from solving the growing bandwidth divide between poor and wealthy and the illegal download problem, to the role of our publicly funded broadcaster.

In my opinion, this hopelessly wide scope created an impossible task for Lord Carter. So I was not surprised that the resulting Bill contained extensive measures to help stop illegal downloading and little else!

The most draconian measure, or so it seems to the digital community, is the removal of a perpetrator’s broadband connection – but only after a few stiff letters have been sent.

Which seems rather ironic, as Carter’s report identified high-speed net access as a human right in the 21^St century!

ISPs are also critical of the Bill because, basically, they don’t want the bother of trying to implement it. They know that online anonymity is never going to be hard to find for people intent on breaking the law and at best they will catch a few gullible kids.

Creators of digital content need to find other ways to remunerate their endeavours. For instance the film industry has discovered that 3D can counter piracy by creating an experience that cannot be replicated at home (yet!).

Musicians can make money on merchandising and live concerts, and games providers through online subscriptions to hosted multi-user features.

They have to find innovative ways to be rewarded for their creativity in this new environment, rather than relying on copyright laws from a pre-digital era.

It is very easy to criticise the Bill, without offering any alternative, but my suggestion would be to have no Bill at all!  Online piracy is not a problem that can be solved by legislation.

With election campaigns getting under way I still believe this. If only the political parties did.

It’s not that they’re ignoring social media but at the moment it’s all a bit style over substance.

They appear to be falling into the trap currently occupied by a lot of businesses and organisations who have also “done” social media in recent times but not really got anywhere with it.

The problem is that like others who complain that social media isn’t working, they are focusing more on the channel rather than REALLY thinking about the content.

A common problem with a lot of social media marketing at the moment is that there is too much focus on the channel – the technology and the means of distribution like Facebook, Twitter, iPhone app and so on.

This is probably because the very genre is defined by the channel – the media.

Which is why a lot of organisations think they’ve “done” social media just because they have a Twitter account or an iPhone app.

But the channel is only a conduit. It’s what is sent and distributed via that channel that holds the key to success. Content, purpose, targeting and resource must be well planned to maximise engagement.

For example, last week the Tory party launched its very own Conservative Party iPhone app.

So cool.

Well actually not quite so much. It’s really a mini-brochure with a few little questionable tools built in, like its swing-o-meter showing election results as they come in. Which will be useful for about 12 hours tops on the night.

The detail on its policies is informative but it’s basically their manifesto in condensed, digital format. For more comment, read Mobsessed’s opinion about the Tory app, it’s good stuff.

And this week we saw the launch of the Labour Party’s social media campaign.

This is much more interesting, using opinions expressed through social media and on the doorstep to “inform” their social media activity. I have no idea what “inform” actually means here though. There’s no clue as to what they will do with all this content.

They’ve also given social media training to key campaign staff. The problem again is that it all feels very token-like. Time will tell.

It’s not all negative. There are some great examples of local and national party activists, party members, MP’s and councillors who really do understand it.

But so far no party has an obvious centralised social media strategy bringing together and mobilising all campaigners to truly listen to and engage with the public and key influencers.

What I’m really talking about here is online PR, and as far as I can see it’s here they are missing an opportunity.

Where is their online PR strategy? How are they creating and resourcing active social media engagement on a daily basis with online citizens: individuals, communities, influencers, bloggers, tweeters, publications and so on?

I can’t see any of that happening on a scale akin to Obama in the US for example.

Maybe it’s coming, or already happening. But I can’t see it, which kind of defeats the purpose.

Online PR is a great way of approaching the task in hand because it diverts attention from the channel, Twitter, the iPhone app or whatever to the meat of the matter – the content, community engagement and the direct conversation.

When the main parties get their head around the fact that this is what social media is about then they may see some success from it in terms of influencing opinion and voting intention.

As things stand, the general public are likely to see through token gestures and do what they normally do when it comes to politics – switch off.

Just as it should in other areas of politics, with social media it’s substance, not style, which holds the key to success.

Considering it is the largest media owner in the world, Google is very bad at communicating with its users – which, lets face it, is most of us.

