I write about issues going on in transition from traditional print media to on-line digital media in my posting Old media and digital media – part 1. This post is a continuation to it. The situation does not look too good for traditional media. Traditional media has been able to solve it’s challenges with aggregation or pay-wall. The future seems to be quite bad for traditional print media that can’t adapt to changed situation.
Despite two decades of trying, no one has found a way to make traditional news-gathering sufficiently profitable to assure its future survival. Only about a third of Americans under 35 look at a newspaper even once a week, and the percentage declines every year. A large portion of today’s readers of the few remaining good newspapers are much closer to the grave than to high school. Today’s young people skitter around the Internet. Audience taste seems to be changing, with the result that among young people particularly there is a declining appetite for the sort of information packages the great newspapers provided.
What is the future of media? There is an interesting article on future of media written in Finnish on this: Median tulevaisuus ja 13 trendiä – mitä media on vuonna 2030? It shows 13 trends that I have here translated to English, re-arranged, added my comments and links to more information to them. In 2030, the media will look very different than today.
The new gerations no longer want to pay for the media: Since the same information, benefits, entertainment provided free of charge, they are not prepared to pay. Older generations support the traditional media for some time, but they are smaller each year. Media consumption continues to rapidly change, and advertisers will follow suit digital and mobile channels, which will affect the media sales because advertisers no longer need the intermediary role of the media companies to communicate with their customers.
This does not look good for media companies, but situation even worse than that: When media personnel, production and distribution costs are rising every year and so the order than the ad revenue will be reduced year by year, deprivation twist to push media companies to the rest of the best authors, owners become impatient and expected returns are reduced. Companies are moving their marketing investment priorities for the purchased media.Corporate communications professionals continues to grow and the number of suppliers will continue to fall.
Technological developments enhance the above trends: Technology eliminates the barriers to entry to the traditional media sector and at the same time create new sectors. Technological media competition winner takes all because new scalable technology to create competitive advantages. Very many news writing tasks can be automated with near real-time and reliable enough translation technology The media world is undergoing a wholesale shift from manual processes to automated systems that strip out waste and inefficiency (The Future of Programmatic: Automation + Creativity + Scale).
Strong continuous technological change and automation mean that media consumption will continue to change for the next decade at least as strong as the previous ten years, whether we like it or not. Critical journalism makes searching for new alternative ways to do their work and to fund its work.
Media’s direction is sure to bring, and an ever increasing rate - in an increasingly digital, more mobile, more and more tailor-made … The newspapers will be read mostly on mobile devices. Information is obtained much earlier, in an increasingly digital and real-time. A lot has changed now already.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Now Handles At Least 2 Trillion Searches Per Year
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/05/24/2023223/google-now-handles-at-least-2-trillion-searches-per-year
Google now handles at least 2 trillion searches per year
http://searchengineland.com/google-now-handles-2-999-trillion-searches-per-year-250247
The search giant won’t say exactly how many trillions of queries it processes, other than it’s now two or more. It last claimed 1.2 trillion in 2012.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Towards a responsible online advertising
Accenture’s study shows that as many as four out of ten could pay to get rid of disruptive online advertising. Advertising or commercial cooperation in general is, however, a variety of online media lifeline. Instead, the ban on the use of Browser add-ons media should strive for responsible online advertising.
Accenture survey of 28 000 consumers from different countries were involved. 61 percent of those surveyed felt the blocking of advertising methods. Young percentage was even higher.
However, there is no free lunch. Media reaction so far has been, for example, to transfer the content behind the paywall. This can be considered as a reactive activity, the need to be proactive approach.
What would then be responsible advertising?
Responsibility includes in addition to the valuation of the reader, of course, security. Self-respecting media need to know, and to guarantee their website they offer bits of security, whether they are in any form.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4474:kohti-vastuullista-verkkomainontaa&catid=9&Itemid=139
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pew Research Center:
Pew: 62% of US adults get news on social media; 66% of Facebook, 23% of Instagram, 21% of YouTube, 19% of LinkedIn users get news there
News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016
http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/
A majority of U.S. adults – 62% – get news on social media, and 18% do so often, according to a new survey by Pew Research Center, conducted in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In 2012, based on a slightly different question, 49% of U.S. adults reported seeing news on social media.1
But which social media sites have the largest portion of users getting news there? How many get news on multiple social media sites? And to what degree are these news consumers seeking online news out versus happening upon it while doing other things?
News plays a varying role across the social networking sites studied.2 Two-thirds of Facebook users (66%) get news on the site, nearly six-in-ten Twitter users (59%) get news on Twitter, and seven-in-ten Reddit users get news on that platform. On Tumblr, the figure sits at 31%, while for the other five social networking sites it is true of only about one-fifth or less of their user bases.
Social news consumers and other news platforms
Social media news consumers still get news from a variety of other sources and to a fairly consistent degree across sites. For example, across the five sites with the biggest news audiences, roughly two-in-ten news users of each also get news from nightly network television news; about three-in-ten turn to local TV. One area that saw greater variation was news websites and apps. Roughly half of Twitter and LinkedIn news consumers also get news from news websites and apps, while that is true of one-third of Facebook and YouTube news users.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU wants open science publication by 2020
Axe hovers over journal publishers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/30/eu_wants_open_science_publication_by_2020/
Bet on furious lobbying to prevent this: the European Union’s Competitiveness Council has recommended all scientific papers be made “open access” by 2020.
The Dutch presidency of the EU has issued this media release explaining what’s on the table.
“From 2020, all scientific publications on the results of publicly funded research must be freely available. It also must be able to optimally reuse research data. To achieve that, the data must be made accessible, unless there are well-founded reasons for not doing so, for example intellectual property rights or security or privacy issues”, the release states.
The release says EU ministers responsible for innovation agreed unanimously on the proposal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ainsley O’Connell / Fast Company:
Inside Verizon’s efforts to build a multi-billion dollar media business that can challenge new media giants like Netflix, and why it is vying to buy Yahoo
Verizon’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Play To Take On Netflix, Amazon, Google & Facebook
http://www.fastcompany.com/3059953/verizons-multi-billion-dollar-play-to-take-on-netflix-amazon-google-facebook
The telecom giant, which is in talks to acquire Yahoo, wants a piece of the digital content revolution.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Liam Corcoran / NewsWhip:
Facebook likes for web content fell 55%, shares declined 57%, comments down 63% between July 2015 and April 2016, NewsWhip analysis of top 10 publishers shows
https://www.newswhip.com/2016/05/facebook-engagement-restructure/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Benjamin Mullin / Poynter:
Washington Post creates progressive web app that loads pages in 80 millisecond
With lessons from Google, The Washington Post has brought its page load speed down to milliseconds
http://www.poynter.org/2016/with-lessons-from-google-the-washington-post-has-brought-its-page-load-speed-down-to-milliseconds/413297/
Under the ownership of Jeff Bezos, The Washington Post has become a fount of editorial innovation. There’s Arc, The Post’s home-cooked content management system that’s now being sold to other news organizations. The Post was the first major daily newspaper to adopt HTTPS, a move that is gaining adherents throughout the news industry. And it’s built an engineering corps 200 staffers strong.
Further evidence of that prowess is now on display in the form of a “progressive web app,” a new effort from The Washington Post to cut down on the time required for its journalism to display on mobile devices.
If the term “progressive web app” sounds unfamiliar, that’s probably because it’s a relatively new concept for the media industry in the United States, said David Merrell, a senior product manager at The Washington Post. Such apps, which offer a slimmed-down version of a site’s content, are more popular in overseas markets where data is far more expensive and users have lower-quality phones.
In a nutshell, progressive web apps combine the technology of native apps (the kind you might download on your phone) with the look and feel of a website to create a high-performance experience for news audiences, Merrell said. It uses features normally associated with read-later apps (think Paper or Pocket) and pre-caches content in the background to speed up loading times.
The app has its origins in The Washington Post’s months-long collaboration with Google to develop Accelerated Mobile Pages, the burgeoning web standard that allows news organizations to create a lightweight version of their sites for phones, tablets and other devices. During the work with Google, The Post learned several tricks to cut down on page load speed, which they built into the progressive web app.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frederic Filloux / Monday Note:
The top 5 things news publishers can learn from game publishers: monetization, design process, testing, metrics, introduction of one-click payment for content
Want to boost your news app? Hire a gamer.
https://mondaynote.com/want-to-boost-your-news-app-hire-a-gamer-4a7cd104eafa#.m16b2xe5y
News publishers have a lot to learn from the gaming industry. Especially when it comes to testing and promoting apps.
