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.
871 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Social Networks Aren’t Drawing U.S. Adults Like They Used To
http://recode.net/2015/08/19/when-it-comes-to-american-adults-social-network-arent-growing-much/
There’s a good reason America’s most popular social networks are looking for new users overseas.
A new study from Pew Research Center found that social networks like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are all slowing down considerably when it comes to adding U.S. adult users. Pew reported the percentage of Internet-using adults for each network on Wednesday, and while Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest all increased (slightly) since 2014, the percentage of U.S. adults on Twitter didn’t change from 2014. LinkedIn’s number actually decreased, from 28 percent to 25 percent.
The networks that did show growth did so in small increments.
Tomi Engdahl says:
We just passed an important milestone. For the first time ever, one billion people used Facebook in a single day.
On Monday, 1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102329188394581
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google makes it official: Chrome will freeze Flash ads on sight from Sept 1
If your ads aren’t on web giant’s network, they better be HTML5 – or they’re dead to Chrome
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/28/google_says_flash_ads_out_september/
Google is making good on its promise to strangle Adobe Flash’s ability to auto-play in Chrome.
The web giant has set September 1, 2015 as the date from which non-important Flash files will be click-to-play in the browser by default – effectively freezing out “many” Flash ads in the process.
Netizens can right-click over the security-challenged plugin and select “Run this” if they want to unfreeze an ad. Otherwise, the Flash files will remain suspended in a grey box, unable to cause any harm nor any annoyance.
Click-to-play … Run if you wish
Back in June, Google warned that, in cooperation with Adobe, it would change the way Flash material is shown on websites.
Basically, “essential” Flash content (such as embedded video players) are allowed to automatically run, while non-essential Flash content, much of that being advertisements, will be automatically paused.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s Ad-Blocking Is Potential Nightmare for Publishers
http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2015/08/28/apples-ad-blocking-is-potential-nightmare-for-ad-sellers/?mod=trending_now_5
Online publishers and mobile advertising companies are bracing for Apple Inc.’s enabling of ad-blocking on its mobile devices, which they say could pose a risk to their businesses.
Apple’s Safari desktop browser has supported ad-blocking software for years. But the company is preparing to allow similar functionality in the mobile version of Safari in iOS 9, the next version of its operating system, which is expected to be released next month. The “beta” version that some people are testing includes the ad-blocking capability.
For sites that support themselves with advertising, the reason for their heartburn is clear: they are already struggling to monetize their growing mobile audiences. If millions of iPhone and iPad users can easily activate ad blocking, that will translate to fewer ads to sell and likely less revenue.
“The ad-blocking problem is real and growing, and ad-blocking on iOS is only going to accelerate it,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
At the New York Daily News’s Innovation Lab, inspiration comes from outside startups and events — Yesterday, Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow Freek Staps wrote about the many ways that news organizations can incorporate a startup-like mentality into their newsrooms.
At the New York Daily News’s Innovation Lab, inspiration comes from outside startups and events
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/08/at-the-new-york-daily-newss-innovation-lab-inspiration-comes-from-outside-startups-and-events/
“Believe me, if I was offered full-time people, I would not say no. But people want to be involved, even if it means working extra hours or going to events outside work.”
Yesterday, Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow Freek Staps wrote about the many ways that news organizations can incorporate a startup-like mentality into their newsrooms. The New York Daily News is trying to do this by actually inviting startups in: Its Innovation Lab program, launched in 2013, was expressly designed to collaborate with the burgeoning New York City media startup scene.
“We’ll never have 200 developers on staff,” Alderman told me. “But we do have the ability to connect with startups in the community and help them, while also trying to address needs we see across the media industry.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alex Spence / Politico:
Crowdfunded journalism site Contributoria folds
Crowdfunded journalism site Contributoria folds
The site provided a platform for freelance writers to publish articles.
http://www.politico.eu/article/crowdfunded-journalism-site-contributoria-folds/
LONDON — An experiment in collaborative online journalism backed by The Guardian is closing, its founders announced in a letter to members Friday.
Contributoria, which launched in January last year after winning a journalism innovation contest sponsored by Google, will publish its final articles next month, the founders said.
They did not give a reason for the closure, saying only that it was “the right time.”
Guardian Media Group, which funded the project, also declined to give a reason. “We remain committed to innovating in the digital and media space and will continue to support and experiment with future initiatives,” a spokeswoman said by email.
Contributoria was the brainchild of Matt McAlister, the Guardian’s head of new digital business, and Sarah Hartley, a former Guardian journalist. It was one of several attempts in recent years at exploring new funding models for online journalism.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
European publishers are actively lobbying to strengthen copyright rules and limit Google’s advertising power
European Publishers Play Lobbying Role Against Google
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/29/technology/european-publishers-play-lobbying-role-against-google.html?_r=0
BERLIN — In private sessions this summer, giant publishers and media companies from Germany, France and elsewhere have met with European officials about proposals to regulate Europe’s digital economy. The discussions have covered a broad range of contentious issues, according to public disclosures and several people who attended or were briefed on the meetings. Central to almost all of them has been limiting the reach of a single American company: Google.
The company has a long list of detractors crying foul about how it operates in Europe, including rivals like Microsoft and Yelp. But as Europeans take a lead globally in regulating the Internet and containing American tech companies, the Continent’s old media — influential newspaper and magazine publishers — are emerging as one of Google’s most persistent adversaries.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Europe Is Going After Google, Amazon and Other U.S. Tech Giants
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/13/technology/How-Europe-Is-Going-After-U.S.-Tech-Giants.html
The biggest American tech companies face intensifying scrutiny by European regulators — pressure that could potentially curb their sizable profits in the region and affect how they operate around the world.
Antitrust: In April, the European Union’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, formally charged the company of abusing its dominance in web searches, accusing it of diverting traffic from its rivals to favor its own products and services, particularly websites for shopping.
Right to Be Forgotten: Europe’s highest court ruled in May 2014 that citizens have a so-called right to be forgotten, and that search engines, including Google, must honor some requests from users to delete links to personal information.
Taxation: The European Union’s antitrust office released a preliminary finding in January that a tax deal between Amazon and Luxembourg appears to amount to unfair state aid that may have enabled the company to underpay its taxes. Antitrust officials had opened the investigation in October 2014.
Data privacy: French, Italian and Spanish privacy officials announced in early April they had opened investigations into the social network’s privacy policies; similar inquiries have already been started by Dutch, Belgian and German officials.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Elias Groll / Foreign Policy:
How journalist Brian Krebs used publicly available information to possibly identify the Ashley Madison hacker — The Curious Case of @deuszu, the Ashley Madison Hack, and an American Journalist — As word has trickled out on the Internet of the massive breach of adultery website Ashley Madison …
The Curious Case of @deuszu, the Ashley Madison Hack, and an American Journalist
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/27/the-curious-case-of-deuszu-the-ashley-madison-hack-and-an-american-journalist/
On July 19, journalist Brian Krebs revealed that Ashley Madison’s servers had been hacked. That report was based on a link to a cache of Ashley Madison data he was provided by the Impact Team, the group claiming to be behind the hack. Shortly after his story posted, @deuszu tweeted the same link. And when the Impact Team posted Ashley Madison’s user date, @deuszu beat the news cycle again, scooping tech outlets Wired and Ars Technica.
Zu’s ability to advance news of the hack has led Krebs, arguably today’s most prominent chronicler of cybercrime, to a simple conclusion: The person or people behind the @deuszu Twitter account either carried out the Ashley Madison hack or know those who did. “Here’s a person who has the inside track of what the Ashley Madison hackers have been doing,”
In a case that has exposed the most privately held secrets of millions of people, Krebs’s investigation is notable for its total reliance on open-source material. If Zu is in fact connected to the breach, he has been astoundingly arrogant in the amount of information he has posted online, given the ease with which it has been collected by Krebs.
The investigation itself is a fascinating case study in how morsels of online information can be pieced together to make a basically convincing case that a social media profile and those who have access to it are connected to a hacking affair that has captivated the world.
It’s not the first time Krebs has carried out such an investigation. Following the widespread theft of credit card data from Target, Krebs identified the Ukrainian hacker Andrew Hodirevski as one of the people responsible for selling the stolen credit card information on the Internet underground.
“One thing that I find with these malicious or criminal hackers is that they just can’t help themselves,” Krebs said, referring to their proclivity for broadcasting information about their exploits. “They have tremendous egos, and they end up digging their own graves.”
Krebs isn’t claiming to have solved this case. “These are my observations. Are they 100 percent right? I’m sure they’re not,” he said. “Is there a pattern here that deserves more scrutiny? Yes.”
The Ashley Madison hack has generated intense public interest and is fairly unprecedented in the recent history of massive data breaches. Stealing credit cards or social security numbers can certainly be damaging, but exposing a spouse’s desire to have an affair is a far more personal matter. Reports have surfaced of hackers trying to blackmail those whose account information has been leaked. There are even reports of suicides connected to the breach.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lights, Camera, Experiment!
