Microsoft reported its revenues for its first fiscal quarter today were down 14 percent at $12.92 billion, but the company beat Wall Street estimates.

Net income was $3.57 billion, or 40 cents a share. Analysts had expected 32 cents a share, and the  stock is up today. Revenues from yesterday’s launch of the Windows 7 operating system will be recorded in the second fiscal quarter which closes on Dec.31. While business demand was weak in the quarter, consumer demand was good. The overall PC business grew zero to 2 percent compared to a year ago, the company estimated.

Going forward, Microsoft predicted that its Windows sales would be in line with PC industry growth, which should be higher because of Windows 7. Emerging markets will grow at double digits, while Microsoft’s business division is expected to lag behind the PC market. The big variable is how soon businesses start buying computers again.

This quarter might have been hurt by both the recession and delays in purchases in anticipation of the Windows 7 launch. Windows revenues fell 37 percent to $2.6 billion, while Microsoft’s business division revenue was also down significantly from a year ago. The company predicts consumer spending will be strong as a result of the Windows 7 launch, while businesses are likely to start spending money next year as they upgrade to Windows 7.

“Into next year, we expect to see businesses start spending again,” said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer, on a conference call this morning. “We are reasonably cautious about the business cycle. We think it will begin next year and stretch over a couple of years. How quickly that will happen, we won’t speculate yet.”

One worry for Microsoft is that consumers have been opting for netbooks, the low-end web-surfing computers that are cheaper and smaller than laptops. Some are using cheaper versions of Windows, but many are using versions of the Linux operating system.

Servers and Tools division revenues was flat at $3.4 billion. Entertainment and Devices group was also flat compared to last year, with revenue of $1.9 billion. Microsoft sold 2.1 million Xbox 360 game consoles in the quarter, bringing the total to 34 million consoles sold. Revenues for the full fiscal year are expected to be flat for the Entertainment and Devices division, which also includes Zune portable sales.

Xbox 360 hardware revenue was hurt in part because of a $100 price cut, but the company had a $100 million increase in game revenue, thanks to sales of Halo 3: ODST, which was the No. 1 game in September. Profits in the division were nearly double year over year at $312 million, helped by a 50 percent growth in Xbox Live revenues. Microsoft said it has sold 8.7 games for every console, the highest in the industry.

Microsoft’s online division lost money, with a loss of $480 million on revenue of just $490 million. The company is investing heavily in its Bing search engine, which launched in June and has gained market share steadily. Search ads from Bing were up slightly, but online ad revenues were down 3 percent.

For the full year, Microsoft said it expects to spend about $26.2 billion in the full fiscal year ending June 30, 2010, down from its earlier estimate of $26.5 billion a year earlier. Liddell said the company is cautious about spending because of the uncertain nature of the economic rebound.

Microsoft ended the September quarter with $36.7 billion in cash and short term investments.

Microsoft announced this week that it has made a deal to include public updates from Facebook in its search engine Bing. Some Facebook users expressed concern that their private activities might be exposed to search. The real story is a little more complex. To put it simply: Facebook is not ever going to knowingly expose private activities on the site to public search. We can say that with as much assurance as we can say almost anything about the internet.

None the less, Facebook has a clear agenda to convince you the user to willingly expose more information publicy by changing your privacy settings. Multiple Facebook execs have told us so when we asked point blank.

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Facebook believes that sharing is good for the world. It was founded on making sharing private and secure between friends – so you’d share more – but it hopes in time to make hundreds of millions of people more comfortable sharing publicly.

As is, searching public activity is good for search users (though many are skeptical), it’s good for search engines and it’s good for the social networks serving up the data.

But is it good for social network users that don’t want their messages showing up in search results? That’s the wrong question to ask because that’s not going to happen.

Your Facebook profile is private by default. Your messages and media can’t be seen by anyone but your friends. Some small number of users have chosen to change those settings, some even making everything they do on Facebook publicly visible to the whole world. Clearly some users would find programatic analysis of their activities anonymized and made available in builk to be a violation of privacy – but many more would not and are all ready wide-open.