In the gaming industry, average revenue per user is a news publisher’s dream. Last week, I spoke with Alexis Bonte, CEO of successful game publisher eRepublik Labs. The company stretches between Dublin, Bucarest, and Madrid where Bonte lives. One of its best selling products, Age of Lords, has made €129 ($144) in cumulative revenue per player after its first 335 days of existence. For 2 million players, that would be €258m ($288m) in revenue. But as good as it is, Age of Lords’ ARPU is low compared to Summoners War ($280) or Game of War ($500).
To put things in perspective, the ARPU for a publication such as the New York Times is $176 per digital subscriber per year (based on 2015 figures: 1.094 million subscribers generating a revenue of $193m). But for a publication charging $9 per month, taking in account a 15% discount (promotion, trial offers), the ARPU evolves around $90 per year.
As with every freemium model, eRepublik’s game revenue comes from multiple, well-crafted in-app purchases where players acquire currency or fighting capabilities, on a regularly repeated basis.
In fact, the bulk of the revenue comes from the tiny fraction (1.5%) of users spending more than… €1000 in the game: they weigh 59% of the revenue generated by Age of Lords.
To that extent, le gaming industry looks like the movie business. Roughly speaking, explains Alexis Bonte, out of five games put on the market, one will be a hit, two will pay for development and promotion costs, and two will fail. “The luck factor plays a big role: we operate in a highly competitive market”, he continues, stating that 1 game publisher out of 50 actually makes money. “The simultaneous release of a comparable game could make our life more complicated…”
As a result, two elements become critical: Testing everything at every stage, and defining strong KPIs.
“We test at every single stage of the development of a game”, explains the CEO of eRepublik Labs. “Actually, even before writing the first line of code, we begin testing.”
Next, audience reaction is measured. This is forward-looking A/B Testing.
The next step is to build a crude prototype that is deployed on the Android platform, under an assumed name. Again, player behavior is scrutinized and analyzed: what triggers in-app purchase, how fast is the core loop, etc.
Interestingly, in the gaming business, the Android platform is closing the gap with Apple in terms of sheer profitability.
Player acquisition is mostly driven by Facebook. Ads are bought for highly targeted segments of prospective players. For instance, a $10k budget will be allocated to a specific target group with a maximum acquisition cost of $1.00 or $1.5 per player; the Facebook platform could come back with a higher acquisition cost but better in terms of reach. The Cost Per Install (CPI), is roughly calculated as follows: let’s say a publisher wants to buy 100 players at an average cost of $1.00. He invests $100; 90 players don’t buy anything in the game but 10 players will each buy $10 over three months, the CPI then lands at $1.00.
here are at least five lessons to draw from the gaming industry:
1. Think way upstream when considering launching an app. In terms of design but also monetization
2. Allow your high-end user to spend large amounts. The Pareto principle applies in the news business like everywhere else. After all, 12% of the New York Times’ readers deliver 90% of its digital revenue
3. Rely on a simple set of metrics.
4. Test everything, all the times. From prospective design changes to circulation within the app, nothing must be left to chance, to consultants or, worse, to a committee. Tools are abundant, cheap and easy to master.
5. The importance of one-click purchase. It worked wonders for Amazon, Apple, and for top grossing games
Tomi Engdahl says:
Robinson Meyer / The Atlantic:
The Washington Post produces about 500 stories per day, more than twice the number produced by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, or BuzzFeed — A report from mascot boot camp. Michael Phelps’s diet. Why trees droop at night. Clinton-Trump poll results.
How Many Stories Do Newspapers Publish Per Day?
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/how-many-stories-do-newspapers-publish-per-day/483845/
A look at how The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and BuzzFeed compare.
But just how many stories? I recently came across a surprising statistic: The Post publishes an average of 1,200 stories, graphics, and videos per day. That’s more than one story every two minutes. Could it possibly be true?
A Post spokeswoman confirmed the number to me. But there’s a twist—the number includes both staff-produced articles and wire stories, written elsewhere. The Post editorial staff itself produces about 500 stories per day, she said.
Let’s start with The New York Times. “NYTimes.com publishes roughly 150 articles a day (Monday-Saturday), 250 articles on Sunday and 65 blog posts per day,”
Taken together, the Times publishes about 230 pieces of content—stories, graphics, interactives, and blog posts—daily. This number has risen by more than 35 percent this decade.
The Wall Street Journal
publishes only about 240 stories per day. That’s both online and in print.
BuzzFeed, for instance? A spokeswoman told me that BuzzFeed published 6,365 stories in April and 319 videos—or about 222 pieces of content per day.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amar Toor / The Verge:
Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft agree to EU hate speech rules that mandates review of “the majority of” hateful content within 24 hours of notification — Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and YouTube today agreed to European regulations that require them to review …
Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft agree to EU hate speech rules
New “code of conduct” aims to combat illegal hate speech and terrorist propaganda
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/31/11817540/facebook-twitter-google-microsoft-hate-speech-europe
Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and YouTube today agreed to European regulations that require them to review “the majority of” hateful online content within 24 hours of being notified — and to remove it, if necessary — as part of a new “code of conduct” aimed at combating hate speech and terrorist propaganda across the EU. The new rules, announced Tuesday by the European Commission, also oblige the tech companies to identify and promote “independent counter-narratives” to hate speech and propaganda published online.
Hate speech and propaganda have become a major concern for European governments following terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris, and amid the ongoing refugee crisis, which has inflamed racial tensions in some countries.
The EU has been pushing for web companies to combat terrorist propaganda, as well, with some developing their own material to counter efforts from groups like ISIS. The code of conduct announced today marks the first effort to unify policy on online hate speech across the EU.
“The recent terror attacks have reminded us of the urgent need to address illegal online hate speech,”
Europe’s crackdown on hate speech has put tech companies in a difficult situation, as governments push them to assume more responsibility in policing illegal content, and there are concerns over free speech, and how the code of conduct was structured. European Digital Rights (EDRi), a Brussels-based advocacy group, criticized the code of conduct in a post published Tuesday, saying that it delegates tasks to private companies that should be carried out by law enforcement.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kurt Wagner / Recode:
Periscope to let livestream viewers vote on whether flagged comments are abusive in “flash juries” of five random users — Attention livestreamers: You’ve been summoned for jury duty. — Attention Periscope users: You’ve been summoned for jury duty.
Periscope has a new plan to fight back against internet trolls
http://www.recode.net/2016/5/31/11803070/periscope-abuse-safety-update-internet-trolls
Periscope, Twitter’s standalone livestreaming app, has created a new way to combat internet trolls, which includes a system to put internet bad guys on trial in front of their internet peers.
Here’s how the new abuse system works: If you’re watching a Periscope livestream and come across a vile or inappropriate comment, you can report that comment, triggering what Periscope calls a “flash jury” of other users watching the same livestream.
Periscope will ask this flash jury, a small group of other randomly selected users, if they also consider the comment abusive or offensive. If the majority agrees with you, the commenter will be placed in a one minute time-out with commenting disabled. Repeat offenders will be muted for good.
The new system is pretty unusual. Most social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat rely on users to report abusive and inappropriate material, but Periscope seems to be the first one asking other users to then weigh in.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What does it take to be a “full-service” digital journalism organization? Ask Discourse Media
“We’ve gone down lots of experimental rabbit holes.”
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/05/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-full-service-digital-journalism-organization-ask-discourse-media/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet, Web Enjoy One Final Day as Proper Nouns
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/internet-web-enjoy-final-day-proper-nouns/story?id=39508227
Internet and Web are enjoying one final day as proper nouns before they’re downgraded in written form to the more generic “internet” and “web.”
The changes go into effect on Wednesday with the new edition of the AP Stylebook, a manual followed by many journalists, offering a comprehensive guide to the usage of words, style, spelling and punctuation.