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/08/30/1436206/lights-camera-experiment
The New Yorker’s Jamie Holmes takes a look at How Methods Videos Are Making Science Smarter, helping scientists replicate elaborate experiments in a way that the text format of traditional journals simply can’t. The Journal of Visualized Experiments (JOVE), for instance, is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that now has a database of more than four thousand videos that are usually between ten and fifteen minutes long, ranging in subject from biology and chemistry to neuroscience and medicine.
How Methods Videos Are Making Science Smarter
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-methods-videos-are-making-science-smarter
The videos can be of particular help to researchers who are not naturally aware of the dexterity that a specific laboratory procedure requires. As Jonathan Butcher, of Cornell’s School of Biomedical Engineering, put it, “Not everybody is intrinsically a good gardener.” Recently, for example, Butcher’s colleagues sent him an e-mail indicating with skepticism that they couldn’t replicate some of his results. The procedure in question required gently swabbing off cells from the lining of blood vessels in the valves of the heart. When Butcher invited the researchers to his lab and watched them try it, he realized that they were oblivious as to how to do it delicately. “They just thought that scraping is scraping,” he said. After they observed a visual demonstration, they were able to replicate the procedure. Rather than repeating this process for numerous investigators, Butcher published a video in JOVE. Since then, he hasn’t been contacted by other doubters. Indeed, Pritsker said, the journal’s sweet spot is anything that requires animal surgery, in which the convenience of visuals veers toward necessity.
Since 2013, JOVE’s user base has grown by thirty per cent per year, and last year the journal, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, opened subsidiaries in London and Melbourne.
The consumption of methods videos remains modest compared with that of traditional, print-only journals. Poorly conceived videos can be as unhelpful as inscrutable text, of course, and no video will fully substitute for an in-person demonstration. They also aren’t as cheap to produce as standard journal articles, and there have been complaints about JOVE’s pricing structure. One point of concern is publication costs: researchers pay twenty-four hundred dollars to produce a video that is available only to subscribers, and forty-two hundred dollars for an open-access video.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nick Summers / Engadget:
Samsung creating its own curated news app, UPDAY, for Galaxy devices, as it partners with Axel Springer for mobile media content — Samsung’s creating its own curated news app for Galaxy devices — Apple isn’t the only one developing an exclusive news service for its mobile customers.
Samsung’s creating its own curated news app for Galaxy devices
http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/01/samsung-axel-springer-upday/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wikipedia’s biggest scandal: Industrial-scale blackmail
But can the stables be cleaned? And does anyone actually want to clean them?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/03/wikipedia_industrial_scale_smears_and_blackmail/
No media mogul in history has ever matched the power of Wikipedia, which is capable of damaging reputations on an industrial scale. But with no checks in place to identify contributors, it was only a matter of time before fraudsters and blackmailers took advantage of Wikipedia to use it systematically, for profit.
The Independent newspaper reported that this is exactly what has happened: hundreds of individuals and businesses were scammed by editors, who fraudulently claimed to improve reputations and even blackmailed subjects who didn’t pay up.
There are serious questions to be asked, not only of Wikipedia’s community structures – which encourage and protect anonymous editing – but also of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) itself. The charity has amassed assets of over $70m and a ready cash pile of millions of dollars, thanks to aggressive fundraising which suggests donors must pay to keep the site online (in reality, only around $3m is required to run the site every year). Yet the Foundation has little power to compel anyone to do anything: the community makes its own mind up. Neither seems able to bear much self-examination.
Wikipedia rocked by ‘rogue editors’ blackmail scam targeting small businesses and celebrities
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/wikipedia-rocked-by-rogue-editors-blackmail-scam-targeting-small-businesses-and-celebrities-10481993.html
Hundreds of small British businesses and minor celebrities have been targeted by a sophisticated blackmail scam orchestrated by “rogue editors” at Wikipedia, The Independent can reveal.
The victims, who range from a wedding photographer in Dorset to a high-end jewellery shop in Shoreditch, east London, faced demands for hundreds of pounds to “protect” or update Wikipedia pages about their businesses. A former Britain’s Got Talent contestant was among dozens of individuals targeted.
Wikipedia has taken action against what it described as the “co-ordinated group” of fraudsters by blocking 381 accounts. An investigation had found that the accounts were controlled by Wikipedia users offering to change articles about companies and private individuals in exchange for payment.
In some cases, the requests for money amounted to blackmail, Wikipedia told The Independent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:
Hachette, HarperCollins Publishers, and Simon & Schuster report declining revenues on ebooks after winning the right to set prices in deal with Amazon — E-Book Sales Fall After New Amazon Contracts — E-book revenue is falling, and some people in the publishing industry say it is partly …
E-Book Sales Fall After New Amazon Contracts
Prices rise, but revenue takes a hit
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/e-book-sales-weaken-amid-higher-prices-1441307826-lMyQjAxMTE1MzAxNDUwMjQ2Wj
When the world’s largest publishers struck e-book distribution deals with Amazon.com Inc. over the past several months, they seemed to get what they wanted: the right to set the prices of their titles and avoid the steep discounts the online retail giant often applies.
But in the early going, that strategy doesn’t appear to be paying off. Three big publishers that signed new pacts with Amazon— Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group, News Corp ’s HarperCollins Publishers and CBS Corp. ’s Simon & Schuster—reported declining e-book revenue in their latest reporting periods.
“The new business model for e-books is having a significant impact on what [the big] publishers report,” said one publishing executive. “There’s no question that publishers’ net receipts have gone down.”
A recent snapshot of e-book prices found that titles in the Kindle bookstore from the five biggest publishers cost, on average, $10.81, while all other 2015 e-books on the site had an average price of $4.95, according to industry researcher Codex Group LLC.
“Since book buyers expect the price of a Kindle e-book to be well under $9, once you get to over $10 consumers start to say, ‘Let me think about that,’” said Codex CEO Peter Hildick-Smith.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startup L. Jackson / Startups and S**t:
Twitter’s core product is fine for current users, but company is overvalued and has to show investors it can grow with projects like Vine, Periscope — Twitter’s Product is F**king Fine — It seems all the range to write thought pieces on Twitter’s product problems.
http://startupljackson.com/post/128504446315/twitters-product-is-fucking-fine
Eugene Wei / Remains of the Day:
Twitter should remove arbitrary 140 character limit and other legacy restrictions to appeal to mainstream users, recognize its true strength is its network — The network’s the thing — Last week Instagram announced it was supporting more than just square aspect ratios for photos and videos.
The network’s the thing
http://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2015/9/1/when-the-network-is-mature
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wikipedia founder backs site’s systems after extortion scam
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/06/wikipedia-founder-backs-sites-systems-after-extortion-scam
Jimmy Wales says system is secure after users posed as senior editors and demanded payment from businesses
The founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, has spoken out in defence of the online encyclopedia’s systems for detecting and dealing with abuse for the first time since an extortion scam was uncovered, which led to hundreds of Wikipedia editor accounts being blocked.
Wales said the blocking of 381 Wikipedia editor accounts for “black hat” editing as part of an attempt to extort money from people and businesses was proof that the site’s systems for detecting and dealing with abuse were working.
Wales said: “We’ve seen coordinated editing and attempts to do paid advocacy, but we’ve not seen it be so bluntly dishonest in trying to deceive the victims.”
More than 200 Wikipedia articles created by deceptive accounts, known as sock puppets, were removed after a network of deceptive accounts was found to be approaching businesses and individuals and demanding payment to create pages about them and then protect them from being negatively edited – while pretending to be senior Wikipedia editors.
Wales said: “It was the result of an investigation into some suspicious behaviour uncovered by the community, which was followed up on to figure out what was going on. And we solved the problem by banning this cluster of accounts. For us, it’s a validation of how we do things: how it’s supposed to work.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Business
Well, what d’you know: Raising e-book prices doesn’t raise sales
Perhaps there is life in that dog of a neoclassical price system
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/09/e_books_sales_fall_harpercollins_news_corp/
One of the things those within economics think that the subject gets generally correct is microeonomics, which itself is generally a discussion of the price system. There are those who insist that this is all well, true, insisting that since we’re not all rational agents, don’t have perfect knowledge, then that standard neoclassical model is wrong.
This then means that the Fat Controller should be telling us all what to do, which doesn’t seem all that much better to be honest.
However, the real point here is not what is absolutely and exactly true down to the last detail, but what theoretical framework explains much of our world pretty well? At which point a quick peek at what’s been happening to e-books ever since publishers raised prices might be instructive:
When the world’s largest publishers struck e-book distribution deals with Amazon.com over the past several months, they seemed to get what they wanted: the right to set the prices of their titles and avoid the steep discounts the online retail giant often applies.
But in the early going, that strategy doesn’t appear to be paying off.
Three big publishers that signed new pacts with Amazon – Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group, News Corp’s HarperCollins Publishers and CBS Corp’s Simon & Schuster – reported declining e-book revenue in their latest reporting periods.
It’s worth pointing out that over the same time scale Amazon showed increasing revenue: meaning that if the higher priced traditional publishers are getting less then the independents must be getting much more. It’s also instructive that the average price of an e-book from the big publishers is $10.81, while the average price of all non-big publisher e-books is $4.95.