Back in December Google slipped Personalised Search into our lives, but few peopled noticed.

Google is always fiddling, or ‘refining’ as it calls it, with its algorithm, the one that determined which sites we see at the top of our search results pages.

Usually you need to be a search engine optimisation (SEO) expert or a real geek to spot the changes, or follow Google’s official blog.

But now even normal people are noticing that their search engine results are becoming very different to those of other people – even when they search with the same words!

Basically, Personalised Search means that once you have visited a website, via its results pages, Google is now more likely to offer you the site again, in future search results.

Now, if you’re an advocate of personal privacy, an international terrorist, or part of an organised crime syndicate you already know that Google records you’re every move and you’ve worked out a way of turning its tracking off.

However, those of us who don’t fit into the above categories have not really been that bothered. But now that Google is using this information to choose websites for us, perhaps we should be bothered.

Fundamentally, I use a search engine to find websites I don’t already know about. I have other mechanisms for recalling websites from previous interest; bookmarks and news feeds (RSS) for instance.

And whether my own previous misjudgment in site selection is a good way of determining what sites I see in the future is highly debatable too!

You can of course turn off personalised search, but it is now on by default and few users will be aware of this or work out how to turn it off. Previously you had to be logged into iGoogle to get this ‘useful feature’ but now everyone is unwittingly lumbered with it.

This makes it very difficult to prove money spent on SEO is justified. If everyone is getting different results, how can you know your SEO is working?

Alternatively, the unsuspecting client, who visits their own website on a regular basis, might think their SEO consultant is doing an amazing job, as their site seems to turn up on every relevant search they do.

So if you’re site has suddenly become number one in Google, for your targeted keywords, but this hasn’t turned into an avalanche of website visitors – and of course you’ve read this, you will now know why.

Being presented with death and suffering, before you’ve even left the house, is a bad way to start a day, but guilt wouldn’t let me turn it off.

I then started wondering why valuable plane space was taken up, flying a Kate Adie wannabe with camera crew, to the scene of a disaster just hours after it had happened?

Did the piece-to-camera clips really need live earthquake scenes behind it?

We’ve all seen the aftermath of an earthquake before – piles of rubble and human bewilderment.

The Haitians have complained that too many US soldiers have been flown in with guns, but I’d be complaining about the army of men with cameras.

I know broadcast media help galvanise aid, but unless one of the dozens of ‘news’ videos features your family, what useful information do they actually provide?

With over 280,000 members, “Earthquake Haiti” is now the largest group on Facebook.  Let the sceptics of social networking take note: not only are people using social media to find missing loved ones, but using it as a source of on-the-ground information.

More harrowing is that by searching for #helphaiti on Twitter, you’ll find tweets of longitude and latitude with request for food and water – grim.

What finally made me turn the TV off, was when Simon Cowell appeared!

I love it when rich people want to ‘give something back’ as long as it’s not actual the money they made, and they get plenty of publicity thrown in.

I feel sorry enough for the people of Haiti, without some piece of pop pap, to induce my sympathy.  I’ll give to the cause, without getting something in return.

However social media is not immune to the words ‘band’ and ‘wagon’.

Birmingham tweeter, @stevegerrard (not the footballer), promised to donate £2 for every comment he got on his blog.  Not the most altruistic of Twitter marketing as many of the comments, now removed, pointed out!

Last week saw the blogosphere speculate that Twitter’s meteoric growth might finally be ending.

According to web monitoring company, Compete, traffic to the micro-blogging website has flat-lined, suggesting its world dominance may not be so assured.

Quantcast’s numbers told the same story. Since its peak at 29.2 million users in July09, Twitter traffic has dropped down to 23.6 million U.S. unique visitors, a loss of nearly 24%!

But before the social media sceptics start celebrating by regurgitating theories on the faddish nature of social networks and the vacuous nature of their inhabitants, it is important to know a couple of things.

Firstly, unlike other social networks, Twitter is not popular with teenagers. It is this age group that is notorious for migrating from one network to another.

Teens don’t tweet.

Possibly because it requires brevity, but more likely because it requires an understanding of what might actually be interesting to other people!