“The argument for lowercasing Internet is that it has become wholly generic, like electricity and the telephone. It never was trademarked and is not based on any proper noun,” Tom Kent, AP Standards Editor, said in a statement. “The best reason for capitalizing it in the past may have been that the term was new. At one point, we understand, ‘Phonograph’ was capitalized.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mike Murphy / Quartz:
Facebook announces Deep Text, an AI engine to understand meaning and sentiment behind posts, so the platform’s content can be categorized, searched effectively — Today, Facebook announced Deep Text, an AI engine it’s building to understand the meaning and sentiment behind all of the text posted by users to Facebook.
Facebook is using artificial intelligence to become a better search engine
http://qz.com/696827/facebook-is-using-artificial-intelligence-to-become-a-better-search-engine/
In a blog post, Facebook said that it was building the system to help it surface content that people may be interested in, and weed out spam.
This might sound like a minor improvement, but it actually has the potential—in theory—to transform the social network most of us use every day into something else we use daily: a powerful search engine.
“We want Deep Text to be used in categorizing content within Facebook to facilitate searching for it and also surfacing the right content to users,”
Facebook already uses demographic information shared by users (whether directly or through their interactions with brands on the site), but right now, the majority of the text-based information Facebook has on its servers is unstructured, meaning Facebook doesn’t know users’ intent in posting, or even what users meant. Deep Text will help categorize and provide meaning for all that text, and could turn all that unstructured data into information it can use—and users can search.
Based on neural networks, Deep Text is unlike other systems designed to understand written language. Facebook says it can understand the meaning of thousands of posts per second, in 20 languages, “with near-human accuracy.” The system tries to understand the semantic relationships and similarities between words, meaning it realizes that “brother” and “bro” are often used in similar situations.
Deep Text is already powering some aspects of Facebook, the company says. For example, some chat bots on Facebook Messenger
Facebook said that it plans to use the millions of Facebook pages users have created to build up more training data for Deep Text.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joseph Lichterman / Nieman Lab:
Sources: Snapchat has 150M daily active users, more than Twitter’s estimated 140M, but more people use Twitter for news
Snapchat reportedly has more daily users than Twitter. What does that mean for news?
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/06/snapchat-reportedly-has-more-daily-users-than-twitter-what-does-that-mean-for-news/
Snapchat now has more active daily users than Twitter, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
Snapchat has 150 million active daily users, up from 110 million in December, Bloomberg reported. Twitter, meanwhile, has less than 140 million.
Even though Snapchat is growing among younger users, Twitter remains a more popular platform for news consumption. Nine percent of American adults use Twitter for news, according to a Pew Research Center study released last week. Just 2 percent of U.S. adults go to Snapchat for news.
Despite Facebook’s dominance and Snapchat’s growth, Twitter remains a highly influential platform — you don’t see Donald Trump’s snaps highlighted on cable news, for instance
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stefan Etienne / TechCrunch:
Twitter makes it easier for developers to embed timelines into their web apps or CMS
Twitter intros three new ways to embed timelines
http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/07/twitter-intros-three-new-ways-to-embed-timelines/
For developers and publishers, organizing and embedding multiple Twitter timelines is often a calculated effort, but this morning the social network has added three new ways to make it easier. In this case, late is better than never.
The first are factory functions, which allow you to generate timelines for a web app, no matter the number. For those looking into the new oEmbed API with a CMS, you can integrate profile, list, like, or collection timelines directly into the work environment.
The third (and simplest option) is to opt for the publish.twitter.com approach, which would allow you to customize and embed a timeline into a site, with minimal coding skills required. This is the solution that I can see most new WordPress users leaning towards.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Gawker files for bankruptcy, sources say it already has a firm bid from Ziff Davis for under $100M, will fight Thiel/Hogan case and continue operations — Gawker and Nick Denton say they won’t pay Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel $140 million. — Peter Thiel is getting closer to his goal …
Gawker files for bankruptcy and says it will sell the company to Ziff Davis or someone else
Gawker and Nick Denton say they won’t pay Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel $140 million.
http://www.recode.net/2016/6/10/11903764/gawker-bankruptcy-chapter-11-sale-ziff-davis
Peter Thiel is getting closer to his goal: Gawker Media has filed for bankruptcy protection and says it eventually plans to find a new owner for the company.
Gawker and owner Nick Denton are making the Chapter 11 filing today, in order to avoid paying Thiel and Hulk Hogan the $140 million judgment they won in Hogan’s privacy trial earlier this year.
now formally entertaining offers to buy the company
Last year, in advance of the Hogan trial, Denton figured his company was worth something in the $250 million to $300 million range.
no one wants to buy an ongoing lawsuit from Peter Thiel.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google is offering app developers the same revenue-sharing terms Apple just announced — with one big advantage
Unlike Apple, the Play Store split would take effect immediately.
http://www.recode.net/2016/6/8/11889298/google-apple-subscription-app-revenue-share
On Wednesday, Apple detailed major shake-ups coming to its powerful app store. Those include a new revenue-sharing model that would give developers more money when users subscribe to a service via their apps — instead of keeping 70 percent of all revenue generated from subscriptions, publishers will be able to keep 85 percent of revenue, once a subscriber has been paying for a year.
Now Google plans to up the ante at its app store: It will also move from a 70/30 split to 85/15 for subscriptions — but instead of requiring developers to hook a subscriber for 12 months before offering the better split, it will make it available right away.
Sources said Google has already been testing the new split with some entertainment companies (so has Apple, to some extent).
Google has already tried differentiating itself from Apple by giving app developers the ability to handle payments themselves and keep all of the revenue. Apple requires any payments made within the app to go through Apple’s iTunes billing system – a point that still irks many publishers
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Sterne / Politico:
Gawker Media files for Chapter 11 triggering auction, will continue operating and fight the Hogan verdict; source says Ziff Davis opens with $90-$100M bid
Gawker Media files for bankruptcy
Company files for Chapter 11 to protect assets from seizure by Hulk Hogan
Read more: http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/06/gawker-files-for-bankruptcy-to-protect-assets-from-hogan-004593#ixzz4BFcA0Vus
Tomi Engdahl says:
Shan Wang / Nieman Lab:
Two professors highlight fair use with Kickstarter to pay fee to quote the New York Times in their book; publisher Routledge asked professors to get formal OK — Obtaining formal permission to use three quotations from New York Times articles in a book ultimately cost two professors $1,884.
$1,884 to quote 300 words from The New York Times in a book: Two authors try to stand up for fair use
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/06/1884-to-quote-300-words-from-the-new-york-times-in-a-book-two-authors-try-to-stand-up-for-fair-use/
Obtaining formal permission to use three quotations from New York Times articles in a book ultimately cost two professors $1,884. They’re outraged, and have taken to Kickstarter — in part to recoup the charges, but primarily, they say, to “protest the Times’ and publishers’ lack of respect for Fair Use.”
The principle, they write, “is more important than the money.”
“When publishers say ‘We’re going to take the safe route,’ they incur another kind of risk, which is that rather than the risk of having a rights holder challenge them, the risk will now be that they do not accomplish their scholarly and academic mission: most of the time scholars don’t have that $1,884,”
The Times, of course, is a business, and ultimately can try to charge whatever it would like
“My quarrel isn’t with the rights holders. We need to support each other”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jessica Davies / Digiday:
German publishers, including Axel Springer, Bertelsmann Group, and Der Spiegel, pool reader data to compete with Google and Facebook
German publishers are pooling data to compete with Google and Facebook
http://digiday.com/publishers/german-publishers-pool-data-compete-google-facebook/
Google and Facebook are now commanding 85 percent of incremental digital ad spending, with publishers left to fight it out over the leftovers. That’s why German publishers have put aside traditional rivalry and gone all-in on a major data-pooling initiative.
Axel Springer, Gruner + Jahr, RTL owner Bertelsmann Group, and Der Speigel owner are among eight of the 10 biggest publishing groups in Germany to be pooling masses of reader data, from just under 1,000 websites including tabloid Bild, and other major titles.
The raw data goes into a single platform called Emetriq, a subsidiary owned by Deutsche Telekom, which sifts through and cleans it up, to create highly targeted, quality audience segments that publishers can use to boost their advertising packages.
“Our biggest competitors are no longer conservative publishers,” said Carsten Schwecke, CEO of Axel Springer’s sales house Media Impact. “We together must combine our forces against Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook.”
Publishers pay a flat fee to use the data segments, which can be anything from €4,000 ($5,000) to €15,000 ($17,000).
