London Twestival

And then I’m spending a long weekend concentrating on my family, so don’t expect many updates until Monday…

Details of London Twestival 2009.

And in the meantime, two things have caught my attention:

 

One is the fact that the Government’s quoted figure of 7 million illegal file sharers seems to have been revealed as being spun out of a very small original survey, with some assumptions distorting the figures. (Hat Tip to  JP Rangaswami)

 

The other is the response to newspapers from Google – they’re creating a micropayments system to appear within the next year. (via Mashable).

I’d guess there are a few reasons for Google adopting a checkout-type micropayment system for newspaper content:

• It’ll shut the newspaper owners up for a while – allowing Google to press ahead with book deals etc to own even more alternative content.
• It will also be available for Google properties, meaning that there are ways to cream off some of the money at the top, as well as by providing the service itself.
• Bugger all people will embrace fixed internet micro payments for generic content.

The last one is the most important – and even in the world of mobile there are divisions between iPhone app spending and Android app spending which suggests that even on an supposedly highly chargeable platform (mobile), many people are starting to expect apps for free.

-NB- I’ve just though of another reason why this benefits Google more than anyone else:

• If the newspapers are fooled into believing this system will make them rich, then they’ll start pushing pressure on aggregation sites to pay – Digg, Reddit, etc. Those sites are unlikely to be happy about paying for content, and the efforts and traffic newspapers currently drive from those sites will disappear. Meanwhile, the one aggregation destination which will be safe and secure will be: Google News.