Younger users may have simply got bored with Twitter and its many shortcomings as a chat room or perhaps realised it is full of grumpy old people like me.

But those of us who don’t use it as a chat room have found increasing ways to share content, galvanise public opinion and exact social media revenge on bad customer service.

(Oh – and it’s great for slagging off the X Factor too).

Secondly, we need to remember that there are “lies, damn lies and website statistics”. A fall in traffic to Twitter’s own websites could simply mean that more tweeters have migrated to using phone and desktop applications; a sign that the Twittersphere is evolving, not retracting.

Frankly, it is the basic functionality of Twitter’s own site that leads many a debutant tweeter to give up before accumulating enough followers to make it rewarding.

We may well see the site transformed in 2010 as it is widely rumoured that this is the year that Twitter intends to monetise its success – perhaps sick of the jokes about it knowing how to spend money but not make it.

In fact, Twitter is reported to be hiring new developers to help transform the site into a commercial entity.

But stories about its negative growth won’t help this course.

However, if there are truly less people using Twitter than before, it must be because it is transforming from a place where narcissists and their voyeurs can meet, to a more credible news and opinion sharing platform.

Perhaps the Tweeters are separating from the Chavs?

1. Launch another attack on Google (Microsoft)

2. Charge for access to content (News Corp)

Two birds with one stone huh.

And from a business perspective it’s almost an obvious move – a match made in heaven (or, if you like, hell).

But this unholy alliance is seriously troubling. Why?

Because it threatens the whole credibility of search, as it has evolved. Google has, to its credit, worked hard to ensure that natural search results are based on merit – not on how much publishers are willing to pay them.

So what’s in it for Microsoft and big publishers like Murdoch? Joseph Tartakoff, in The Guardian yesterday, summed up the spoils for the victors :

“…not only would Microsoft presumably be giving the content of its partners better play, it would also be paying to ensure that their content could not be found directly via the search engine of its arch-rival.”

Should we really be bothered? Douglas McCabe, publishing analyst at Enders Analysis suggests we should perhaps take a chill pill:

“It doesn’t work unless they [Microsoft] get enough people involved”.

But Microsoft is on the case.

TechCrunch has reported that Microsoft have made presentations to major publishers (not just News Corp) setting out their proposition: we will pay you, the content owners, to de-list your content from Google, in exchange for priority listings on Bing.

But if Microsoft are trying to attack Google where it really hurts (their wallet) then they might have to think again.

Google earns virtually no revenue at the moment from news content on Google News, so no great loss there. In fact a recent study in Germany on google.de found that removing publishers’ content had a negligible economic effect for Google.

But lest we forget our old mate the Murdochosaurus.

The loser (money aside) could well be Murdoch. The removal of News Corp content from Google, and the consequent loss of exposure for their brands, will only mean more traffic and visibility for their competitors.

Take the UK, where nearly every one of us use Google – is the loss of The Times or The Sun from Google really going to make us use Bing instead?

Most of us won’t even notice it’s gone!

But, as Tartakoff says:

“For the newspapers… the question is whether Microsoft’s dollars can make up for the loss of traffic that Google generates for them.”

All of this, of course, totally removes the end consumer from the equation.

Microsoft might increase Bing’s market share and Murdoch might be satisfied with some cash from Microsoft – but what about us?

My hunch is that if we are wise to the fact that search results in Bing are based on cash rather than credibility, we’ll stick with Google who we already love and trust.

Or maybe there is a benefit, as one comment by GinSter highlighted in The Guardian yesterday:

“I hope this happens. Google – now with free Murdoch blocker…brilliant.”

The reality is that it could work to achieve short term objectives for Microsoft and the big publishers, but over the long term Microsoft’s strategy kind of stinks.

And as for Murdoch, well it seems to me that he put his stake in the ground earlier this year by saying he was going to put a paywall around all his content – paid for by us, the end consumer.

Since then, perhaps he’s realised it’s not quite as easy as all that and is now desperately hunting for a viable alternative.

And Microsoft have seized on this desperation and offered what looks like a very crude solution that we should care about – especially if more publishers do get involved and this is just the start of a wider trend.