It’s via this joint venture that Emetriq can access all the publishers’ data, all of which is anonymous.
All segments created by Emetriq are sense checked against online consumer panels from research group GfK. Deutsche Telekom also puts some of its own data in. This gives it an 87 percent accuracy rate, Neuhaus claims.
The benefit for publishers is that they receive advanced, anonymous data segments from a far bigger pool than their own portfolio of brands, which they can use to boost CPMs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Forbes:
Behind the legal battles against Gawker involving Charles Harder, the attorney funded by Peter Thiel in the Hulk Hogan case
Behind Peter Thiel’s Plan To Destroy Gawker
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2016/06/07/behind-peter-thiel-plan-to-destroy-gawker/#70f565d5848a
As FORBES revealed in late May, Thiel is the clandestine financier of numerous lawsuits targeting Gawker Media, the New York-based company whose biting style of journalism has grated on the egos and sullied the reputations of some of the world’s most powerful people. The most damaging lawsuit–an invasion-of-privacy case revolving around a sex tape of the wrestler Hulk Hogan (real name, Terry Bollea)–recently resulted in a $140 million jury award and a national debate on the rights of celebrities versus the rights of a publication to disseminate what it considers to be newsworthy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Forrest Gump of the Internet
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/ev-williams-is-the-forrest-gump-of-the-internet/486899/
Ev Williams became a billionaire by helping to create the free and open web. Now, he’s betting against it.
Williams helped write the software that made us call blogs blogs. He founded a podcast company years before most people listened to them. He sent Twitter’s 75th tweet, then ran the company. And now he’s the founder and CEO of Medium, the platform for online writing embraced by sportswriters, Silicon Valley executives, and the President of the United States.
Of all the American internet industry’s critical events (other than that fateful night in Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room), odds are good that Williams was there or knew someone present.
While other CEOs in his early-web cohort have left the industry, or have become writers or consultants, Williams has stuck around, leading companies. His startups have nearly all specialized in the same abstract medium: text boxes. He has dotted the web with these text boxes, and people have poured their souls into them, have argued and wept and whispered into them. Millions of people have had their worldview shaped by these text boxes, and the boxes themselves have, in turn, changed the Internet. They have also made Williams rich. Though few of his businesses have turned a profit, he is a billionaire.
The open web is the nickname for the internet as it should be—free, uncensorable, and independently owned and operated. According to the blog posts that hashed out most of its theory (and which themselves were published on the open web), the open web describes an internet where people mostly publish their writing (or music, or photos, or films) to servers that they own or rent, accessible via their own personal domain names, in formats that are themselves free or unrestricted. It is the web because the pages are written in HTML and CSS; it is open because anyone can access almost all of it, without special privileges, expenditures, or a user account. Above all, the open web is free—free like language is free, like consciousness is free. Freedom not so much as a right, but as a technical and inalienable fact.
This liberty has an end goal: to turn the web into the finest, coolest piece of media ever created, a library of libraries authored by all of humanity. This web encompasses novels and newspapers and scientific journals, all at once. Anyone can write for it, and anyone can read it. It is a to-do list, a logbook, a work of literature, and a communication tool so powerful that it could abort war.
“Railroad, electricity, cable, telephone—all followed this similar pattern toward closedness and monopoly…”
This is a vision for the web that sounds both very similar to and very distant from the web that you and I use everyday. Our web, after all, contains unhappy news, garish advertising, unsympathetic grandstanding, and a lot of photos of other people’s kids. All this clutter reaches us after being shunted through social networks, which (the idealists lament) are effectively shut off from the rest of the network. The follow-on effect from these networks is even worse: Cookies tied to those same user accounts surveil us as we read across the open web
“There’s still a bunch of stuff on the web. The stuff we read everyday, the stuff you write, is on the web. And that’s great,” says Williams.
“There’s still the fact that anyone, at any time, can create their own website and start publishing, and they have a voice—I mean that’s the idea that I got really excited about almost 20 years ago.”
“I think that will continue. I think the openness of voices is not going to consolidate back to the old days of media,” he told me. “I think the distribution points are going to consolidate.”
The distribution points are the search engines and the social networks: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, and the messaging apps. Also on that list are YouTube (owned by Google), Instagram (owned by Facebook), Whatsapp (also owned by Facebook), and Facebook Messenger (ditto). By linking the web together, or hosting normally data-heavy content for free, these distribution nodes seize more and more users. And because each of the nodes is more interesting than any one individual’s personal site, people who used to go to personal sites wind up at the nodes instead.
As Williams puts it: “Primarily what we’ve seen is that the social networks have gotten really, really big, and they drive more and more of our attention.” With this size, they also collect more revenue: 85 cents of every new dollar in online advertising went to Google or Facebook in early 2016, according to a Morgan Stanley analyst quoted by The New York Times.
“That could be bad,”
book The Master Switch that every major telecommunications technology has followed the same pattern: a brief, thrilling period of openness, followed by a monopolistic and increasingly atrophied closedness. Without government intervention, the same fate will befall the internet, he says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scientific publishers are killing research papers
Pressure to publish short articles removes details, leaves readers confused.
http://arstechnica.com/staff/2016/06/scientific-publishers-are-killing-research-papers/
If I were to summarize the ideal scientific paper in four sentences, it would look like this:
Look at this cool thing we did.
This is how we did the cool thing.
This is the cool thing.
Wasn’t that cool?
We like to think that the standard format (not to be confused with the Standard Model) was beautifully followed in days of yore. Nowadays, of course, it is not. Because things always get worse, right? In reality, scientific papers have always looked more like this:
Look at this cool thing we did, IT IS REALLY COOL, BE INTERESTED.
This is how we did the cool thing (apart from this bit that we “forgot” to mention, the other thing that we didn’t think was important, and that bit that a company contributed and wants to keep a secret. Have fun replicating the results!).
This is the cool thing.
This thing we did is not only cool, but is totally going to cure cancer, even if we never mentioned cancer and, in fact, are studying the ecology of the lesser spotted physicist.
Call me cynical, but missing information in the methods section, as described in the parenthetical in item two, really, really bugs me
To keep papers short, many journals emphasize results and conclusions at the expense of methods.
Supplementary information doesn’t come in the print version of journals, so good luck understanding a paper if you like reading the hard copy. Neither is it attached to the paper if you download it for reading later—supplementary information is typically a separate download, sometimes much larger than the paper itself, and often paywalled.
For my day job, most of the journals I read do not publish articles with supplementary information.
Unnecessary speed bumps
There is no reason an online research paper should be accompanied by a document called supplementary information. Everything should be in the main document, even if some things are relegated to an appendix. Just because publishers have chosen to make their print versions increasingly cryptic doesn’t mean that they should cripple their online versions, too.
But more generally, methods should not be part of some appendix—they are a central pillar of any research report.
The authors… were kind enough to provide the supplementary information. Suddenly I had twelve more pages, and their paper finally made sense.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hayley Tsukayama / Washington Post:
Reddit is changing algorithms and processes after Orlando shooting fallout raised questions about volunteer mods, censorship, and small groups’ influence
A big change is happening at Reddit after its Orlando shooting fiasco
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/16/reddit-makes-some-changes-in-the-wake-of-the-orlando-shooting/
As the shooting in Orlando unfolded Sunday, the biggest news on Reddit — the self-proclaimed “front page of the Internet” — wasn’t the crime taking place in Florida. It was, instead, about how Reddit was messing up the news about the shooting.
As my colleague Abby Ohlheiser wrote, the problems started when users began posting that the moderators of “r/news” — a Reddit subsection devoted to news — were unnecessarily censoring the discussion about the shooting. The subsection has strict rules about what can be submitted to the site. For example, there can be no opinion pieces or duplicate stories; those posts are deleted.
This past weekend, however, moderators appeared to be overzealous when deleting posts
Under the new algorithm, Huffman said, repeatedly posting from the same community will make it less likely that posts from that specific community appear in the r/all listing.
That, he said, should help keep small groups of users from dominating the site’s overall conversations and keep situations like this from snowballing out of control.
That change will take effect today. It is the first time Reddit has changed its r/all algorithm since 2008
The firm is also working to improve tools that allow Reddit employees to more easily contact the moderators of subreddits, in case the company itself needs to step in to arbitrate a situation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Mobile Today Is Like TV Six Decades Ago
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/mobile-is-eating-everything/487148/
All of the growth in advertising right now is targeted at that little screen people carry with them everywhere.
