I’m a strong believer that despite all the Elon mess over at Twitter, the network effects are simply too strong and Twitter will survive just fine and most of the leavers will be back in short order.
I certainly will stay on Twitter until they turn off the lights. (BTW – always like reminding of my terrible prediction ability with this great post about Twitter...)
Still – curious to learn about new efforts. For that – I’m checking out Mastodon. Follow me here! (@YaronGalai)
Facebook announced this week that they’ll be spending $300M over the next 3 years to support journalism. Google made a similar announcement last year.
As Peter Kafka over at Recode writes, a bunch of this is actually going towards helping publishers contribute content to Facebook’s Watch product:
Facebook will keep spending money on its previously announced program to bring news videos to its Facebook Watch hub, which launched last year. Facebook is paying news outlets like Fox, ABC, and the BBC to produce programming for its site — but those payments aren’t guaranteed
Peter Kafka, Recode
As Jason Calacanis points out, Facebook is committing 0.3% of it’s annual revenue towards this:
Right on cue, Facebook does the most misguided, heavy-handed and unsustainable version of sharing the wealth, by sharing $100m a year — .3% of their yearly revenue — in a series of grants.
Jason Calacanis
The cynical take is that these kinds of one-time payoffs, to highly influential media organizations, are designed to silence and tamper criticism — they’re buying off influential people for a pittance.
Outbrain has paid out to publishers over 4x this amount (more than $1.3 Billion) over the *past* 3 years. And this is money that went directly to publishers, with no strings attached. Don’t let Facebook’s PR confuse the story – their core business is a direct competition to publishers, both in ad $$’s and users’ attention. Unlike Facebook, Outbrain has a truly enormous impact on publishers’ ability to create journalism sustainably.
I’m always surprised when smart people, especially those working in ad supported industries, advocate the use of ad blockers. When new folks join the Outbrain team, I ask them during their on-boarding how many of them use ad blockers. About 50% of people say they do, and are quite casual about it.
Then I ask them how many of them steal books at Barnes & Noble, and the response is usually a bunch of horrified faces at the mere suggestion. I’m not sure why. Both are very similar forms of stealing content without paying the content owner.
The idea that ad blockers are OK to use because ads are annoying or interruptive, is absolutely ridiculous. The ads aren’t some optional thing you choose to turn on or off – the ads are how you pay for the content you consume and enjoy.
The ads might be annoying, but so is the cashier at your bookstore. But you probably never told yourself: “I want these books and magazines, but that payment part is really annoying… It’s an interruption in my day to stand in line and take out my credit card. And the paying piece – that is really annoying! So I’ll just take all the books I wanted and walk out the store without the annoying part!”.
The form of payment for the content is determined by the seller, not the consumer. Barnes & Noble might set the price in dollars. A publisher might set the price in the form of advertising. If you don’t like the form of payment, or the price, the only recourse is to not consume that content.
