What is in Kelvin's Head?

Google Reader RIP

15/03/2013
In the midst of the hubbub over a certain election in the Vatican earlier this week, I noticed one or people tweeting “This would be a good time to bury bad news”. As it turned out, there was quite a significant piece of geek news that came out at that time which has got quite a lot of people riled and got quite a lot of people bewildered as to what the fuss is about.

Seems that Google is going to turn off the Google Reader service. Now, I don’t need to explain what Google Reader is to readers of this blog, do I gentle reader? Oh no, you’ve all read, bookmarked and inwardly digested that post I put up about blog aggregation in 2010.Â (What do you mean you don’t have it at your fingertips? You can find it here: http://thurible.net/20101111/how-to-read-blogs/)

It is rather a significant moment in the life of the blogosphere when google announces that that particular service is coming to an end. It works, it beats everything else I’ve tried and I’m surprised that they are pulling the plug. It may well mean that overall blog reading will shrink and it will be an inconvenience to move to another kind of reader.

Four thoughts:
1. This is a Woolworths moment. I know I check Google Reader less than I used to do because somehow my brain has come to believe that those posting and linking on social media are more up to date, happening, switched on voices than people who don’t. That means the first sight of interesting content most often comes for me on twitter or Facebook. If we look at a service less, it is of less value to the people providing it and hence, the Google Boffins can probably read the runes. They practically dominate web analytics in any case. My guess is that they can see that the use of this service is falling fast. If you don’t shop in Woolworths, Woolworths will close, no matter how nostalgic you are for the pick and mix that you never actually bought.
2. This was a free service. They don’t have to provide it. Get used to it.
3. All those people who are worried about privacy and Google do have a point. Untangling the individual from the corporation one of the major themes of our day. This is a day of victory for the Open Source movement whose advocates can rightly look smug.Â (They will anyway).
4. I expect I will find another reader to follow RSS feeds. RSS is a lovely thing. However, like wikis, the great unwashed don’t get it. I’d like to say that they want their content served up on a plate for them without any effort. However, it would appear that they don’t, doesn’t it? That’s what RSS does.

10 responses to “Advertise, advertise, advertise!”

Matt Hanson

02/10/2008

Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..

Matt Hanson

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Eamonn

02/10/2008

How naff can you get? It was worth listening to a professional advertiser’s comments on the Lichfield advert on the Sunday programme on Radio 4.

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Gavin Drake

02/10/2008

Adverts that make people in the church feel comfortable are likely to be completely irrelevant to people outside the church. As the instigator and creator of the Lichfield football adverts campaign I stand by them – they did what we wanted them to do. We had a target and we achieved that target. The professional advertising chap on Radio Four was anti the adverts; but he was also anti the entire Christian message as a self-proclaimed militant atheist. His best effort? “Life” – which is a campaign he created for the Billy Graham missions 20 years ago. Hardly creative (now, 20 years on) nor fresh. His message was that the church should get rid of Jesus, God and all the “after life” stuff and concentrate on making people feel good now.

One final thought, in this blog entry aren’t you demonstrating the Christian Christmas grumpetyness which you appear to be criticising in others?

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kelvin

02/10/2008

Thanks for your comments Gavin.

You are quite right about my grumpityness though I was not particularly being critical of it in others. Indeed, being able to rely on other people’s grumpityness is one of the things which has ensured a lot of exposure for the CAN ads, for example, the Bad Hair Day campaign and the Meek, Mild As If one. It was the (mock?) outrage of the christian community that got those ads talked about.

I’m a fan of what the CAN do, which I perhaps did not make clear in the above blog entry.

I’d be interested to know what the target was and how achieving it was measured.

I have to confess to feeling embarrassed by the Lichfield ad but then of course, it was not aimed at me.

I also commented about past CAN campaigns here and here.

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Kennedy

02/10/2008

Having listened to the CAN adverts, I am left asking what the message was and who was the target audience? If the intention was to familiarise the audience with the characters and motifs from the Christmas story then OK, but there is more that could be said in the time.

You’ll permit me a small plug for the stuff that GRF produce.

Have a listen:

http://smallvoice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/01-ms-christianity.mp3

Yes, this uses the style of the M&S ads but I think that it communicates something about the Christian message and in a form that a non-church person could relate to.

The judges at the Jerusalem Awards seemed to like it as they awarded it the premier award in the ‘Shorts’ category at their awards ceremony last week.

If you are looking for creative audio to use in churches or schools then have a look at http://www.audiopot.org.

Kennedy

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kelvin

02/10/2008

Thanks Kennedy. I like the M and S Ad. Very clever. I always like hearing Albatross (the music underneath) because it reminds me of someone I knew a long time ago who used to play it (on large pipe organs) during communion.

One of the drawbacks of the ads that I was speaking about above is that they all depend on knowing the Christian story. That is perhaps legitimate in a Back to Church Sunday as it is presumably aimed at folk who have gone away knowing something or other.

The line about the penalty does kind of imply that substitutionary atonement is what we believe though.

The Lichfield ad certainly got a lot of coverage and if that was the intention, it succeeded.

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Elizabeth

03/10/2008

I must admit I found the racing advert amusing. The football ones leave me cold. Aside from issue about inclusivity and dubious theology, I think living in Glasgow has made me very wary of any connection between religion and football.

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Coxy

03/10/2008

I think that the football one is excellent, as does my wife (and she can’t tell the difference between Liverpool and Arsenal – I guess they do both play in red though!). How is it not inclusive of men and women? As I see it there is good build up play from Mary and Joseph before Jesus scores…

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kelvin

06/10/2008

Hi Nick

I’ve just rescued your comment from a spam filter – don’t know why it got swallowed.

At St Mary’s we tend to avoid language like “men” where what is really meant is men and women, “mankind” when what is meant really is humanity etc

This affects things like the language we use for hymns.

We’d never sing, “Brothers, this Lord Jesus, shall return again” for example. In a mixed crowd it just seems rude.

There is an ongoing degate about how far to go with this policy but by and large, language inclusive of men and women is the norm at St Mary’s and exclusive language tends to jar and be distractive when you’ve got used to more inclusive language in church. Thus the ad is something we couldn’t use because of the use of the word “man” meaning something other than just men.

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ryan

06/10/2008

The term “banter”, as featured in the ad, should also be used by no-one anyway (and only partly because of Chewing the Fat). O the amount of people that have endured abuse and had it expained away as “just banter”.

Wondering if “male” ads like this are ok if one also does female-centered advertising, or if the whole idea is hoary sexism. St.Silas does a Women 4 Women thing which I believe is popular. No Men 4 Men though.

Hope I’m immune from the st.silasite ensnaring spam filter
;-).

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