In the early 1950s, television was popular, but unsophisticated.
But either despite its gimmicky shortcomings or because of them, advertisers loved the little box. Revenue from ads increased more than 60 percent a year for the first five years of the decade, so that by 1955, television accounted for nearly 20 percent of total U.S. media advertising.
This year, mobile media accounts for the exact same share, nearly 20 percent of total U.S. media spending. So, in a very real way, mobile is today where television was exactly six decades ago.
For more than a century, media organizations working in newspapers, magazines, television, and radio have relied on advertising to report and publish the news.
The news created an audience of readers, the advertiser paid to piggyback off that audience
That’s precisely why anybody in the news business should be more than a little alarmed
In a sentence, digital is eating legacy media, mobile is eating digital, and two companies, Facebook and Google, are eating mobile
1. U.S. advertising is declining as a share of GDP. Total national ad spending, as a percentage of the economy, has fallen by a third since 2000
2. The entire net growth is U.S. advertising is digital. Between 2011 non-digital advertising fell from $126 billion to $123 billion. During the same period, digital advertising doubled from $32 billion to $60 billion.
3. The entire net growth in digital advertising is happening in mobile. Since 2011, desktop advertising has fallen by about 10 percent, according to Pew. Meanwhile mobile advertising has grown by a factor of 30, reaching about $32 billion in 2015.
4. Two companies, Facebook and Google, control half of net mobile ad revenue.
At the same time that access to news media is getting democratized—the internet is theoretically an all-access platform for broadcasting ideas—the business of media advertising seems to be concentrating.
Now two tech companies own half the digital market for ads. The New York Times was never “newspapers.” NBC was never “television.” But Facebook and Google are “the internet.”
What does this mean for the future of news? To acknowledge this shift toward mobile is not to embrace a doom-and-gloom mindset. It is happening, full stop, and people can choose for themselves to be optimists or pessimists about the economic future of the news.
For newspapers, magazines, and websites, there are several paths forward. First, billionaires can rescue media organizations from the stormy seas of the mobile Internet and fund journalism that the ad market won’t support. Second, companies like Facebook may determine that it is in their own interest to preserve some news and entertainment publishers, and they will directly pay media companies, the same way cable companies pay carriage to television channels. Third, more media companies could ask readers to pay directly for the news and shift their business back to subscriptions. Fourth, companies forced to find sources of revenue beyond digital advertising could find new ways to move their brands into higher-margin (hopefully) businesses, like events (e.g. the New Yorker Festival) and marketing (e.g. BuzzFeed’s digital-media ad team). Fifth, some news publishers, particularly those with massive scale, could eventually figure out a sturdy advertising model based on sponsored posts, banners, and video to support their work independently.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Can a Bunch of Doctors Keep an $8 Billion Secret? Not on Twitter
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-14/can-hundreds-of-doctors-keep-an-8b-secret-not-on-twitter
In New Orleans Monday, a major medical organization attempted a feat perhaps as hard as treating the disease doctors were there to discuss. They asked a packed convention hall of attendees not to tweet the confidential, market-moving data they had flown in to see.
It didn’t work.
In an unusual arrangement, the American Diabetes Association let hundreds, if not thousands, of in-person attendees see new data on Novo Nordisk A/S’s blockbuster diabetes treatment Victoza more than an hour before its official release to the public and the markets. That’s atypical for such sensitive data, which are usually shared only with journalists and researchers who have agreed to abide by strict terms, under threat of losing future access.
After warning attendees not to share the information they were about to post, presenters in the hall put up slides showing that Bagsvaerd, Denmark-based Novo’s drug cut heart attacks and strokes by 13 percent and improved survival, while also lowering blood sugar rates and a host of other complications. While good news for diabetics, it was less than investors had hoped.
Within minutes, some Twitter accounts were posting pictures of the charts, including key slides
“#2016ADA slides include unpublished data and are the intellectual property of the presenters,” the association tweeted at accounts who posted the data. “Please delete immediately.”
It was too little, too late. Some of the tweets had already been re-tweeted by others, making it impossible to scrub the information from the web.
Shares Drop
On Tuesday, Novo’s shares fell 5.6 percent to 343 kroner, for their biggest one-day drop since February — confirmation of how important the information was to the market. The decline represented about a 52 billion kroner ($7.77 billion) decline in market value.
The meeting organizers appeared aware of the potential for a leak. The moderator at the session, Matthew Riddle, an endocrinologist from Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, announced the embargo date and time at the start of the session, and the restrictions on sharing the data were noted on multiple slides.
It’s not the first time medical meeting organizers have tried to restrict the distribution of information from the event they are running
Tomi Engdahl says:
News site Gawker announced bankruptcy on June 10 after it was sentenced to pay a $ 140 million record-breaking Terry Gene Bollea, the former show wrestler which is perhaps better known as Hulk Hogan.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/facebook-miljonaari-paljastui-takapiruksi-showpainija-sai-140-miljoonaa-seksivideosta-6561092
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War With Gawker
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-thiel-tech-billionaire-reveals-secret-war-with-gawker.html?_r=0
Facebook is about to decide the fate of a board member who waged a secret legal war against a news site
http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-decide-peter-thiel-fate-annual-shareholders-meeting-after-gawker-legal-war-2016-6?r=US&IR=T&IR=T
Tomi Engdahl says:
E-books fair game for public libraries, says advisor to top Europe court
AG opinion: Digital lending should be subject to same rules as library loans.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/ebooks-lending-public-libraries-advocate-general-cjeu/
Electronic books should be treated just like physical books for the purposes of lending, an advisor to Europe’s top court has said.
Maciej Szpunar, advocate general to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), said in an opinion published (PDF) Thursday morning that public libraries should be allowed to lend e-books so long as the author is fairly compensated.
A 2006 EU directive says that the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit rentals and loans belongs to the author of the work. However, countries may opt out of this rule for the purposes of “public lending,” provided that authors obtain fair remuneration.
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2016-06/cp160064en.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Matt Waite / Nieman Lab:
New FAA rules will allow any newsroom to legally use drones for journalism in 60 days, with restrictions — In 60 days, drone journalism will be legally possible in any newsroom in the United States. That’s not to say it will be easy, but it will be legally possible in ways that it has never been before.
In 60 days, drone journalism will be legally possible in any U.S. newsroom
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/06/in-60-days-drone-journalism-will-be-legally-possible-in-any-u-s-newsroom/
“There are still challenges, and we haven’t even talked about state and local laws that have been piling up while the FAA lumbered toward today. But the future of drones in journalism is much brighter today than it has ever been.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Reuters:
Sources: Google and Facebook start automatically blocking reposted extremist videos — Some of the web’s biggest destinations for watching videos have quietly started using automation to remove extremist content from their sites, according to two people familiar with the process.
Exclusive: Google, Facebook quietly move toward automatic blocking of extremist videos
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-internet-extremism-video-exclusive-idUSKCN0ZB00M
Some of the web’s biggest destinations for watching videos have quietly started using automation to remove extremist content from their sites, according to two people familiar with the process.
The move is a major step forward for internet companies that are eager to eradicate violent propaganda from their sites and are under pressure to do so from governments around the world as attacks by extremists proliferate, from Syria to Belgium and the United States.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Exclusive: Google, Facebook quietly move toward automatic blocking of extremist videos
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-internet-extremism-video-exclusive-idUSKCN0ZB00M
Some of the web’s biggest destinations for watching videos have quietly started using automation to remove extremist content from their sites, according to two people familiar with the process.
The move is a major step forward for internet companies that are eager to eradicate violent propaganda from their sites and are under pressure to do so from governments around the world as attacks by extremists proliferate, from Syria to Belgium and the United States.
YouTube and Facebook are among the sites deploying systems to block or rapidly take down Islamic State videos and other similar material, the sources said.
The technology was originally developed to identify and remove copyright-protected content on video sites. It looks for “hashes,” a type of unique digital fingerprint that internet companies automatically assign to specific videos, allowing all content with matching fingerprints to be removed rapidly.