Further, since the publishers regained from Amazon the ability to set prices they have raised them and this coincides with the fall in their general revenue from those products.
In detail there’s an interesting little pricing puzzle here. Selling a physical book comes with marginal costs per sale: there’s the cost of printing and distributing that last book that you’ve just sold. Thus one cannot adopt a pricing policy which aims to maximise gross revenue: to do so would lead to less profit than adopting one where the marginal book sold covered its marginal cost.
With an e-book the pricing policy should, to maximise profit, be to maximise that gross revenue received. For there’s only one set of fixed costs (getting the book written, proofed and uploaded, marketed, assuming that the writer is only ever on a profit share or royalty) and any revenue gained at all from the sale of that last marginal sale is an addition to profit.
All of which is remarkably like what the advice from the standard neoclassical pricing model would be. And we are seeing here that raising prices does lead to a fall off in sales. And, given the cost structure of producing e-books a subsequent falling off in profits.
Do note that the neoclassical model does not say that all firms immediately adopt this wondrous pricing model: only that after however many iterations of trying to maximise profits then that’s where the equilibrium will settle down (that this all happens immediately is something found only in the more extreme versions of the models).
Higher prices reduces sales. Who knew that demand curves slope downwards? Except, obviously, everyone who has ever cracked open page one of the Econ 101 course.
Demand curves slope downwards: as the price of fuel drops people are willing to consume more of it.
Yes, of course, there’s still large areas of controversy in economics.
Over in macroeconomics there’s still not one single major theorem that you could get every currently living Nobel Laureate to sign up to.
If and when prices rise people will buy less of that good and substitute out to something else. Meaning that those who have raised prices face falling profits and might be tempted to reverse course.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ten Years Later, This Is How Techmeme Has Avoided Click-Bait, Auto-Play Ads, And More
http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ten-years-later-how-techmeme-has-avoided-click-bait-auto-play-rivera
Techmeme launched on September 12, 2005 amid a flurry of blog posts from Robert Scoble, Richard MacManus, and several others. Friends and Techmeme team members have insisted we need to mark this anniversary, so I reluctantly wrote the following listicle of surprising facts about Techmeme. Now that I’ve finished, I am glad I wrote it. Enjoy!
1. Techmeme didn’t launch with the name “Techmeme”, or even its own top level domain. Instead, it launched as tech.memeorandum, the technology offshoot of memeorandum, an automated aggregator of news and commentary mainly around US politics.
2. Techmeme’s original mission statement still holds up nicely today, allowing for a few addendums.
3. Although it has almost no direct competition today, Techmeme was reportedly beset by a legion of competitors for years.
4. Techmeme has lots of indirect competition, including Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. Like all media sites, Techmeme’s real competition comes from whatever is best at diverting attention that it might otherwise draw. So foremost among Techmeme’s “competitors” are Twitter, Facebook, blogs that function as news aggregators, and, in fact, media of all forms (not to mention sunshine, children, and puppies).
5. Lately we’ve been more about building team and process than technology.
6. Techmeme usually has only one editor working at a time. In 2008 we announced we were coupling our algorithmic engine with our first human editor. Since then, we’ve hired several more editors to provide near-24/7 coverage. Even with those additional editors, we still follow a model in which usually just one editor works on Techmeme at a time.
7. Our editing model leads to a highly distributed and international team, and no offices. Covering news 24/7, but with only one editor working a site at a time leads to an organization built around working from home, so long as those home offices span many time zones. The flexibility that comes with working from home has enabled us to tap talent pools unavailable to other kinds of organizations, particularly stay-at-home parents and full time college students.
8. Opting not to host articles profoundly affects the way news can be conveyed for non-obvious reasons. Because Techmeme doesn’t host its own stories, we’re never tempted to publish more articles than our readers want just to goose traffic.
9. Techmeme has never run interstitials, page takeovers, mouse-over ads, auto-playing anything, or even banners. Arriving at a sustainable ad model for Techmeme was never going to be easy. When you don’t host articles, you don’t rack up as many page views, and moreover, you don’t have very sharable content, the kind that attracts monthly unique visitors
10. Techmeme has never taken VC: a lesson for some, but a model for none. I always hoped it would be possible to build and sustain Techmeme without the aid of venture capital or debt.
the lessons we learned are not so widely applicable, especially in 2015.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Simon Khalaf / Flurry Insights Blog:
Time spent inside mobile apps has exceeded that of time spent watching TV in the US for the first time
The Cable Industry Faces The Perfect Storm: Apps, App Stores and Apple
http://flurrymobile.tumblr.com/post/128773968605/the-cable-industry-faces-the-perfect-storm-apps
On the 3rd of September, 2015, Benedict Evans, a veteran mobile industry analyst turned venture capitalist, tweeted a chart showing how traditional TV is losing its share of screen to smartphones and tablets. While Mr. Evans’ chart was not the first chart to alarm the cable industry, its timing was particularly interesting, as it came exactly a week before Apple’s major update of its Apple TV hardware. In fact, many financial and industry analysts have predicted the demise of the cable industry since rumors of a new Apple TV hardware or an Apple over-the-top streaming service emerged earlier this year.
After yesterday’s announcement, it turns out fears surrounding the long-term prospects of the cable industry were well warranted. We believe that the industry is facing a perfect storm: Apps, App Stores and Apple.
Apps Are Gaining Ground
After putting the desktop web in their rear view mirror, apps now reign supreme as the top media channel in the United States, even without the help of the mobile browser. For the first time ever, time spent inside mobile applications by the average US consumer has exceeded that of TV.
And they are paying handsomely. This year, it’s estimated that revenues from in-app purchases will exceed advertising revenues for the first time. In 2014, App stores generated $21B USD in sales on a worldwide basis, while the mobile ads industry generated $23B USD during the same time. This year, we expect in-app purchases to exceed $33B USD and the ads industry (excluding search) is expected to generate $31B USD.
As shown on the chart above, the average US consumer is spending 198 minutes per day inside apps compared to 168 minutes on TV. Please note that the 198 minutes per day spent inside apps on smartphones and tablets don’t include time spent in the mobile browser.
It is hard for us to quantify how much of that time spent in apps overlaps with time spent on TV, as the second screen phenomena is clearly prevalent especially among generations Y and Z. So, while time-spent on TV hasn’t decreased, it is hard to say how much of that time is actual watching, versus having background noise to the plethora of apps being actively consumed on mobile devices. In the media industry, time-spent is the ultimate metric and if we simply look at the chart above, there is no point for analysts to debate the long term prospects of the cable industry.They’re better off debating its short-term prospects.
App Users Pay For Content
Since its launch in 2008 and until this year, the Apple App Store and its Android counterpart’s top grossing charts have been dominated by the gaming industry. But this year, many media & entertainment apps such as Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, Spotify and Pandora have ranked well in the top grossing charts and have ended the gaming industry’s de-facto monopoly on the App Store’s revenues. This demonstrates that the mobile consumer has been trained to pay for content.
This impressive growth in sales can easily encourage traditional media companies to move its content to apps and stream it over-the-top, charge consumers for it through the App Stores, and still make money from ads.
Here Comes the … New and Improved Apple TV
While Apple didn’t announce its much anticipated TV service (the cable killer) yesterday, it sent a warning shot at the cable industry in particular and the the media industry in general.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Columbia Journalism Review:
Study: 66 self-identified longform readers finished 94% of 1349 long stories they started, shared 35%, placing big premium on sources they trust — Readers will finish long stories—especially if they come from a trusted source — For a moment in time when the internet was new …
Readers will finish long stories—especially if they come from a trusted source
http://www.cjr.org/innovations/why_do_people_share_stories.php
For a moment in time when the internet was new, and even a little later when excitement about longform reached a fever pitch, one important question was largely ignored: Who is this particular story for, and how can I make sure that an audience sees it?
It’s a question journalists are only beginning to answer.
A year or so ago, three of us at The Big Roundtable asked ourselves, how do we—with limited access to Web analytics—better understand the reading behavior of longform lovers, and what it is that compels those readers to share a story?
So we conducted a study, funded by Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, that looked at how 63 self-identified longform readers found, read, and shared long stories over the course of 21 days.
Among our most remarkable findings is that readers finished 94% of the longform pieces they started. To understand why that completion rate is a big deal, we have to step back in time to the early days of the internet, when conventional wisdom held that readers would not be interested in stories longer than the height of a computer screen.
Instead, with much faster download speeds and the advent of the tablet’s “lean back” reading experience, journalism has seen a rise in “longform” ventures, among them curated sites like Longreads.com and Longform.org, and publishers of original content like the Atavist, Narratively, and The Big Roundtable. In addition, more and more media organizations, like BuzzFeed and Politico, have begun publishing longer pieces, while others, such as The New York Times, have thrown their resources and manpower behind ambitious design projects like “Snow Fall.”
“Snow Fall” was a milestone achievement in online interactive storytelling, and quickly every newspaper and Web magazine seemed to want its own version. In the flurry of excitement about the story’s great design, the question of who was reading it got lost.
