Gmail and Social Media Meet-Up, No Clear Winners (GOOG, NWS, NYT)

We are hearing more reports about social media combining with email.   This has been evolving for a decade or so, and now we have Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) reportedly trying to either catch up or take this one step further.  There have been many rumors about more and more social-features coming, so this may just be nothing more than a finalization of news under development.  A report first from the Wall Street Journal, with Gmail unveiling a new feature that makes it easier and faster for users to communicate and share data or content with their approved contacts.  Where this gets interesting is that this is the exact sort of issue that News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS) and the New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) may want to squash.

Google has also been at the front of much of this argument already without opening up email and social media aspects even further.  As far as what the WSJ notes, this is “a new feature to Gmail designed to make it easier and faster for users to share media and status updates…”  Does that sound like something that the media companies will actually want?

Sharing content on a more rapid basis has completely demonetized the steady value of what may have been more quasi-permanent content.  How many people read day old stories?  While the answer is many, it keeps getting easier and easier to read ‘news around the news’ and harder and harder to find the actual true source of a news report after more and more time passes.  The monetization from a great set of stories now tends to last for minutes to hours rather than hours or days.

The defense is that Google might not be intending users to rapidly share content.  But go to any trading desk or go to any environment using computers for rapid data transfers.  Sharing became the norm through AIM and through Yahoo! Instant Messenger years and years ago.

It is still an undecided route for the ‘charging for content’ route.  This may win outright or it may only have limited success.  In the financial markets, traders and investors will pay more and more for information if they can make money off it or get an added edge from it.   In the world of iPhones and social connections just between friends, free or near-free is probably about all that will ever work.  But eliminating all subscriptions immediately with the hope that advertising revenue can fill the gap is a losing scenario for major media companies.

If Google goes through this launch, it may be nothing more than what is already available on the web.  There are already Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and a hundred other methods for sharing content or information… This may just be one more method, and it may not go unanswered by major media outlets.

JON C. OGG