That group is probably made up mostly of self-promoters, marketers, overcompensating lonely people and other exhibitionists. (My profile is public, I fall under the self-promoter category, unfortunately.)

Facebook would appreciate it if you would put yourself in this category, too. The company believes that sharing leads to understanding between people, empathy and progress towards world peace. Sharing also provides nice opportunities to advertise.

Facebook wants to display lots of your information publicly, but it won’t shoot itself in the foot by breaking its promise to respect your privacy settings – whatever they may be. Is it strange that Facebook, now more populous than all but three nations in the world, has such a clear agenda to change the world’s culture? It is certainly something to be aware of. But Facebook is not going to make your private messages public.

Discuss

This week brought news that Google and Microsoft are now incorporating Twitter into search results, solidifying the importance of incorporating social media content into search results. And startups like OneRiot have also recognized the value of tapping into the Twitter stream for search. Startup Kikin is doing the same with its newly launched plug-in.

Once installed, Kikin will integrate content from social networks (like Facebook and Twitter) and other social sites (like Amazon, eBay and YouTube) alongside results from search engines (like Google, Bing and Yahoo!). So if you search for chocolate labs on Google, Kikin will provide a pane of YouTube videos of chocolate labs and a Twitter stream of mentions of chocolate labs.

You can filter Twitter search results to just the Tweets from those users you are following. The pane also acts as a Twitter client where you can retweet Tweets and more. And the search results will tap into your Facebook account via Facebook Connect and search your news stream. Kikin lets you alter your settings so you can only see results from Twitter or YouTube.

While Google, Bing and other search engine embrace social media content in their search results, I’m a fan of Kikin’s plug-in because it lets you moderate what content you want to see and which content isn’t useful to you. You may not be interested in results from eBay for your searched, which you can disable (of course, it will still show up in your Google results). And I like that Kikin accesses your Facebook stream and YouTube videos. And if you tire of Kikin’s results, you can easily minimize the pane.

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Google’s dominance in the search engine market isn’t likely to end anytime soon, but Microsoft’s Bing managed to continue its slow but steady growth last month, even though the search engine market in general remained at seasonal lows. According to the latest data from Compete, Bing’s market share only grew from 8.7% in August to 8.8% in September, but the total query volume on Bing grew 8.2%. All the other large search engines – except for Ask – registered a decline in total search queries last month.

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Yahoo

Yahoo Search continues its steady decline. Yahoo Search lost another 1% market share last month and has now lost a total of 5% since September 2008 when it still owned 18.8% of the market according to Compete. The total search volume on Yahoo was down 8% and Yahoo served 100 million less queries in September than August.

Google, Ask and AOL Hold Steady

Google’s market share grew slightly from 72.3% to 72.6%, while Ask and AOL remained stable. Based on this data, Bing seems to be eating into Yahoo’s market share, but isn’t growing at Google’s expense.

Searches Per Day

Compete’s Marko Madjarac points out that Bing’s numbers are even more impressive when we take into account that Bing’s users tend to perform fewer searches on the service (5 searches per user per day) than Google’s users (5.6 searches). Bing apparently lives up to its promise to get users to relevant answers faster than any other search engine. Yahoo users performed an average of 7.8 searches per day.

Discuss

While Twitter offers a decent search experience, Twitter’s own search engine doesn’t make it very easy to discover interesting local Twitter users. LocaFollow wants to change this. The service offers an easy to use interface that makes it painless to find local Twitter users by searching through their Twitter bios. Once a search is completed, users are presented with a list of local Twitter users, their bios, a basic set of statistics and their latest tweets.

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You could use Twitter’s own advanced search to find tweets from local users as well, but Twitter doesn’t allow you to restrict searches to its users’ bios. LocaFollow, on the other hand, focuses exclusively on searching through Twitter bios.

If you are interested in following all the marketers in Portland, OR, for example, you can do so with just one click – or you select those users who seem to be the most interesting ones by examining their follower numbers and their latest tweets.

LocaFollow uses OAuth to connect to Twitter and this makes it easy to bulk-follow all the selected users with just one click.

Hopefully, once Twitter expands its lists feature, services like LocaFollow will also make it easy for users to immediately create new lists based on their selections. After all, the more users you follow, the more useful these lists become.