But analytics offer an incomplete picture of reader behavior, and little real insight into how readers engage. Page views, entrances, time on page, and bounce rates are helpful to only a limited degree.
Steve Jobs famously said, “Customers don’t know what they want.” The same can be said for readers.
Our participants read a total of 1,349 stories in three weeks and shared 469 (35%) of them. Intuition tells us that a 35% is a high sharing rate
When readers do decide to share a story, the most powerful tool—email—is also limited: Personal emails from one individual to the next are most powerful at getting someone to act, but because the interaction is between so few people, it’s less likely that the recipient will be someone with the power to make a story go viral.
Email brings with it a social compact: that the sender knows the recipient and, it seems reasonable to conclude, understands what might interest the recipient most. It also feels fair to conclude that in the act of sharing via email, the sender assumes a certain risk, one built upon the assumption of knowledge and understanding of the recipient’s interests. After all, in sharing a long story, the sender is essentially saying to the recipient, “I know you well enough not just to believe, but to know that you will want to commit half an hour or so to this story.” If a story recommendation misses the mark, it dilutes the sharer’s future power. Far safer, then, is sharing via social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, where the broadcasted story is essentially scattered to all of one’s “friends,” regardless of whether they are people the sender has met.
It appears that a trusted name brings with it the warrant of quality; readers are more likely to invest their time in a story that comes from a media outlet they know rather than one they don’t. This, in turn, suggests that curation is an essential component of how longform gets read—whether that curator is an editor at a media outlet the reader values, or a friend.
So why do some stories take off while others—of equal quality and intrigue—don’t?
The answer here, too, is linked to the notion of trust, in this case the trustworthiness of the source who first shared the story.
Long reads take time to produce—to report, write and edit—and time to read, and they demand something of a reader, with the promise of delivering something more lasting in return.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Is Building An Empathy Button, Not “Dislike”. Here’s How It Could Work
http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/15/the-sorry-button/
The Dislike button has long been the most requested feature from Facebook users. So when Mark Zuckerberg today said in a public Q&A that the company was working on a way to show empathy for victims of tragedies and other things that are inappropriate to Like, news outlets around the world sprung into action saying the masses would soon get their wish.
But don’t hold your breath for a button called “Dislike”. Zuck explicitly said that’s not what Facebook is building.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Independent publishers are collateral damage in the war over ad revenues between Google, Apple, and Facebook
Welcome to hell: Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook and the slow death of the web
By Nilay Patel on September 17, 2015 08:32 am Email @reckless
http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/17/9338963/welcome-to-hell-apple-vs-google-vs-facebook-and-the-slow-death-of-the-web
So let’s talk about ad blocking.
You might think the conversation about ad blocking is about the user experience of news, but what we’re really talking about is money and power in Silicon Valley. And titanic battles between large companies with lots of money and power tend to have a lot of collateral damage.
iOS 9 came out yesterday (in fits and starts) and with it, support for content blockers in iOS 9. There is already a little cottage industry of ad blockers available, and you should definitely try one or two — they will radically improve your mobile web experience, because they will… block huge chunks of the web from loading.
Those huge chunks — the ads! — are almost certainly the part you don’t want. What you want is the content, hot sticky content, snaking its way around your body and mainlining itself directly into your brain. Plug that RSS firehose straight into your optic nerve and surf surf surf ’til you die.
Unfortunately, the ads pay for all that content, an uneasy compromise between the real cost of media production and the prices consumers are willing to pay that has existed since the first human scratched the first antelope on a wall somewhere. Media has always compromised user experience for advertising: that’s why magazine stories are abruptly continued on page 96, and why 30-minute sitcoms are really just 22 minutes long. Media companies put advertising in the path of your attention, and those interruptions are a valuable product. Your attention is a valuable product.
Now, here’s the thing about the web, and in particular web ads: the biggest provider of ads on the web is Google. In particular, Google runs an ad server called DoubleClick for Publishers, or DFP. DFP is huge, and it serves ads for basically every major publisher: Vox Media and The Verge use DFP. BuzzFeed uses DFP. ESPN uses DFP. If you are seeing advertising on the web, there is a real chance it’s being served to you by DFP.
Then, in addition to DFP, Google runs the web’s largest ad exchange, AdX. DFP lets publishers serve their own ads, while AdX is responsible for those programmatic ads that follow you around the web. Those are the three biggest categories of web advertising revenue — premium display, native, and programmatic — and Google has a huge stake in all of them.
In fact, there’s no other company that’s managed to monetize the web quite like Google has through the power of DFP and AdX. The web has always been Google’s native platform, and DFP means that the web is also Google’s revenue platform — users search for things using Google, see Google search ads, and then land on content that is further monetized by Google DFP and its ad exchange. This is basically the foundation of Google’s entire business: Google makes the lion’s share of its money on search, and Google search doesn’t work if the web isn’t searchable, so Google has a huge interest in making the web profitable for media companies, so they can search all that content.
But what’s happening now is that attention is shifting fast from desktop browsers — where Google’s Chrome is dominant (and supports ad blocking!) — to mobile browsers. In particular, to Apple’s Mobile Safari, which dominates usage statistics on mobile.
And with iOS 9 and content blockers, what you’re seeing is Apple’s attempt to fully drive the knife into Google’s revenue platform.
But taking money and attention away from the web means that the pace of web innovation will slow to a crawl. Innovation tends to follow the money, after all! And asking most small- to medium-sized sites to weather that change without dramatic consequences is utterly foolish. Just look at the number of small sites that have shut down this year: GigaOm. The Dissolve.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Danny Sullivan / Marketing Land:
Ad blocking war heats up as blockers top the App Store, some publishers fight back by hiding content from people using blockers
Round 2: Peace Ad Blocker Pulled & CNET Fights Back
As concerns for and by publishers rise about ad blocking, the most popular new one for iOS bows out.
http://marketingland.com/peace-ad-blocker-pulled-143270
The revolution in ad blocking that was ushered in with iOS9 has seen its first pushback. The Peace ad blocker that topped the Apple App Store charts has been pulled, while CNET introduced messages blocking the blockers.
Concerns For Publishers, Including Independents
On the other side of that war have been any number of publishers and other voices raising concerns that ad blocking is robbing publications of revenue they need and that it especially hits hard at small independent ones.
Indeed, among those small publishers are places like Daring Fireball, the popular blog of John Gruber. He expressed dissatisfaction that Peace stripped ads off his site that were provided by The Deck.
Publishers Fight Back
Meanwhile, The Loop noted that CNET was now targeting messages to those using ad blockers, telling them to disable the blockers to view content. The Washington Post did something similar earlier this month, before iOS9 was even released (that move had an impact on people using ad blockers with desktop browsers).
“It’s going to be a bloody war,” wrote Dave Mark, of The Loop.
Indeed. Ad blockers have been largely ignored until now because they’ve generally been seen as not worth the effort for most publishers to challenge. But when Apple made them so much easier to enable for mobile browsing, where the growth area has been, alarms got sounded. Seeing ad blockers then actually rise to be among the top paid for apps has taken that to red alert.
By the way, I’m actually seeing ads on CNET — and from Google’s ad network — despite using multiple blockers. That suggests to me that some scripts might have already changed to get around the blockers.
Battle Likely To Continue
At some point, there’s likely to be a legal tussle, one that might involve both makers of such apps and Apple itself. That’ll be messy.
People have real concerns that too much tracking is going on, and they want to reassert control without being required to study ways to opt out of various ad networks — work that still won’t help with malicious networks. People also obviously would love to have a faster, cleaner browsing experience.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Re/code:
Netflix-like e-book subscription service Oyster to shut down; part of team moving to Google Play Books, including CEO and co-founders according to sources
Oyster, a Netflix for Books, Is Shutting Down. But Most of Its Team Is Heading to Google.
http://recode.net/2015/09/21/oyster-books-shuts-down-team-heads-to-google/
Oyster, a company that provides a Netflix-like book subscription service, is shutting down. And most of its team is heading over to Google.
In a blog post on Monday, Oyster’s founders said they were “taking steps to sunset” the company’s service, which launched in 2012. “We believe more than ever that the phone will be the primary reading device globally over the next decade,” they wrote. “Looking forward, we feel this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for e-books.”
Those opportunities may happen at Google. A rep for the search giant confirmed that “a portion” of the Oyster team has joined Google Play Books, its online store for books.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Washington Post Launches Instant Articles on Facebook
https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/wp/2015/09/22/the-washington-post-launches-instant-articles-on-facebook/
The Washington Post today became the first new partner to launch on Facebook’s Instant Articles platform. The Post will send 100% of its stories to Facebook so that all Washington Post content can be formatted as Instant Articles, giving readers a lightning-fast user experience for reading, sharing and commenting within the Facebook iOS app.
“We want to reach current and future readers on all platforms, and we aren’t holding anything back,” said Fred Ryan, publisher, The Washington Post. “Launching Instant Articles on Facebook enables to give this extremely large audience a faster, more seamless news reading experience.”
