Our Cynical Side: Big Brother 13, Google, Facebook

We have observed countless times that people can’t keep secrets.

That’s why we generally don’t buy into 99% of conspiracies out there.

But, oh, what Google Trends will do to you.

If you read our blog regularly, you know that Google Trends has exposed us to a world of celebrity nonsense and other Hollywood crap that we would normally never even hear about.

Such is the case with Big Brother 13.

We had heard of the reality show before but really didn’t know anything about it until we looked into the show after seeing it sit upon the Google Trends throne this morning.

Big Brother is a television show in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras. Each series lasts for around three months, and there are usually fewer than 15 participants. The housemates try to win a cash prize by avoiding periodic evictions from the house. The idea for the show is said to have come during a brainstorm session at the Dutch production house of John de Mol Produkties (an independent part of Endemol) on 4 September 1997. The first Big Brother broadcast was in the Netherlands in 1999 on the Veronica TV channel. It was picked up by Brazil, Germany, Argentina, Portugal, USA, UK, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland and Italy the following year and became a world-wide sensation. Since then it has been a prime-time hit in almost 70 countries. The show’s name comes from George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, a dystopia in which Big Brother can always spy on the inhabitants of the dictatorship he heads through their television sets, with the slogan “Big Brother is watching you”.

Thanks, Wikipedia.

So how did we link Big Brother 13, Google, Facebook?

Remember a few months ago when Facebook got caught trying to pay bloggers to write negative content about Google?

Facebook tried to shift the online privacy spotlight away from itself—and onto rival Google through controversial tactics. Basically, Facebook secretly hired a public-relations firm to push stories critical of Google’s privacy practices. But the strategy backfired when bloggers and journalists disclosed Facebook’s behind-the-scenes role, forcing the company to explain its tactics.

We can tell you, a lot of bloggers will get uncomfortable when asked to smear a company of individual for money, however, many will do it for the right price.

We also know that bloggers have much less of a problem writing positive reviews of a product or service in return for some cheddar.

Now, having spent a significant portion of the last week on Google+, we have to say, we like the social network. We don’t find anything on Google+ to be groundbreaking. In fact, we think Facebook saved a lot of money and time and can now sit back and cherry pick the commoditized features that Google spent millions of dollars to discover.

That said, so far, so good, Google.

And the folks on Google+, who are 90% male, by the way, tend to agree.

In fact, the response on Google+ about Google+ has been so overwhelming positive, we can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a little something behind it.

Obviously, without someone coming forward with significant proof, we don’t know that Google is incentivizing positive reviews, but we wouldn’t even have problem with it if they did.

In the fight for the future, why wouldn’t a company try to buy off influencers?

Corporations try to buy off government officials, journalists, financial advisors and pretty much everyone in between.

Why wouldn’t we expect them to try to buy off bloggers?

And who’s to blame if they’re successful?

Not saying. Just saying.

Now back to our morning does of Coast to Coast AM.