There are, of course, other services that allow you to discover local Twitter users. LocalTweeps, for example, lets you discover local Twitter users, but this service doesn’t allow you to search for users with specific interests. The same is true for similar services like NearbyTweets or TwitterLocal. TweepSearch makes it easy to search through users’ bios, but it doesn’t have LocaFollow’s focus on finding local users.

Discuss

Google’s dominance in the search engine market isn’t likely to end anytime soon, but Microsoft’s Bing managed to continue its slow but steady growth last month, even though the search engine market in general remained at seasonal lows. According to the latest data from Compete, Bing’s market share only grew from 8.7% in August to 8.8% in September, but the total query volume on Bing grew 8.2%. All the other large search engines – except for Ask – registered a decline in total search queries last month.

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Yahoo

Yahoo Search continues its steady decline. Yahoo Search lost another 1% market share last month and has now lost a total of 5% since September 2008 when it still owned 18.8% of the market according to Compete. The total search volume on Yahoo was down 8% and Yahoo served 100 million less queries in September than August.

Google, Ask and AOL Hold Steady

Google’s market share grew slightly from 72.3% to 72.6%, while Ask and AOL remained stable. Based on this data, Bing seems to be eating into Yahoo’s market share, but isn’t growing at Google’s expense.

Searches Per Day

Compete’s Marko Madjarac points out that Bing’s numbers are even more impressive when we take into account that Bing’s users tend to perform fewer searches on the service (5 searches per user per day) than Google’s users (5.6 searches). Bing apparently lives up to its promise to get users to relevant answers faster than any other search engine. Yahoo users performed an average of 7.8 searches per day.

Discuss

A new offshoot of Social Media Club, the Social Media Club Education Connection (SMCEDU) is a Chris Heuer-led organization intended to promote social media in higher education curricula.

At a kickoff event tonight in Richmond, Virginia, I got to participate in a panel discussion and hear questions from an audience of college students and professors. One of the questions posed was how those in academia can best put the social web to work for themselves. Far beyond Facebook and LinkedIn, how can this community harness the Internet to be smarter, more efficient, and more productive? Read on for our top five ideas.

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1) Use Twitter to find your network.

In almost any field of study, from sociology to physics to arts to media, educators and students can find a group of experts on Twitter, engaging in debate, posting relevant links, sharing their most recent work, and answering questions. With its asymmetrical follower model, this network allows you to keep up with leaders and organizations in your industry of choice without their having to follow you in return. There are lots of tools for finding topic-specific experts on Twitter. WeFollow and Mr. Tweet are two popular applications, and Twitter app store oneforty can provide even more resources for discovering an existing network and staying up to date.

2) Use feeds to stay informed about news, events, and conversations.

Once you’ve found your network, you may notice that a lot of these individuals and groups maintain blogs. Do a Google search, and focus on finding blogs that speak specifically to your field of interest. For every niche, no matter how obscure, someone out there is curating content. There are wind turbine blogs, turtle breeding blogs, biomedical engineering blogs, economics blogs – you get the gist. Staying updated in your field is as simple as spending 20 minutes a day online once you know how to use feeds.

For those users with a good grasp of RSS, feed readers such as Google Reader can bring clarity, organization, and efficiency to the formerly painful process of staying informed. But even if you don’t know RSS from a hole in the ground, there are sites that will allow you to simply put together lists of websites to track, or even bring you news feeds just based on a particular topic. We recommend checking out Lazyfeed and Guzzle.it for getting news by keyword or topic, and for the visually oriented, we also suggest these two dead-simple visual feed readers.

3) Build your website.

If there’s one thing students in particular need to worry about, it’s Google. Social accounts are fine and dandy to have, but prospective employers are searching for candidates by name when making interviewing and hiring decisions, as was made abundantly clear by a professional recruiter on tonight’s panel. Right now, Facebook might have a search engine monopoly on your name; unless that account is the best representation of you, a FirstNameLastName.com website might be a good idea. Here’s our list of four what-you-see-is-what-you-get website builders that don’t require much or any coding knowledge. You can also use some of the blogging resources mentioned in the next section. Once your site is up, link back to it from all your social profiles to help boost your site’s place in search results.