The Post has partnered with Facebook to ensure all of our rich content like videos and galleries are formatted to feel native to the Facebook platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Instant Articles
https://instantarticles.fb.com/
A new way for publishers to create fast, interactive articles on Facebook.
Using existing production tools and standard markup language, you can publish any type of article, from daily news coverage to longform features. Harness standard HTML and RSS feeds to scale entire content libraries in the Instant Articles format and provide a fast, interactive experience for all of your readers on Facebook.
You maintain control over your content and your business model. Sell ads in your articles and keep the revenue. Earn comScore traffic credit and bring your own analytics tools. Customize how your brand identity is represented from News Feed into the article.
Tomi Engdahl says:
You’ve been Drudged! Malware-squirting ads appear on websites with 100+ million visitors
eBay, Drudge Report, etc inadvertantly carry evil adverts
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/14/malvertising_expands_drudge/
Internet lowlifes who used Yahoo! ads to infect potentially countless PCs with malware have struck again – using adverts on popular websites to reach millions more people.
Security researchers at MalwareBytes this week discovered the crooks running another massive campaign of ads that use the Angler Exploit Kit to infiltrate Windows PCs via vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash and web browsers.
“I think supporting free content is fine but not with the kind of risk it entails. People already hate ads, and we really didn’t need another incentive to block them,” said MalwareBytes senior security researcher Jérôme Segura.
“The popularity of ad blockers may really force the ad industry’s hand to change how they go about advertising.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
Study of millennials’ news reading habits shows majority don’t pay for news and many use a subscription service paid for by someone else
Guess what: Millennials aren’t all the same when it comes to news consumption
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/09/guess-what-millennials-arent-all-the-same-when-it-comes-to-news-consumption/
Millennials tend to get lumped into a big group when it comes to hand-wringing about their news consumption habits. But (shocker) defining the entire group of people born between 1980 and 1998 as a “monolithic group that doesn’t change with age and different circumstances” doesn’t really make sense, according to a new report from the Media Insight Project.
The report, out Friday, is a collaboration between The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute. The researchers found that “millennials’ news and Internet habits fall into four distinct types.”
The Unattached
The Explorers
The Distracted
The Activists
it’s interesting to see who pays for news and who is still relying on someone else’s subscription (probably a parent’s) for it
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jack Marshall / Wall Street Journal:
Digital Content Next study: fraudulent traffic is 2.8% at member sites like Conde Nast, ESPN, Vox Media, CBS, NBCUniversal, NYT, vs. 11% on wider Web
Big Publishers’ Fraud Rate is 2.8%, Wider Web’s is 11%, Studies Say
Online media companies aim to distance themselves from ad fraud
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/big-publishers-fraud-rate-is-2-8-wider-webs-is-11-studies-say-1443412888-lMyQjAxMTI1NDI5ODkyODg1Wj
Fraudulent traffic is a problem that continues to plague the digital advertising industry, particularly with ads purchased from online advertising networks or automated ad exchanges, buyers say.
As a result, well-known media companies are eager to distance themselves from the issue, and to use the relative lack of fraud on their sites to help differentiate their ad offerings in the market.
To evaluate the quality of traffic to its members’ properties, online publishing trade group Digital Content Next commissioned ad fraud detection firm White Ops to study 32 of its members’ sites for 53 days, from June 22 through August 14. DCN participants included Conde Nast, ESPN, Vox Media, CBS Interactive, NBCUniversal, the New York Times and more.
The goal was to compare fraudulent traffic to its members’ sites with that present in the wider online ad ecosystem, which was last year examined by a separate White Ops study.
According to DCN’s study, “sophisticated bots” accounted for an average of 2.8% of traffic to display ads across its members’ properties, and 2.5% of traffic to video ads.
“It’s interesting that these guys are now trying to define ‘premium’ as a category as ‘bot-free,’” Mr. Tiffany said. “That’s the world we’re living in; it’s a selling point.”
“The results are compelling, but this is not the finish line,” he said. “The trust that [member publishers] have in their brands and what defines premium is something they earn every day.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lynne Marek / Chicago Business:
Tribune Publishing CEO Jack Griffin says mobile devices are used mainly as search tools, are not suitable replacements for newspapers — Trib Publishing’s Griffin plays digital catch-up … For a man leading a digital revolution, Tribune Publishing CEO Jack Griffin is surprisingly sanguine about the enduring value of newspapers.
Trib Publishing’s Griffin plays digital catch-up
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20150925/NEWS06/150929889/trib-publishings-griffin-plays-digital-catch-up
For a man leading a digital revolution, Tribune Publishing CEO Jack Griffin is surprisingly sanguine about the enduring value of newspapers.
He believes they’re still likely to exist in 10 years, and that 20-somethings will keep picking up the newspaper-reading habit, he said in an interview this week. He also doesn’t discount the possibility that newspapers will continue to account for more than half his company’s revenue in 2025.
Holding the paper up, he said: “I could be wrong, but I don’t think that this entirely goes away. I think there’s enough about it—the experience that’s sufficiently different with both the advertising and the editorial. I mean, how do you do that online?” He answers his own question later: “That’s really hard to do online or on a phone.”
Among Tribune Publishing’s many challenges, this is still the biggest: surviving in a digital era.
Griffin has kept his focus on a five-point strategy aimed at reversing a decline in the company’s revenue and stock price, which has plummeted from a high of $23.49 in December to about $8 today.
Newspaper circulations nationwide have been dropping over the past 20 years in reaction to the rise of digital alternatives, which have pulled away readers and the advertisers who pay to reach them. The pace of that decline quickened in the past 10 years. Between 1995 and 2005, print circulation nationwide declined 8.3 percent on weekdays and 9.7 percent on Sundays, but over the past decade, between 2005 and 2014, it plunged 24.2 percent to 40.4 million on weekdays and 22.7 percent to 42.8 million on Sundays, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
“Overall, where we are headed, is a strong(er) Sunday, weekly, printed paper and daily digital,” said Ken Doctor, a media industry consultant in Burlingame, Calif. “The economics of daily digital will dictate how soon the printed daily goes away and where first, but I have little doubt that between 2020 and 2025 we’ll be in a Sunday print/daily digital world.”
Tribune Publishing still delivers about 2.5 million papers daily across the country, and has signed up just 70,000 digital subscribers across its national network. It earns the bulk of its revenue from the print business
The digital riddle has vexed newspaper companies industrywide. Some, including the Wall Street Journal, began cultivating a digital audience earlier than others, forcing readers to pay for digital subscriptions.
“They’re just at the start of digital,” BWS Financial analyst Hamed Khorsand said of Tribune Publishing’s efforts. “Now, they’re actually investing in it and making it work.”
Nonetheless, sometime in the next few weeks, the company will once again resort to job and expense cuts to make up for continuing revenue declines
Still, he concedes he’s playing “catch-up” on the digital front. “It’s a bit of a maelstrom,” Griffin said. “We’re basically a year old and into a very ambitious program to transform an old-line newspaper company to be able to continue to support great journalism.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Discontent is an iOS content blocker that finally rids the world of content — For years now, people on the web have complained about content. Too often it is biased, it’s clickbait, or worst of all, it’s supported by invasive advertisements, which learn your most private desires …
Discontent is an iOS content blocker that finally rids the world of content
From the former Verge staffer who brought you not being on the internet
http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/28/9410043/discontent-ios-content-blocker
For years now, people on the web have complained about content. Too often it is biased, it’s clickbait, or worst of all, it’s supported by invasive advertisements, which learn your most private desires, store them in a database, and use them to sell you IKEA furniture timed to the dissolution of your marriage. Despite these drawbacks, the popularity of content has ensured that it can be found on most major websites, perpetually tantalizing us with its meretricious charms.
The release of iOS 9 this month introduced the ability for developers to build content blockers that, once installed, would prevent certain types of content from appearing in mobile Safari. Most controversially, it enables the creation of ad blockers, which can prevent the sites that run them from earning ad revenue. Publishers have reacted to this news with characteristic calm, but it has proven controversial among developers — with some saying it’s a good idea, and others saying it’s not.
“Stop distracting yourself with marginally informative blog posts and start living.”
In a blog post, Miller explained the rationale behind his war on content. “I want to stop reading ad-supported websites,” he writes. “I don’t want to steal their content by browsing with an ad-blocker, I want to ignore their content. I need a content blocker that blocks content too. Will I miss out on some stuff that’s truly impressive, truly hilarious, truly insightful? Undoubtedly. But I’ll also miss out on a lot of garbage, and a ton of garbage ads. So that will be nice.”