Such a system would catch attempts to repost content already identified as unacceptable, but would not automatically block videos that have not been seen before.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How an Archive of the Internet Could Change History
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/magazine/how-an-archive-of-the-internet-could-change-history.html
Building an archive has always required asking a couple of simple but thorny questions: What will we save and how? Whose stories are the most important and why? In theory, the internet already functions as a kind of archive: Any document, video or photo can in principle remain there indefinitely, available to be viewed by anyone with a connection. But in reality, things disappear constantly. Search engines like Google continually trawl for pages to organize and index for retrieval, but they can’t catch everything. And as the web evolves, it becomes harder to preserve. It is estimated that 75 percent of all websites are inactive, and domains are abandoned every day. Links can rot when sites disappear, images vanish when servers go offline and fluctuations in economic tides and social trends can wipe out entire ecosystems. (Look up a blog post from a decade ago and see how many of the images, media or links still work.) Tumblr and even Twitter may eventually end up ancient internet history because of their financial instability.
There are scattered efforts to preserve digital history. Rhizome, an arts nonprofit group, built a tool called Webrecorder to save parts of today’s internet for future generations. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has archived hundreds of billions of web pages. But there’s still a low-grade urgency to save our social media for posterity — and it’s particularly urgent in cases in which social media itself had a profound influence on historic events.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ad Blockers Imperil Internet Video Revenue
http://www.btreport.net/articles/2016/06/ad-blockers-imperil-internet-video-revenue.html?cmpid=enlmobile06232016&eid=289644432&bid=1441472
According to Parks Associates, U.S. broadband households watch an average of 3.8 hours of Internet video on TV screens each week, accounting for 20% of all video viewed on this device. The research house says consumers might increasingly use ad-blocking solutions while streaming video if the digital advertising methods disrupt their viewing experience. Parks Associates’ digital media analysts advise service providers and media companies that the best defense against ad blockers is to develop digital advertising models that are integrated and nondisruptive to the viewing experience.
“Many content creators rely on advertising revenue to monetize video, especially as newly launched digital services seek revenue. As digital video viewership increases on all screens, use of ad-blocking technologies is a concern for content owners and distributors,” said Glenn Hower, Parks research analyst. “Ad blockers have their roots in web publishing, often to prevent full-page overlays or popups that would disrupt the experience. As Internet video viewership on the television screen increases, advertisers are seeking to leverage prime living room real estate in this new media model. Content and OTT providers and advertisers need to ensure their methods do not interfere with the viewing experience, which would otherwise drive viewers to ad-blocking technologies.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Removing DRM From Aaron Swartz’s eBook
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/27/removing-drm-from-aaron-swartzs-ebook/
After his death, Aaron Swartz became one of the Internet’s most famous defenders of the free exchange of information, one of the most polarizing figures on the topic of intellectual property, and the most famous person that still held on to the ideals the Internet was founded on. Aaron was against DRM, fought for the users, and encouraged open access to information.
Early this year, Verso Books published the collected writings of Aaron Swartz. This eBook, according to Verso, contains ‘social DRM’, a watermarking technology that Verso estimates will, “contribute £200,000 to the publisher’s revenue in its first year.” This watermarking technology embeds uniquely identifiable personal information into individual copies of eBooks.
The watermarking technology in Aaron Swartz’s eBook comes courtesy of BooXtream, a security solution where every eBook sold is unique using advanced watermarking and personalization features.
After analyzing several digital copies of Aaron Swartz’s eBook, the Institute for Biblio-Immunology is confident they have a tool that removes BooXtrem’s watermarks in EPUB eBooks. Several watermarks were found, including the very visible – Ex Libris images, disclaimer page watermarks, and footer watermarks – and the very hidden, including image metadata, filename watermarks, and timestamp fingerprints.
In a communique released late last weekend, they cracked this watermarking scheme and released the code to remove this ‘social DRM’ from ePub files.
While the Institute believes this tool can be used to de-BooXtream all currently available ‘social DRM’ed’ eBooks, they do expect the watermarking techniques will be quickly modified.
https://pastebin.com/raw/E1xgCUmb
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Thiel Has Only Pushed the Next Gawker Underground
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/peter-thiel-gawker/
Gawker has filed for bankruptcy. Peter Thiel, who sits on the Facebook board and is a Donald Trump delegate, took it down in a proxy lawsuit. Although the case is unresolved, it was enough to bleed and bankrupt the company.
This is a terrible outcome for freedom of the press, for society, and, I argue, for Silicon Valley, which may have just ensured that the next Gawker operates in the shadows, where tech billionaires can never sue it. The next Gawker will be decentralized and it may follow the Wikileaks model or even publish on the dark web.
Hypocrisy
The motto of the valley is Fail fast. Disrupt. Make something people want. Nick Denton and Gawker did this. And yet much of the Silicon Valley establishment cheered Thiel on. Venky Ganesan, managing director at Menlo Ventures, told The New York Times that Gawker “wanted to be taken seriously as journalists, yet they didn’t follow all the norms.” Vinod Khosla tweeted that “click bait journalists need to be taught lessons.”
They’re on a different coast but Gawker, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jezebel, Deadspin, Jalopnik, Lifehacker, and the defunct Valleywag are startups (the company was founded a few years before Facebook). Each site and community has grown and evolved in the past decade. They have published tens of thousands of stories, broken huge news, pioneered a sustainable ad model (without VC cash), admitted mistakes, and deeply influenced how truth is delivered to power online. Gawker alumni are editors at many prestige media outlets in New York.
Yet any defense of Gawker falls largely on deaf ears in Silicon Valley. It doesn’t matter how much incredible work Gawker has done, people in the Valley will point, hysterically, to a handful of articles that they say cross their line.
It’s fine to disagree with Gawker (I certainly have), but there’s a reason the US lists freedom of the press in the First Amendment. Why can’t Silicon Valley counter speech with speech? Why does must it use a proxy lawsuit? Many legal experts expect Gawker to prevail in the Hulk Hogan case on appeal, but it won’t matter because fighting the lawsuit cost enough to bankrupt the company. This is Silicon Valley justice?
The Next Gawker Will Be Darker
My worry, as someone who works in tech, is that support of Thiel will backfire and everyone in the sector will suffer.
Thiel crucified the most notorious critic of Silicon Valley and called it philanthropy.
Using his personal fortune earned from funding technology companies including Paypal and Facebook, Thiel just made a tabloid that covers Silicon Valley untenable as a business. What media entrepreneur can afford to regularly take on Thiel’s lawsuits?
If Thiel is successful in destroying Gawker, he will martyrize it. The Hollywood movie that will come from this a few years from now is too cartoonish to imagine. Social Network: The Sequel. Staring Jesse Eisenberg, Hulk Hogan, Donald Trump, and a series of tech billionaires with egos as thin as egg shells.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook implements News Feed ranking changes favoring friends and family over publishers, lists the “cores values” underlying this move — After the conservative trends fiasco, Facebook is pushing itself to a new standard of transparency. The company is publishing a formal …
Facebook puts friends above publishers in “News Feed Values” and ranking change
https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/29/facebook-news-feed-change/
After the conservative trends fiasco, Facebook is pushing itself to a new standard of transparency. The company is publishing a formal “News Feed Values” document that details how it decides what shows up in your feed — a common question amongst users.
Facebook is also making a feed ranking change today that literally puts its primary value that “Friends and family come first” into practice. The News Feed will now show posts from friends higher up in the feed than posts from Pages like news outlets. Pages should expect a decline in reach and referral traffic, especially if they rely on clicks directly to their posts rather than re-shares by their followers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Efe Kerem Sözeri / Vocativ:
Turkish government bans publication of news, interviews, visuals about Istanbul bombing — Once again, Turkey’s government has cracked down on media after a terror attack — Less than an hour after a coordinated suicide attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport that left dozens dead and many more wounded …
Turkey Blocks News Sites, Twitter, Facebook After Deadly Attack
Once again, Turkey’s government has cracked down on media after a terror attack
http://www.vocativ.com/334890/turkey-blocks-news-sites-twitter-facebook-after-deadly-attack/
Less than an hour after a coordinated suicide attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport that left dozens dead and many more wounded, Turkey’s government resumed a tactic frequently seen since last summer: a gag order for the country’s media outlets. Less than an hour later, watchdog groups reported Twitter and Facebook were inaccessible inside the country.
