Up in Los Angeles yesterday afternoon, I listened as two major radio hosts aired a claim by Yahoo could predict primary election results by monitoring incoming queries.
The two talk show hosts immediately jumped on Yahoo’s claim, getting a Yahoo spokeswoman on the phone during their broadcast to explain how search could be used to predict election results..
I listened with amazement as the two radio hosts completely missed what the Yahoo spokeswoman was saying. What annoyed me is that they seemed incapable of understanding that Yahoo was only talking about incoming searches it was fielding, not all Internet searches.
At first, I thought their excitement over Yahoo’s claims might have caused them to overlook what Yahoo said. I listened carefully as the spokeswoman again explained Yahoo’s discovery. And yes, at the end of one spoken sentence, the drill down: searches on our service had been said.
The two talking heads on KFI AM radio still missed what Yahoo had said and motored on to talk and speculate about the implications of using search results as an election prediction tool. Looking at search queries, as a predictor is a fascinating idea, particularly when it includes the top-ranked search engine.
It’s just too bad that the talking heads didn’t have either the sense, or the job-related experience to take their thinking a step further by calling Google’s PR department for comment or to get comparable results from their searches.
All of this makes me wonder: At a time when legions of print reporters are out scrambling for a handful of PR jobs, why aren’t more of them looking to talk radio news for employment?.
As I listened to the banter on talk radio about Yahoo’s claims, 35 years of reporting experience went into overdrive. The bottom line, however, was very clear, KFI’s two on-air talkers didn’t realize they had just glossed over a topic that could fill an entire week’s worth of shows. More’s the pity though, cause it’s just this sort of topic that keeps me interested in the long-term implications of search engines and how they are changing our lives.—Jim Forbes 05/07/2008
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