If you’re tired of this garbage, Discontent is now available on iOS.
http://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1514734&site=theverge.com&xs=1&isjs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fapp%2Fdiscontent-block-content%2Fid1041733704%3Fmt%3D8&xguid=34eef091b462aba463b5a9a0af8c8f73&xuuid=46f0b1bdc9eedec5328e9f7d3d387009&xsessid=1c56cf670fb04540d5ad64b124da3d5c&xcreo=0&xed=0&sref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2F2015%2F9%2F28%2F9410043%2Fdiscontent-ios-content-blocker&pref=http%3A%2F%2Fmediagazer.com%2F&xtz=-180
Tomi Engdahl says:
(Over-)Measuring the Working Man
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/09/29/132250/over-measuring-the-working-man
Tyler Cowen writes in MIT Technology Review that the improved measurement of worker performance through information technology is beginning to allow employers to measure value fairly precisely and as we get better at measuring who produces what, the pay gap between those who make more and those who make less grows. Insofar as workers type at a computer, everything they do is logged, recorded, and measured. Surveillance of workers continues to increase, and statistical analysis of large data sets makes it increasingly easy to evaluate individual productivity, even if the employer has a fairly noisy data set about what is going on in the workplace. Consider journalism. In the “good old days,” no one knew how many people were reading an article, or an individual columnist. Today a digital media company knows exactly how many people are reading which articles for how long
The Measured Working Man
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/541531/the-measured-working-man/
The technology that illuminates worker productivity and value also contributes to wage inequality, Tyler Cowen argues.
Discussions of income inequality typically focus on how information technology raises the return to skilled labor, or on the rise of global trade, or perhaps on the way that politics skews power toward the rich and well-connected. But there’s another fundamental driver of income inequality: the improved measurement of worker performance. As we get better at measuring who produces what, the pay gap between those who make more and those who make less grows.
Consider journalism. In the “good old days,” no one knew how many people were reading an article like this one, or an individual columnist. Today a digital media company knows exactly how many people are reading which articles for how long, and also whether they click through to other links. The exactness and the transparency offered by information technology allow us to measure value fairly precisely.
The result is that many journalists turn out to be not so valuable at all. Their wages fall or they lose their jobs, while the superstar journalists attract more Web traffic and become their own global brands. Some even start their own media companies, as did Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight and Ezra Klein at Vox. In this case better measurement boosts income inequality more or less permanently.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sam Altman / Y Combinator Posthaven:
Y Combinator makes Hacker News an autonomous unit within YC to give it full editorial independence, tests “vouching”, a new community moderation feature
http://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements
Making HN autonomous within YC (Sam)
We’re going to factor out Hacker News into its own autonomous unit of YC. It has de facto been like that, but it feels like a good idea to make it official. Going forward, HN will no longer formally be part of the investment branch of YC, but will be its own separate thing.
Everyone at YC knows that it’s vital for HN to have full editorial independence, and we have absolute trust in Dan’s decision-making in product, engineering, and moderation. Dan will report directly to me, though I don’t plan to be very involved–other than as an enthusiastic user (who would, however, prefer that it be easier to read on a phone) and someone who’s always happy to bounce around ideas. We’re also setting it up so that Dan will have the option of reporting directly to the YC Board of Overseers instead if he ever decides to.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Bergen / Re/code:
Google to host event next Wednesday in New York, likely to unveil its open-source project similar to Instant Articles
Google Plans to Unveil Its Version of ‘Instant Articles’ Next Week
http://recode.net/2015/09/30/google-plans-to-unveil-its-version-of-instant-articles-next-week/
Three weeks ago, we told you about plans Google was hatching to launch a publishing tool to serve up articles on mobile devices. It would look similar to Facebook’s Instant Articles feature, only Google would cull articles from cached versions on search, rather than hosting it themselves, and would release it as an open source tool to other platforms. Its first big platform partner was Twitter.
Earlier today, Google sent out an invite for a press event in New York next Wednesday for “a new open source initiative for the mobile Web.”
The New York Times and The Guardian Sign On for Google and Twitter’s Instant Article Push
http://recode.net/2015/09/11/the-new-york-times-and-the-guardian-sign-on-for-google-and-twitters-instant-article-push/
The New York Times is working on the new “instant article” format Google and Twitter want to launch this fall.
“We’re working with Google and we’re involved as both a publishing and a technology provider,” Times rep Eileen Murphy told Re/code via email. Murphy confirmed that she was referring to Google’s plan to create an open-source “instant article” format that would allow mobile users to quickly pull up stories.
The Times itself reports that British newspaper the Guardian is also working with Google and Twitter.
The Times and the Guardian were some of the first publishers to join Facebook’s instant articles program last spring. The Google/Twitter plan is seen as response to Facebook’s push, as well as other proprietary publishing programs launched by the likes of Snapchat and Apple.
Both Google and Twitter executives say both companies are working on the project,
Tomi Engdahl says:
ike Shields / Wall Street Journal:
A growing number of new media companies like Vice Media, BuzzFeed, and Vox Media are avoiding automated ad sales from third-party firms
Publishers That Say No to Automated Ad Sales
Some websites believe they can make more money on their own and reduce annoyance
http://www.wsj.com/articles/publishers-that-say-no-to-automated-ad-sales-1443650792
Justin Stefano and Philippe von Borries, founders of fashion and lifestyle site Refinery29, are among a growing band of Web publishing rebels—not because of any edgy or controversial content they produce, but because of how they sell ads.
Almost every publisher on the Web now teams up with “ad tech” firms, specialists in software that automates ad sales. Most media industry executives consider it a must to employ such brokers, the “networks” and “exchanges” that serve as middlemen in the roughly $60 billion online advertising marketplace.
But Refinery29 and a host of other new-media companies—among them, Vice Media, Vox Media, BuzzFeed and Mic—are bucking that approach, arguing that automated ad technologies are to blame for overrunning the Internet with too many ads and obnoxious tracking mechanisms.
“Consumers are tiring of disruptive ad experiences across the board,” Refinery29’s Mr. Stefano said. “The way people use ad tech is very toxic for a user.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sam Biddle / Gawker:
Reporters Are Rude During Tragedies Because They’re Reporting
http://gawker.com/reporters-are-rude-during-tragedies-because-theyre-repo-1734081065
For as long as bad shit has happened, people have attempted to speak to the people who saw the bad shit in order to figure out how bad the shit is—today that’s called reporting, and it’s conducted by a shrinking number of print media writers, a large number of people in television, and a growing number of internet busybodies. Their job titles are different, but their shared purpose remains the same: to relay information about the world we inhabit during a time of crisis and confusion, when information is scant and bystanders might offer the best (or only) chance of piecing together the truth.
In journalism this is generally called door-knocking because it sometimes entails literally knocking on the door of a victim or eyewitness. Reporters interjecting themselves into the lives of grieving loved ones have written Pulitzer-winner stories. But door-knocking, always a source of anxiety for both reporters and subjects, has somehow come to sound more respectable than its technologically assisted alternatives, like cold-calling (or tweeting at) victims and the victim-adjacent.
That’s nonsense. Twitter is both public and a useful reporting tool, and contacting potential sources is a crucial part of news-gathering.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Tumblr now allows users to hide their blogs from the web, making them accessible only via dashboard and native mobile apps
Tumblr now lets you hide your blog from the internet
A privacy measure, or the start of a walled garden?
http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/30/9429767/tumblr-web-toggle
Tumblr today introduced a feature that lets you hide your blog from the web so its content can only be viewed on Tumblr.com and in its native apps for mobile devices. The move, which Tumblr positioned as a privacy measure, will “let you better control who gets to see your stuff and who doesn’t,” the company said in a blog post. Once you set your blog to not be shown on the web, anyone who visits its URL will see a 404 error. But anyone who follows your blog will be able to see it on their dashboard when they log into Tumblr, either on the web or in its apps.
Tumblr says the toggle “pairs nicely with the block feature.” The idea behind both features, the company says, is to make it easier to hide posts from the public, particularly trolls and abusers. But Tumblr’s privacy features remain generally confusing. You still can’t make your primary blog private, but you can set up a secondary blog protected by a password. Password-protected blogs feel like something out of another era — Instagram and Twitter are among the social networks that have long let you make your account private and then whitelist your followers, making it easier to keep trolls out.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NY Times Passes 1M Digital Subscribers
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/10/05/2230241/ny-times-passes-1m-digital-subscribers
Many news organizations, facing competition from digital outlets, have sharply reduced the size of their newsrooms and their investment in news gathering but less than four-and-a-half years after launching its pay model the NY Times has increased coverage as it announced that the Times has passed one million digital-only subscribers, giving them far more than any other news organization in the world. The Times still employs as many reporters as it did 15 years ago — and its ranks now include graphics editors, developers, video journalists and other digital innovators. “It’s a tribute to the hard work and innovation of our marketing, product and technology teams and the continued excellence of our journalism,” says CEO Mark Thompson.
According to Ken Doctor the takeaway from the Times success is that readers reward elite global journalism.
The New York Times Reaches a Milestone, Thanks to Our Readers
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/business/the-new-york-times-reaches-a-milestone-thanks-to-our-readers.html?_r=0
This week, The Times is celebrating a breakthrough: We recently passed one million digital-only subscribers, giving us far more than any other news organization in the world. We have another 1.1 million print-and-digital subscribers, so that in total, we have more subscribers than at any time in our 164-year history.
Many news organizations, facing competition from digital outlets, have sharply reduced the size of their newsrooms and their investment in news gathering.
But The New York Times has not.