The order, issued by the Turkish Prime Minister’s office on the grounds of “national security and public order,” bans sharing of any visuals of the moment of explosion, blast scene, emergency work, of the wounded and dead, or any “exaggerated narrative” about the scene. It also bans the act of sharing any information about the suspects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
Reuters report: consumers prefer text over video for hard news but big breaking stories increase video interest
Sure, people like online video, but that doesn’t mean they want to watch your hard news videos
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/06/sure-people-like-online-video-but-that-doesnt-mean-they-want-to-watch-your-hard-news-videos/
“Even for brands associated with hard news…their top or second videos in terms of Facebook engagement numbers turned out to be animal videos.”
On November 13, 2015, terrorists coordinated multiple attacks in Paris, killing 130 people and injuring hundreds. On the day of the attacks, the BBC experienced the highest online traffic day in its history; the following day, November 14, 19 percent of the visitors to the BBC’s site watched video, compared to 11 percent on a typical day.
A report released Tuesday by Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism finds that “interest in video news does increase significantly when there is a big breaking news story.”
But the rest of the time? Online video news is less of a force than publishers might hope. The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2016, which came out earlier this month, noted that only about a quarter of 50,000 respondents across 26 countries watch online news video in a given week.
“Website users in particular remain resistant to online video news,”
We keep hearing about the boom in online video, so what’s going on? To be clear, the report’s authors distinguish between “news video” hosted on publishers’ own sites and video on social networks or centered around “softer news and lifestyle content (or premium drama and sports on demand)” rather than hard news. They researchers urge caution in conflating the fast growth of online video in general with the growth of, specifically, hard news video.
“So far, the growth around online video news seems to be largely driven by technology, platforms, and publishers rather than by strong consumer demand,”
On Facebook, almost 40 percent of the most successful videos from the 30 brands that Reuters looked at “related to lifestyle or entertainment content (for instance about animals, babies, or cooking) rather than harder news subjects such as current affairs, politics, science, or the environment.” And “even for brands associated with hard news like The Telegraph, The Guardian, or The Independent, their top or second videos in terms of Facebook engagement numbers turned out to be animal videos.”
Monetization of online news video remains a big challenge. On their own sites, publishers still tend to monetize videos with preroll advertising. That’s a problem: Of the users in Reuters’ previously released survey who hadn’t watched online news video in the past week, 35 percent said preroll ads put them off.
“Video is clearly going to be a much bigger part of the future news landscape, but it is unlikely to replace text,” the report’s authors conclude. “We should also not expect a new format like video to solve the fundamental problems of the news industry any time soon.”
More:
Online video news driven by technology, publishers and platforms, not consumers – new report
http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/online-video-news-driven-technology-publishers-and-platforms-not-consumers-new-report
Tomi Engdahl says:
The New Yorker, BuzzFeed, and the push for digital credibility
http://www.cjr.org/special_report/newyorker_buzzfeed_trust.php
It’s one of magazine journalism’s most pressing questions: How can publications that have long captivated print consumers earn the trust of wary online readers?
As the internet solidifies its role as a leading news source amid continued declines in print, news organization homepages are losing traction. Magazine stories are increasingly unmoored from the outlets that published them, and from the brands that once all but guaranteed their legitimacy. In the US, more than 60 percent of social media users now access news through platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and news organizations harvest nearly half their traffic from social media.
The fragmented nature of the digital landscape has created a conundrum for magazines and other news outlets. Being seen as reliable is crucial to a news organization’s survival.
Do brands even matter anymore?
It turns out they do. Readers are less likely to trust a longform story that appears to have run on BuzzFeed than the same article on The New Yorker’s website, according to a study by the Columbia Journalism Review and the George T. Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism.
However, our study also suggests that changes in how and where we read are pushing us to seek out reliability cues wherever they exist, and that readers make many judgments about the journalism itself when evaluating a story’s credibility. One study subject told us that he usually uses the publication where an article ran as a guidepost. “However, some journalists are very interesting and credible, prior to working for a famed organization,” he wrote. “Sometimes the audience must consider the context.”
Trust levels seemed related at least in part to people’s reading habits. Readers whose primary source of news is the internet—more than 80 percent of our study subjects—had less faith than their peers in the article, no matter where it appeared to have run.
Once a participant believed the writer or story was credible, that conviction was reinforced by other elements that might have independently put readers off, such as the journalist’s use of secret recordings, the article’s funding source, or the scope of the reporting. By the same token, people who distrusted the magazine brand were also likely to distrust the writer.
“This is an industry that’s very much based on trust in publications and in individual journalists, and that trust is very fragile,” says Nick Baumann, who wrote the Mother Jones piece. “You have to keep earning it and re-earning it.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Li Yuan / Wall Street Journal:
Chinese journalists increasingly leaving the profession and turning to jobs in tech as China tightens media control
As the State Looms, Journalists Move On
Many depart profession as China tightens media control and tech opportunities beckon
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/as-the-state-looms-journalists-move-on-1467217197-lMyQjAxMTE2MzI4OTIyMzk5Wj
When former senior Chinese official Bo Xilai was expelled from the Communist Party in 2012 amid a corruption scandal involving him and his wife, journalist and artist Wang Guopei seized the moment with a satirical commentary.
Defying official limits on discussing the matter publicly, Mr. Wang posted a calligraphy drawing on a Twitter-like social-media platform called Sina Weibo.
That and similar posts attempting to circumvent state censors drew hundreds of thousands of followers for Mr. Wang on Weibo. He persisted even as censors deleted some posts and his account
These days, though, Mr. Wang is one of many Chinese journalists leaving the trade as the state tightens media control while a technology boom opens new opportunities.
He now writes a weekly infomercial on Tencent Holdings ’ WeChat social-media platform, charging in the low six figures in yuan for each ad about products such as Illuma baby formula and the Huawei Honor smartphone.
Mr. Wang doesn’t touch politics—“[I] can’t take the risks,” he says—and questions his former career. He wanted to expose human-rights abuses and help move China toward a democracy. “I felt I was like a warrior, and my pen was my weapon,” he wrote in a WeChat post last month. But he now says his efforts were “utterly pointless.”
Even the top journalists are leaving. Qin Shuo quit a year ago as editor in chief of China’s biggest business publication, China Business News, to start a WeChat public account that focuses on research about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. The situation for news is “dismal” when compared with flourishing entertainment and lifestyle content, he says.
Journalists jumping ship isn’t unique to China, and not all the departures are driven by censorship. As in many parts of the world, print media in China are in broad decline, and the startup craze has captured the imaginations of many Chinese, including journalists. Tech companies, big and small, have huge demand for public-relations managers. Platforms such as WeChat make it easier for writers like Mr. Wang to connect with advertisers directly.
Journalists aren’t leaving only for tech jobs.
journalism was more attractive when he started out in 1995. “Now 99% of it is dead,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Time Inc. plans restructuring to generate more digital revenue and increase distribution on social platforms; some layoffs possible
Time Inc. Plans Significant Reorganization to Generate Non-Print Revenue
Publisher gives executive Rich Battista more responsibility, encourages distribution on social media
http://www.wsj.com/articles/time-inc-plans-significant-reorganization-to-generate-non-print-revenue-1467395384
Time Inc. plans a reorganization to generate more revenue from videos, live events and deeper collaborations with advertisers and to broaden distribution of its content including on social media platforms, people familiar with the situation say.
The restructuring, which is expected shortly, comes as the magazine publisher is forecasting a revenue gain of 1% to 5% in 2016, which would be its first significant revenue improvement in five years. Time Inc. like many traditional publishers has been hit by a drop-off in print advertising revenue.
Staff layoffs could be ahead.
“Rich is a guy who can reimagine a brand and how it can be extended across social, mobile, video, events, products and services, a 360-degree view of how you make these brands into big businesses,” said one Time Inc. executive familiar with the plans. “It’s about extending our brands well beyond the printed page.”
Time Inc. is fighting for ad dollars against digital-oriented publishers, from BuzzFeed to Vice Media to Vox Media, and all players are contending with the digital advertising dominance of Facebook and Google.
Time Inc. is considering creating a plan calling for more collaboration between titles that share areas of similar coverage.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Israel Accuses Facebook Of Aiding Terrorists and Hampering Police Investigations
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/07/03/1810221/israel-accuses-facebook-of-aiding-terrorists-and-hampering-police-investigations
“The young generation in the Palestinian Authority suckles all of its incitement against Israel from Facebook and, in the end, goes and commits murders,” Israel’s Minister of Internal Security said Saturday. “Some of the blood of the victims of the recent attacks…is unfortunately on the hands of Mark Zuckerberg, because the police and security forces could have been told about the post of that vile murderer.”