4) Create content.

Now that you know your network and its key players, you’re staying informed in your field, and you’ve got a decent start in representing yourself online, it’s time to start giving back. Whether you’ve got expertise to share or simply more questions to ask, you should be creating content. Tweeting is a great and engaging place to start; many professional and mentoring relationships have begun with a simple @reply. But you also need to blog, create videos, and/or post images or audio to your website.

Not only is this good for SEO, which will help when the aforementioned recruiters start Googling you; it’s also essential for deeper participation in the conversation happening all around you online. If visual arts are your thing, for example, a Flickr account is a must, and it’s probably a good idea to post any images you create on a separate blog, as well. Ideally, your content should tie in with your FirstNameLastName.com website. Depending on the type of content you choose to create, you might want to look at WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, or Posterous. Post content regularly, and check out this Slate post with tips from some of the most famous bloggers online.

5) Be an early adopter and refine your digital toolkit.

Finally, once you’re comfortably participating in the conversation and you’re part of a very real community of experts, educators, and students in your field of interest, realize that your journey toward technological proficiency has just begun. The Internet is in a constant state of flux, and learning how to leverage the social web for academic benefit is an ongoing exercise. There are many resources for finding new weapons to add to your digital arsenal; we’re sure lots of helpful pointers will come from others in your community. But also, keep an eye on the techies, who are always testing and recommending new products and apps.

Check sites such as ReadWriteStart, AppUseful, and oneforty every now and then to see if there’s a better mousetrap than the ones you might currently be using. Stay open-minded and flexible; be willing to try anything three times.

The social web means so much more to academia than finding out which students were really sick on exam day and which just went to a kegger the night before. It also means a lot more than a static resume and a stagnant list of useless “connections.” Social web apps, when used intelligently, can make us all as brilliant and resourceful as the brightest stars in our networks, fostering real-world value and reinforcing learning.

Discuss

We’ve added a bunch of great events to our guide this week. The one we’re most excited about (of course) is our own ReadWrite Read-Time Web Summit, which takes place this coming Thursday in Mountain View. You can download the entire event calendar in iCal format or import it into your Google Calendar. You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. This events guide is a weekly feature here on ReadWriteWeb. We publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans.

Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

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15 October 2009: Mountain View, California

The ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit

Our month of special coverage on the real-time Web culminates with ReadWriteWeb’s very first event: the ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit, a day-long event of conversations about the real-time Web, including its current state and its pressing challenges and greatest opportunities.

Topics will include:

• The potential and pitfalls of real-time for social networking, media, financial services, humanitarian work and political advocacy.
• How will ubiquitous real-time information delivery change the web in the future? What will it make possible? How will it change user expectations?
• How can real-time information overload be dealt with, technically and culturally?
• How can small organizations use the real-time web to challenge market incumbents? How can market incumbents continue to thrive in a real-time environment?

Register here.

22 October 2009: London, England

Cloud Computing World Forum

The Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event for professionals to learn and discuss the future development and integration of cloud services. This one-day conference will provide a focused platform for the global cloud computing industry.

The Cloud Computing World Forum is the place to meet all the key decision makers from all of the cloud service providers in one place. Show highlights include:

• Hear from leading case studies on how to integrate cloud computing into working practices,
• Learn from the key players offering services in the cloud,
• Benefit from pre-show online meeting planner,
• Evening networking reception.

23 October 2009: Durham, North Carolina

The Social Media Business Forum

The Social Media Business Forum will feature national and local speakers from marketing companies, technology companies, and social networks discussing ways in which business communications have changed because of social media. Sessions will look at internal and external communications methods for both B2B and B2C companies and provide actionable takeaway items for attendees to immediately implement in their businesses. The forum targets business owners, executives, business communicators, key organizational stake holders, and anyone interested in gaining practical knowledge about social media.

Early bird registration is $125 until September 18, and $250 thereafter.

26 October 2009: London

Media140 London

The need for brand transparency is here. Engage your consumers and share best practices and case studies of social media engagement at Media140. With award-winning speakers from AKQA, Unilever, easyJet, BBH Labs and Innocent Drinks, we explore together what works and how to do it in this burgeoning sector of marketing strategy.