We have our subscribers to thank for that.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The New York Times Passes One Million Digital Subscriber Milestone
http://investors.nytco.com/press/press-releases/press-release-details/2015/The-New-York-Times-Passes-One-Million-Digital-Subscriber-Milestone/default.aspx
The New York Times Company announced today that as of Thursday, July 30, it had passed the one million paid digital-only subscriber mark, less than four-and-a-half years after launching its pay model. This number is in addition to its 1.1 million print-and-digital subscribers.
The New York Times Company is a global media organization dedicated to enhancing society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news and information. The company includes The New York Times, International New York Times, NYTimes.com, international.nytimes.com and related properties.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Newsonomics: 10 numbers on The New York Times’ 1 million digital-subscriber milestone
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/08/newsonomics-10-numbers-on-the-new-york-times-1-million-digital-subscriber-milestone/
Digital subscribers are proving to be the bedrock of the Times’ business model going forward. How much more room is there for growth — and at what price points?
If, half a decade ago, you’d been able to put money down in Vegas on The New York Times’ chances of reaching 1 million digital subscribers by 2015, what kind of odds could you have gotten? Longer than longshot. In 2010, when the Times announced it would put up a paywall, hardly anyone thought readers would pay for that sort of “commodity” — general news — on the web. TimesSelect, the Times’ first foray into digital paid content in the mid-2000s, had gone bust, and the program’s name served as an easy punchline for the conventional wisdom of the moment.
Today, four and a half years after the Times introduced its metered paywall, we can declare a milestone. The Times can now count 1 million digital-only subscribers. It’s a moment the Times should be celebrating.
And yet, despite this success, the Times’ ad results paralleled too closely that of its peer newspaper companies. For the quarter, overall ad revenues dropped 5.5 percent, anchored down by a print loss of 12.8 percent despite a digital gain of 14.2 percent. That means overall revenues dipped 1.5 percent.
None of that is surprising; it’s largely more of the same, with a deeper print gloom to consider.
It’s worth celebrating for all who value journalism.
The paywall didn’t “save the Times,” but it’s come damn near close. This year, digital-only reader revenue will reach close to $200 million. And though print circulation continues to shrink, there’s little doubt it would have dropped more quickly if print subscribers had continued to be confronted with what now seems like a crazy paradox: Pay hundreds of dollars for a print Times — or get all the content free not only online, but on that smartphone and tablet that have become third and fourth arms of our lives.
1. Readers reward elite global journalism.
2. Digital-only news readers about pay for the cost of the newsroom.
3. Mobile engagement drives much of the digital subscriber business.
4. The Times can count about the same number of paying daily readers today as it could in 1995.
5. Only a small percentage of Times readers generate a huge part of its income.
6. The Times’ crossover grows more profound.
7. Zero remains a number of achievement.
8. The global opportunity rises in importance.
9. Newsroom investment is a business driver.
10. Paywalls 2.0 still waits in the wings.
The Times generates about 60 million unique visitors (U.S.) a month. One million of them pay; 59 million don’t. That’s less than two percent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
With Reactions, Facebook Supercharges The Like Button With 6 Empathetic Emoji
http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/08/with-reactions-facebook-supercharges-the-like-button-with-6-empathetic-emoji/
In September, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made some waves when he hinted Facebook was working on a way to expand its famous Like button — not by adding the much-fabled “dislike” option, but by making it way more empathetic, expressing sadness and other emotions. Today, Facebook is taking the wraps off what form the new Like may take. It is rolling out “Reactions,” a new set of six emoji that will sit alongside the original thumbs-up to let users quickly respond with love, laughter, happiness, shock, sadness and anger.
Facebook tells us that the pop-up feature will first start out as a test in two markets only, Spain and Ireland, before it decides whether to tweak it and/or how to roll it out further.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Get AMP’d: Here’s what publishers need to know about Google’s new plan to speed up your website
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/10/get-ampd-heres-what-publishers-need-to-know-about-googles-new-plan-to-speed-up-your-website/
The speed gains are very real. But do publishers want to trade in the open space of what we’ve known as the web for yet another platform they have little control over?
Google unveiled its new plan to speed up the mobile web today — Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP — and it’s the latest attempt by a technology company to deal with the problem of the slow mobile web. Facebook has its Instant Articles to make certain news stories load more quickly in an app; Apple wants to move you into its slick new Apple News app. Google’s effort has more to do with changing the mobile web than building its own app or environment, which is why AMP is debuting with a ton of partners in technology (Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Chartbeat, Parsely) and publishing (The New York Times, Vox Media, the Financial Times, Gannett, Hearst, the Posts Washington and Huffington).
There are a ton of smart ideas in AMP. And it works — cutting the load times of article pages enormously.
But I have to say I’m a little conflicted about it. Google notes that AMP isn’t a business partnership the way that Instant Articles or Apple News are; there’s no ad rev share to consider. But AMP tries to do something maybe even more significant: change the way that the web is built, killing off some technologies and advantaging others. In a world of controlled platforms and walled app gardens, the web is the last open space standing, built over two decades, and there’s something irksome about a few Google engineers deciding which parts to ban.
Yes, publishers don’t have to adopt it, and yes, it’s an open source project, and yes, the performance gains are very real and very substantial. But publishers can choose to adopt Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News too. The point is that this is another stop on the path to powerlessness for publishers — another case of tech companies setting the rules.
What’s the origin story?
Google’s incentive here is obvious: It makes its money on advertising, and the vast majority of that advertising is on the open web. If Facebook (or some other platform, but seriously, Facebook) provides a markedly better mobile experience than the open web does, those advertising opportunities (and that user data) disappears into Zuckerberg’s Walled Garden of Earthly Delights.
So what is AMP?
AMP is a number of technologies rolled into one. The first and most important is what we might call code subsetting. HTML, the language webpages are built in, includes some things that load quickly and others that load slowly. AMP aims to kill off the slow parts, most notably JavaScript.
No third-party scripts! Here are some things that use third-party scripts: essentially every ad, essentially every analytics package. When you see a page that is stuffed full with trackers, those are pretty much all third-party scripts.
Certain HTML tags are also banned: iframe, embed, object, and all script other than JSON (and the script that loads AMP in the first place). The main HTML5 multimedia tags, img, video, and audio, are replaced with custom elements amp-img, amp-video, and amp-audio.
CSS is also strictly limited in AMP HTML
By essentially supplanting the native rendering engine in a mobile browser, AMP can load or unload assets at will — not worrying about images until they’re nearly in view, for instance, or loading editorial text content first and ads second.
It is possible to believe both that (a) there are too many ad tech companies and too many sloppy ad networks and too many duplicative analytics packages and the web is a giant mess, and (b) that publishers don’t add those things to their pages purely to annoy users, and they get some form of (financial, analytical, editorial) value from them. AMP makes those choices for them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Google SVP for search: More than half of Google searches worldwide now happen on mobile, more than 100B links within apps indexed
Worldwide, More Than Half Of Google’s Searches Happen On Mobile
Google also says it has indexed 100 billion links within apps.
http://searchengineland.com/half-of-google-search-is-mobile-232994
Earlier this year, Google announced that for the first time, it was seeing more search activity on mobile than desktop. The caveat was that this was for 10 countries, including the US. Today, Google has now said this is the case worldwide.
It was last May when Google said that more searches were happening on mobile devices than desktop in the US, Japan and eight other countries that weren’t named. Today, Google’s senior vice president of search, Amit Singhal, reiterated that statement when speaking at Recode’s Code Mobile event, as reported by The Verge.
More than half of all Google searches now happen on mobile devices
A win for the web
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/8/9480779/google-search-mobile-vs-desktop-2015
Google may be waging an ongoing battle against its competitors to keep smartphone owners using the web, but recent evidence suggests it’s making progress. Google’s Amit Singhal, senior vice president of search, said today Google now sees more than half of its 100 billion monthly searches occurring on mobile devices. Singhal, who’s speaking at Recode’s Code Mobile conference in Half Moon Bay, California, defined mobile as devices with screens smaller than six inches.
“For the first time, we’re getting more searches on mobile devices than on desktop,” Singhal said. The metric is significant because Google has been facing off against Facebook and Apple in a power grab for internet browsing habits. Google bakes search, which helps generate a majority of its ad revenue, into nearly every Android handset sold around the globe, making it a backbone of the mobile ecosystem. Yet Facebook has increasingly been tailoring its mobile app, which it’s built into its own ad-supported money-making machine, as a one-stop shop for all your web needs. There’s no reason to use Google search if Facebook can surface everything you’re looking for via algorithms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:
Playboy magazine, down from a circulation of 5.6M in 1975 to 800K today, will stop publishing images of naked women in March 2016
Nudes Are Old News at Playboy
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/business/media/nudes-are-old-news-at-playboy.html?_r=0
Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, went to see its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.
In a wood-paneled dining room, with Picasso and de Kooning prints on the walls, Mr. Jones nervously presented a radical suggestion: the magazine, a leader of the revolution that helped take sex in America from furtive to ubiquitous, should stop publishing images of naked women.
