Alierta and Google: Bilbao to NY via Facebook, Twitter and eitb.com

A video published by EITB.com in which the president of Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica, César Alierta, speaking in Bilbao last Friday, warned users of search-engines they would be charged for the service, has made it into the further corners of the globe.

The Wall Street Journal, Germany''s Die Welt and even New Zealand newspaper the Herald, published the words of Alierta and, in some cases, such as that of the New York-based economy journal, the source was cited as "a conference broadcast by local television channel ETB". (Which can be found in Google doing a search for ''Aliert''.)

Prior to the reference to the words of Alierta, the reports in question were focused on "traditional" issues concerning the economy, such as the stock market crisis, mergers, etc. During the seven minutes of speech published by eitb.com, the president of Telefónica warned that "internet searchers use our web without paying anything. It is clear that this cannot continue... This will change". He also declared that "Intelligence in on the web and the web belongs to us".

Twitter, Facebook, Blogs

Around midday on Saturday, a number of the more influential Spanish-speaking Twitter-users (Ignacio Escolar, Antonio Delgado, José A. Pérez... to name but a few) sent the video link to their many thousands of followers, with brief comments in the format of "microblogging", which permits only 140 characters.

In the hours following their posts, hundreds of followers forwarded their messages via Twitter (Re-twitts) including the video link, with a total number of 650 Re-twitts being made. So far on Facebook, 280 people have shared the same content with their friends and the total number of hits received by the video since its publication has already surpassed 20,000.

Dozens of blogs also posted the link as an original source for the news item, among them that of Enrique Dans, who linked the video to the beginning of his post: Alierta y la neutralidad en la red (Alierta and neutrality on the net).