The real-time Web is revolutionizing communication with consumers. By pushing products and services as soon as they become available to market and monitoring direct instant feedback on your promotions you can become head of the game.

Social media tools like Twitter, Flickr and Facebook are disrupting and changing traditional media and advertising. Media140 strives to understand and progress the potential of disruptive real-time social media. Share with us at info@media140.com or @media140.

Go to www.media140.com/brands and use discount code “readwrite” for a £95 ticket.

27 October 2009: San Francisco

FailCon

FailCon is the first of its kind and will be one of the most relevent events ever designed for entrepreneurs and startups! We’re bringing major founders and investors in the online world to talk about mistakes they’ve made, failures they’ve experienced, what they learned and how they recovered. Topics will include founding team communication, design mishaps, investment mistakes, how not to build a viral app and much more! These talks will leave you inspired and excited to be an entrepreneur today and get you prepared for what lies ahead. More information is at snapsummit.com, and get 15% off your ticket by clicking here.

28 – 30 October 2009: Amsterdam

eComm Fall

The Emerging Communications Conference & Awards is the world’s leading-edge event, spanning telecom, mobile and Internet-based communications. It’s designed to showcase and accelerate both technology and business model innovation.

There is not a migratory way for telecom operators and media outlets to the future; emergent social practice is increasingly clashing with their very structure and desires. This means unprecedented opportunity for those ahead of the curve. The emerging transformations require big thoughts and big bets. eComm the venue for those thoughts and bets to be shared and heard.

ReadWriteWeb readers save 10% off general admission by using the discount code “READWRITEWEB.”

29 – 30 October 2009: San Francisco, California

Virtual Goods Summit

The virtual goods market has exploded as developers and publishers dive into this new opportunity. The third annual Virtual Goods Summit in October 2009 will bring together thought leaders in this space from Asia, Europe, and the US to talk about what’s changed and what’s working and the key challenges facing the industry. If you’re active in virtual goods — or thinking of jumping in — the Virtual Goods Summit is a must-attend event.

New for 2009 is VGS University, a half-day seminar designed to provide a comprehensive overview of how to succeed with virtual goods. Hear from experts on topics such as why virtual goods are effective and the ins and outs of managing a virtual economy. Whether you’re new to virtual goods or seeking insights and lessons from the leaders, we encourage you to join us for the day and learn from some of our industry’s leading-edge thinkers.

ReadWriteWeb readers save 15% off general admission by registering here using the discount code “READWRITEWEB.”

2 – 5 November 2009: San Francisco

Enterprise 2.0 Conference

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference is the largest gathering for people ready to connect teams and harness collective intelligence with social tools and 2.0 technologies. Enterprise 2.0 includes visionary keynotes, informative sessions, case studies and an Expo Pavilion featuring the latest technologies. Register today and save 20% (code: CNGXES07) or get a free Pavilion Pass (code: CNGXES01).

4 – 5 November 2009: Raleigh, North Carolina

Internet Summit 2009

Internet Summit ‘09 will feature over 75 speakers, including representatives of major Internet brands such as Twitter, Pandora, Google, Salesforce.com, Digg, Technorati, CBS Interactive, Huffington Post, Blogger, Tree.com, and many more.

Topics will include social media, blogging, real time, mobile, video, search, online advertising, e-commerce, analytics, the cloud, and more.

Join over 1200 entrepreneurs, senior marketers, and executives in the conversation about the future of the industry and how to capitalize on the shifting dynamics of the Internet and tap into its unlimited business potential.

5 – 6 November 2009: Sydney

Media140 Sydney: Future of Journalism in the Social Media age

News broadcasting is evolving. Citizen journalists are coming to the fore, saving lives by tracking brush fires and changing the course of history at elections.

Media140 Sydney addresses the changing face of journalism. Partnered by ABC, we bring together Australia’s leading lights in journalism, broadcasting, blogging and citizen journalism. Are Twitter and the real-time Web truly shaking up traditional media?

Tickets from $165. Register at www.media140.com/sydney using promo code “readwrite” for a 20% discount.