Mr. Hefner, now 89, but still listed as editor in chief, agreed. As part of a redesign that will be unveiled next March, the print edition of Playboy will still feature women in provocative poses. But they will no longer be fully nude.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Axel Springer bans adblock users from Bild online
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/13/us-axelspringer-adblock-idUSKCN0S70S020151013
Germany’s Axel Springer has banned readers who use adblockers from its Bild tabloid website, stepping up a fight by publishers to stop online advertising revenues being eroded.
Springer said visitors to the website of Bild, Europe’s top-selling tabloid, will be asked to switch off the adblocker or pay a monthly fee of 2.99 euros ($3.40) to browse the website mostly ad-free.
“Whoever does not switch off the adblocker or does not pay cannot see any content on Bild.de, as of now,” the publisher said in a statement on Tuesday.
Publishers are struggling with the increasing popularity of software that blocks the Web advertising that is key to maintaining or growing their revenue in the Internet age
Tomi Engdahl says:
Benedict Evans:
The implications of mobile operating systems controlled by Apple and Google succeeding the neutral web browser as the primary platform for Internet services
Mobile is not a neutral platform
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/9/26/mobile-is-not-a-neutral-platform
For a decade or two, for most people ‘the internet’ meant a web browser, a mouse and a keyboard. There were a few things around the edges, like IM, Spotify, Skype or Steam (or, for some people, email), but for most people and for almost all activities, the web was the internet. The web was the platform, not the PC operating system – people created services for the web, far more than for Windows or MacOS.
And once the browser wars died down, the browser was pretty much a neutral platform. Browser technology changed and that made new things possible (Google Maps, say), but the browser makers were not king-makers and were not creating or enabling entirely new interaction models. The building blocks of the desktop internet in 1995 were pages and links and that was still the case in 2005 or indeed today. You might never actually see a URL and the pages might start blending into each other, but everything still happens in that framework.
On mobile this is different – it’s the operating system itself that’s the internet services platform, far more than the browser, and the platform is not neutral.
The first manifestation of this (but only the first) has been messaging.
It’s not just that you’re running an app instead of a web page, but that the app can leverage specific APIs on the platform that never existed on the web. So the smartphone is itself a social messaging platform. Social apps plug into that platform rather like Facebook apps used to plug into the Facebook platform, or the way Facebook wants apps now to plug into Messenger.
All of those enabling layers and APIs are consciously controlled by the platform provider, and they keep changing things.
The crucial change is that Netscape or Internet Explorer did not shape which websites you visited (though toolbars tried to) and they didn’t do things that changed how user acquisition or retention worked online. Apple and Google do that all the time, both consciously and unconsciously – it’s inherent in what an actual operation system means. Some of this is simple evolution, and often collaborative – the emergence of deep links is a good example of this. But some of it isn’t.
Hence, at both IO and WWDC this summer we saw moves from Apple and Google to create their own real-estate around the home screen. The ‘swipe left from home’ screen gains more and more capabilities, all totally under the platform owner’s control.
Next, Apple and Google are exploring new ways to unbundle the content within apps into new usage models.
Of course, all this sort of stuff is a big reason why Google bought Android in the first place – Google was afraid that Microsoft (it was that long ago) would dominate mobile operating systems and shut it out.
This, obviously, is why Facebook keeps trying to insert its own layers into the OS (and why Amazon made a phone). I sometimes feel that every spring Facebook holds F8 and says “this is what interaction on smartphones will look like”!”, and a few weeks later Apple and Google say “look, sorry kid, but…”. It’s not Facebook’s platform to change. But if Facebook is successful in using Messenger to close the loop between its online identity platform (which both Apple and Google lack) and notification and engagement on the phone, then it it’ll have managed to create its own layer at last.
Interview with Facebook’s David Marcus on the future of Messenger, and why the company considers it the app for everything — Facebook Messenger: inside Zuckerberg’s app for everything — , and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Facebook Messenger: inside Zuckerberg’s app for everything
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2015/11/features/inside-facebook-messenger
Tomi Engdahl says:
James Vincent / The Verge:
Facebook now lets you filter out bad memories by date and people’s names to better control what is surfaced in On This Day, Year in Review nostalgia posts
Facebook lets you filter bad memories out of your nostalgia
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/13/9518069/facebook-on-this-day-memory-filter
Facebook is a nostalgia machine, with features like “Year in Review” and “On This Day” summoning photos and posts from the past in an attempt to entertain users. However, these memories aren’t always welcome, and the social network has often been accused of “inadvertent algorithmic cruelty” — accidentally confronting users with painful memories, like images of dead friends and relatives, without warning. To avoid this the company is introducing a pair of filters for its “On This Day” tool, letting users specify individuals and dates they don’t want to be reminded of.
Facebook was aware of the problems that surround this sort of automated nostalgia when it launched “On This Day” in March this year. The feature — which is simply a feed of content users posted on the same day in years past — tried to avoid potentially distressing memories by omitting, for example, posts featuring individuals that users had previously listed as romantic partners. But these precautions were inadequate. Earlier this year user Sean Forbes told The Verge that the feature had showed him a picture of his best friend who had committed suicide. “It’s just such an in-your-face reminder of what happened,” said Forbes, “and it dredges up old memories and feelings.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Playboy Drops Nudity As Internet Fills Demand
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/10/13/1636249/playboy-drops-nudity-as-internet-fills-demand
Ravi Somaiya reports in the NY Times that as part of a redesign that will be unveiled next March, the print edition of Playboy Magazine will still feature women in provocative poses but they will no longer be fully nude. “That battle has been fought and won,” says CEO Scott Flanders. “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.”
Playboy to Drop Nudity as Internet Fills Demand
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/business/media/nudes-are-old-news-at-playboy.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pornhub thinks your smartphone choice reflects your kinks
http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/01/pornhub-phone-choice-reflects-kinks/?utm_content=gravity_organic_sitefeed&cps=gravity_1677_7242124846758996766
Much like OK Cupid, Pornhub has access to a large repository of data concerning our most private and intimate desires. Every now and again, both sites like to reveal some statistics about what we like to get up to when nobody else is watching.
If you needed any more evidence that the smartphone is the dominant computing platform, then Pornhub’s figures should probably convince you. Back in 2010, desktop browsing accounted for 88 percent of the site’s traffic, but in 2015, that figure has fallen to just 37 percent. The rest of that figure is now accounted for by Android and iOS, with a near perfect split between the two (Android has 32 percent, iOS has 31). The company has also tracked the duration of each visit, and while the average iOS user lingering on the site for 8 minutes and 40 seconds — Android fans hang around for 10 minutes and six seconds.
The choices of content that people choose are different, too, and Pornhub believes that there’s a link between the phone you own and the sort of porn you look for.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dry those eyes, ad blockers are unlikely to kill the internet
In fact, they might halve everyone’s marketing budget
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/14/adblockers_kill_off_the_internet_marketing_budget/
There’s worry out there that the spread of ad blockers will kill off the internet. Or at least, the idea that people are paid to create stuff for it but that people aren’t charged to look at it. You know, like, umm, El Reg.
This has all come up as Apple has allowed the technology in iOS9, and people started to offer the software that performs the trick. The worry’s been such that one bloke even withdrew his offering, muttering that perhaps he didn’t want to bankrupt the providers of all of his favourite reading.
However, I’m not entirely sure that that’s the right way to think about it.
The point being that Lord Lever once said: “I know that half my marketing budget is wasted, I just don’t know which half.” That allied with the point that ads themselves aren’t just means of persuasion. They’re information too.
A reasonable estimate is that at any one time in a big city these days there’s some one billion items on offer. And someone, somewhere, needs to be telling us what they are.
So, we know that much advertising is wasted, also that at least some of it is informative. So, in that world, what’s the effect of people blocking their ever seeing any of the ads?
So, people who don’t even get served ads by blocking the very possibility are those upon which the ads would have been wasted anyway.
Leaving the advertising to be seen by those who are looking for information: exactly the people the advertisers actually want to reach in the first place.
So it’s not entirely obvious that adblocking does lead to a particular problem with the standard business model: the readers are the product being sold to the advertisers.
Blockers are simply signalling that they’re not the ones who would be interested in, or influenced by, advertising anyway. So, everyone, as they market themselves out, saves the effort of bothering to advertise to them.
Obviously, there’s a problem if everyone does this. That means that no one at all is interested in advertising. But given that advertising does change sales numbers, that cannot actually be true.
And that doesn’t change whether you’re advertising to many or few people. Thus, if it’s worth spending, say, £10 to make the sale of a tablet, then whether that £10 is spread over 2,000 or 1,000 people doesn’t matter very much.
Because, of course, we know that half our advertising is wasted, but the people with adblockers are by their very action telling us that they were the people it was being wasted upon. Thus we still want to spend that £10 on advertising to the 1,000 who aren’t using the software.
Tomi Engdahl says:
John Herrman / The Awl:
As news sites see traffic decline, Facebook tests new standalone mobile news app Notify, expected to launch later this month
Notes from the Platform’s Edge
Platforms for everyone, publications for no one
http://www.theawl.com/2015/10/just-one-more-step-back-there-perfect