Israel prepares legislation which would allow it to order social media sites to remove posts it considered threatening
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Erdan-blames-Facebook-for-aiding-recent-murders-459328
Facebook defends position on content standards after Israeli censure
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-facebook-idUSKCN0ZJ0D8
Facebook is doing its share to remove abusive content from the social network, it said on Sunday in an apparent rejection of Israeli allegations that it was uncooperative in stemming messages that might spur Palestinian violence.
Beset by a 10-month-old surge in Palestinian street attacks, Israel says that Facebook has been used to perpetuate such bloodshed and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightist government is drafting legislation to enable it to order social media sites to remove postings deemed threatening.
Ramping up the pressure, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan on Saturday accused Facebook of “sabotaging” Israeli police efforts by not cooperating with inquiries about potential suspects in the occupied West Bank and by “set(ting) a very high bar for removing inciteful content and posts”.
“We have a set of community standards designed to help people understand what’s allowed on Facebook, and we call on people to use our report if they find content they believe violates these rules, so that we can examine each case and take quick action,” the statement said.
Citing sources familiar with the technology, Reuters reported last month that Facebook and other Internet companies have begun using automation to remove Islamic State videos and other extremist content from their sites.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Maybe China’s on to something: Clickbait articles now need to be ‘verified’ by officials
It’s like a spam filter only with faceless censors in charge
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/05/china_decrees_news_stories_now_need_to_be_verified/
China has stepped up its online censorship efforts with a declaration that from now on all news stories will need to be “verified” for accuracy.
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has published new rules that say websites should not publish unverified news stories from social media outlets. “It is forbidden to use hearsay to create news or use conjecture and imagination to distort the facts,” said a CAC statement.
Although China’s online censorship efforts are well known, such as the removal of political content critical of the ruling part and efforts to whitewash history, particularly the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, in this case, it is a heavy-handed effort to get rid of annoying clickbait-y made-up “news” articles like padded bras causing cancer and robots taking over.
Several big Chinese news sites have been warned and indeed “punished” this year for publishing untrue stories, according to the South China Morning Post.
The new rules state: “No website is allowed to report public news without specifying the sources, or report news that quotes untrue origins.” It also prohibits “distortion of the facts” – a requirement that would likely put the Murdoch newspaper empire out of business.
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Digital influencers’ must disclose paid-for content, says new guidance
Must ‘clearly and prominently’ label it
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/06/digital_influencers_must_disclose_paidfor_content_says_new_guidance/
Online publishers, bloggers, tweeters and other “digital influencers” must “clearly and prominently” label content they are paid to produce as paid-for promotions, new guidance developed by a body of regulators from around the world has said.
The International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN), in work led by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has published new guidelines on online reviews and endorsements for review administrators (13-page/517KB PDF), traders and marketers (11-page/3.36MB PDF) and digital influencers (10-page/1.73MB PDF).
In its guidance for digital influencers it warned that if an online review or endorsement is “not based on a genuine user experience” or “displays elements of bias without appropriate disclosure” then it can negatively impact on consumers and competition. This is because it can serve to mislead consumers into “taking decisions … they would not otherwise have taken” and because businesses that “do not engage in misleading practices” could lose trade to companies that do.
Businesses and individuals in a position of influence online should therefore “tell their readers/viewers about any incentive (financial or otherwise) that may have influenced or led them to post particular content”, the new guidance said.
“Disclosure of a commercial relationship may be appropriate regardless of whether the digital influencer has been paid, or is otherwise obliged, to write or talk about a good or service at a particular time,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook needs a way to report content as “Graphic But Newsworthy”
https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/07/live/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
Mark Zuckerberg believes Facebook Live could illuminate wrongdoing in the world.
Facebook still hasn’t explained the details of its policy on censorship of Live video. But today in response to the police shooting of Philando Castile whose last moments of life were broadcast on Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted that “The images we’ve seen this week are graphic and heartbreaking, and they shine a light on the fear that millions of members of our community live with every day.”
The comments indicate that Facebook may lean towards less censorship of Live because of its potential to expose injustices.
Facebook Needs A “Graphic But Newsworthy” Content Flag
Facebook must determine whether it’s willing to be a serious source of news, even if the content it shows is challenging or uncomfortable for some viewers seeking a more light-hearted experience. While it might seem like graphic content could scare away some users or advertisers, it could also make Facebook a more popular place for consumption and discussion of current events.
Right now, the graphic content disclaimer does a good job of shielding eyes from what they might find offensive without suppressing it.
Yet Facebook has no reporting option for important by graphic content, only that something is graphically violent.
The best bet might be for Facebook to add “Graphic but newsworthy” as a reporting option, and add the disclaimer without any temporary takedown.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube reportedly blocked or slowed in Turkey during military coup attempt; Instagram and Vimeo still available — The Turkish military has deployed in Istanbul and Ankara, and the government has apparently blocked social media in response to what is being reported as an attempted coup.
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube blocked in Turkey during reported coup attempt
https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/15/facebook-twitter-and-youtube-blocked-in-turkey-during-reported-coup-attempt/
The Turkish military has deployed in Istanbul and Ankara, and the government has apparently blocked social media in response to what is being reported as an attempted coup.
Turkey Blocks, a Twitter account that regularly checks if sites are being blocked in the country, reported at 11:04 PM Istanbul time that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were all unresponsive, though Instagram and Vimeo remained available. Access was restored after about an hour-and-a-half, according to the research agency Dyn Research.
Some residents of Turkey appeared able to access social media, likely via a VPN or some other anonymizing service. Anyone affected might want to try Tor Browser for Windows and Mac OS or Orbot for Android (or try some of the other circumvention techniques listed here).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Andrew Golis / blog.this.cm:
Link sharing startup This. to go offline at the end of the month, shutting down the site, newsletter and app
https://blog.this.cm/tough-news-f6a5138b2ab3#.lhmy681nl
Tomi Engdahl says:
Liz Spayd / New York Times:
New York Times editor estimates use of anonymous sources has decreased around 30% since tighter policy began in March
The Times Gives an Update on Anonymous Source Use
http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/15/the-times-gives-an-update-on-anonymous-source-use/
Many readers have written in to the public editor over the past months and years complaining about The Times’s persistent use of unnamed sources. This past March, The Times laid out new rules aimed at tightening up the circumstances under which these unnamed sources could be used.
A Note From Dean Baquet, Matt Purdy and Phil Corbett: New Guidelines on Anonymous Sourcing
http://www.nytco.com/a-note-from-dean-baquet-matt-purdy-and-phil-corbett-new-guidelines-on-anonymous-sourcing/
The use of anonymous sources is sometimes crucial to our journalistic mission. But it also puts a strain on our most valuable and delicate asset: our trust with readers.
At best, granting anonymity allows us to reveal the atrocities of terror groups, government abuses or other situations where sources may risk their lives, freedom or careers by talking to us. In sensitive areas like national security reporting, it can be unavoidable. But in other cases, readers question whether anonymity allows unnamed people to skew a story in favor of their own agenda.
The use of anonymous sources presents the greatest risk in our most consequential, exclusive stories. But the appearance of anonymous sources in routine government and political stories, as well as many other enterprise and feature stories, also tests our credibility with readers. They routinely cite anonymous sources as one of their greatest concerns about The Times’s journalism.
After consulting with a number of our most experienced reporters and editors, we have decided to take several steps to raise the bar and provide added scrutiny for our use of anonymous sources. These new guidelines require top editors to approve the use of anonymity. But it is incumbent on everyone producing journalism throughout the newsroom to share the responsibility.
Our basic, longstanding criteria remain unchanged: Anonymity should be, as our stylebook entry says, “a last resort, for situations in which The Times could not otherwise publish information it considers newsworthy and reliable.” That standard should be taken seriously and applied rigorously. Material from anonymous sources should be “information,” not just spin or speculation. It should be “newsworthy,” not just color or embellishment. And it should be information we consider “reliable” — ideally because we have additional corroboration, or because we know that the source has first-hand, direct knowledge. Our level of skepticism should be high and our questions pointed.