6 – 8 November 2009: Savannah, Georgia

Geekend 2009

Geekend 2009 is an interactive conference that brings together geeks from all walks of life for three days of cutting edge speakers, expert panels, afterparties, networking and mash-up opportunities. Speaker highlights include Major Nelson of Xbox Live, renowned designer David Carson, Eric Snowden of Atlantic Records, Joey Hasty of Disney, and Matias Corea of Behance, among many others. Get your geek on and enter “RWW” for $30 off the full price weekend badge.

9 – 10 November 2009: Santa Clara, California

Social Networking World Forum — California

This event taking place at the Santa Clara Convention Center actually consists of three conferences: two days dedicated to social networking, one day dedicated to enterprise social media, and one day dedicated to social TV. Key speakers include social networking publishers, advertising agencies, industry analysts, software developers and equipment manufacturers, pay-TV and network service providers, mobile operators, and more.

• Joint exhibition combining social networking and enterprise social media formats
• Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
• Discount for early booking (expires September 25th)
• Free pass for exhibition only

10 – 13 November 2009: Las Vegas

PubCon Vegas

PubCon Las Vegas is a multi-track educational conference hosted by SearchEngineWorld & WebmasterWorld. PubCon events are for thought leaders and professionals in search engine and Internet marketing to gather and to share best practices in the design, development, promotion and marketing of their Internet businesses and brands. PubCon London 2009 is a social networking event.

11 – 12 November 2009: Denver, Colorado

Defrag 2009 Conference

As online data is growing and fragmenting at an exponential pace, individuals, groups and organizations are struggling to discover, assemble, organize, act on and gather feedback from that data. In the largest sense, we’re all looking to augment the pace at which we achieve insights on raw data — to accelerate the “A-ha” moment.

Defrag explores the intersection of topics like:

• Business intelligence
• Business process management
• Social computing and analytics
• Next-level discovery
• Enterprise 2.0
• Next-gen email
• The semantic Web

18 – 19 November 2009: San Francisco

VentureBeat presents GreenBeat

VentureBeat, the leading innovation-focused business blog, will host the seminal conference on the smart grid. GreenBeat 2009 brings together the nation’s 500 leading entrepreneurs, investors, utility and technology executives, policymakers and press to accelerate development of a leaner, more efficient electrical grid. With participation by Al Gore, former Vice President and Nobel Prize Winner; John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins; and industry leaders, including from Cisco, Tendril, PG&E, expect lively discussion and power networking. The program will highlight new technologies and explore the opportunities afforded by the stimulus package.

Also, we’ll be looking for the biggest, boldest ideas entrepreneurs have to change the way we think about, build and use the existing grid. To spotlight these ideas, we’re holding an Innovation Competition to find the best disruptors in the business. Early bird registration ends this Saturday, 10 October 2009, so get your tickets now at www.greenbeat2009.com.

19 November 2009: Mountain View, California

Under the Radar

Featuring the most cutting-edge mobile startups from around the globe, Under the Radar will get you dialed in to what the 2010 mobile innovation marketplace will look like. It’s a must-attend event for dealmakers from global carriers, brands, media companies, and handset manufacturers responsible for helping their companies leverage new mobile technology and innovation in the fast-evolving digital landscape.

Save $200: book by 2 October 2009, and get the early-bird rate.

1 – 3 December 2009: London, England

Online Information & IMS 2009

Online Information and IMS together create the largest event dedicated to the information industry. Consisting of an exhibition delivering over 9,000 visitors from 70 countries, a conference and a show-floor seminar program, the event provides an annual meeting place for the global information industry.

Online Information is once again set to play host to thousands of information professionals, information end-users and publishers from around the globe, meeting suppliers of online content, e-publishing, and library management solutions. IMS provides a forum for IT, business, and information management professionals to find unlimited, relevant advice, educational content and compare solutions under one roof. Attend IMS and meet suppliers of content management, search solutions, and Web 2.0 technologies.

1 – 3 December 2009: Boston, Massachusetts

Gilbane Conference Boston

Join us at the sixth annual “Gilbane Conference Boston: Content, Collaboration and Customers.”

Your content is your business, and you need to make your Web content part of an integrated platform for
customers. You need to know solutions and technologies that are ready to be implemented today. Gilbane Conference Boston is built around the four major areas of how enterprises use Web and content technologies:

• Web business and engagement;
• Managing collaboration and social media: internal and external;
• Enterprise content: searching, integrating and publishing;
• Content infrastructure.

Visit www.gilbaneboston.com for conference details. ReadWriteWeb readers, use the discount code “GILBANE” to save an additional $200. Register today!

1 – 3 December 2009: San Francisco

Supernova

The Supernova Conference is the thought-leadership forum for the network age. It brings together over 500 business, government and technology influencers to understand how decentralization and pervasive connectivity are changing our world. It’s the only conference to focus on how networks have become the main instruments of change from both business and social perspectives.

An ever-evolving network itself, the conference has become the place for highly interactive and spirited debates, making significant business connections and revelations on new innovation.

ReadWriteWeb readers get a discount of $700 off the regular price when registering by 16 October 2009. Use code “RRW09″. After October 16th, the discount changes to $200 off the regular price. Register here.

15 – 16 March 2010: London, England

2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum — London

The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams:

1. Social Networking World Forum
2. Enterprise social media
3. Social TV World Forum
4. Mobile Social Networking Forum

The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more.

• Full workshop program within exhibition area
• Evening networking reception
• Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
• Free pass for exhibition only

Download this entire events calendar in iCal format.

Discuss

Despite ongoing legal wranglings, Google is still on the offensive against critics of its book settlement. The latest salvo is an Op-Ed in the New York Times by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. He goes over much the same ground that he articulated at a meeting with reporters on Wednesday: Google has done the hard work of digitizing more than 10 million books, while its competitors who oppose the settlement like Microsoft and Amazon have done nothing. “I guess they scanned 15 books,” Brin quipped at the meeting.

The main objection to the settlement is that it will give Google a monopoly on out-of-print, or orphan books. Brin swats that argument in his Op-Ed, writing:

The agreement limits consumer choice in out-of-print books about as much as it limits consumer choice in unicorns.

In other words, there is no choice in out-of-print books because for the most part they are simply not available other than in large research libraries.

Brin also points out that the settlement does not impose a compulsory license on unclaimed works, only a default license which can later be changed. Furthermore, he argues, as he did at the meeting, that the settlement is not anti-competitive because it does not preclude other companies from striking similar deals. In fact, it sets a precedent for them to do so.

Everyone agrees that digitizing these books is a good idea, and will help unlock the information hidden away in them. Brin quotes liberally from out-of-print books in his Op-Ed to make his point.

But Google is not digitizing these books so it can sell copies of them. They are out of print for a reason. There is no market for them as whole books. Their value lies in cutting them up into snippets and relevant excerpts, and showing those snippets along with search ads to people looking for related information. The reason they are valuable to Google is because they are a rich source of high quality information that will improve its search results, and in fact give them an information advantage over other search engines without equal access to the world’s books.

Brin’s attitude is that if Microsoft or Amazon want a similar corpus of digital information, they should go scan their own out-of-print books. Of course, there are other efforts such as the not-for-profit Internet Archive’s (which has scanned 1.6 million books), but they don’t have the same resources as Google.

The response, however, would be that the settlement gives Google a free pass against any legal liability for orphan works still under copyright protection.

On Wednesday I asked Brin, why not just open the settlement to other book digitizers to afford them the same protections? He said that would be “legally impossible.” After all, those rights aren’t Google’s to extend. But what about the Author’s Guild? Would it be willing to apply the same terms to other companies and book digitization efforts to help open up and distribute out-of-print books even further? How great would it be to be able to download millions of such books for free (or a token fee of $1) onto your Kindle and other devices?

Everybody wants to see that world happen. But first this legal hurdle must be overcome, and second other organizations must catch up in their book scanning efforts or Google should do the right thing and choose to license its digital book database to other companies that don’t compete in search like Amazon. Making all the world’s books accessible in digital form through more than just Google doesn’t have to be a unicorn fantasy.

Photo credit: Flickr/Eggybird

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