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Friday, August 12, 2016
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That friends-and-family Facebook algorithm change doesn’t seem to be hurting traffic to news sitesAn analysis across 600 digital publishers found no measurable traffic impact from either of Facebook’s big summer algorithm changes. By Taylyn Washington-Harmon. |
What We’re Reading
CNN / Dylan Byers
The New York Times rebuts a report about cutting print sections →
“The New York Times Magazine and our Sunday Book Review are two of the most successful and popular products in our very powerful arsenal. We will not cease producing them in print.”
Medium / Gary Vaynerchuk
Instagram Stories is well-made, but won’t kill Snapchat. Here’s why. →
“Instagram won't kill Snapchat because Snapchat acts like a media company — it has scale.”
Forbes / Madeline Berg
Fox News names Jack Abernethy and Bill Shine co-presidents →
“Many expected Bill Shine, formerly Fox News' senior executive VP, would fill [Roger] Ailes' role” — but Shine in particular has popped up numerous times in stories about Ailes’ alleged harassment at Fox.
Digiday / Sahil Patel
Sorry digital media kids, “old media” is going to eat you →
“If you put most of these digital media startups in a bucket, their best long-term opportunity is to partner with or get bought by a traditional, established big media company. They are building real businesses, but I'm not sure many of them are going to be standalone entities five years from now.”
Medium / Chris Mohney
How Nick Denton and Gawker Media killed my lawn →
“Disproportionate to its audience size, Gawker is a strange attractor for the minds in the media industry and especially the people who've toiled in its fields and factories.”
New York Post / Claire Atkinson
Bankrupt Gawker being pursued by several suitors →
Including Univision, the New York Post reports.
CNNMoney / Dylan Byers
CBSN: Wave of the future, or a money-losing ‘pet project’? →
“There is no business model, they’re not getting any sub-fees for this thing, and no one is watching it,” said one executive.
TechCrunch / Natasha Lomas
Blendle reaches 1 million signups →
Though still no revenue or paying user figures.
USA Today / Roger Yu
The FCC retains media cross-ownership rules →
“In 1975, the FCC, seeking to ensure diversity of voices and opinion in local media, passed the current cross-ownership rules. The FCC reviews the rules every four years, and media companies have fought for years to change or relax them to pursue business diversification.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Sign of the Times: The New York Times is buying an experiential agency →
Fake Love, which The Times has worked with before on to create a VR video ad, is an agency that specializes in live experiences, virtual and augmented reality.
Facebook Newsroom / Jie Xu, Akos Lada, and Vibhi Kant
Facebook is tweaking its News Feed yet again, this time to show “more informative” stories →
Facebook is creating a new News Feed ranking signal to predict “what is most informative to you, so those stories appear higher in your feed.” The signal will be combined with “how relevant the story might be to you personally.”
ProPublica
Here are all the resources from this year’s ProPublica Data Institute →
ProPublica is also working on creating an online course out of the two-week workshop. But for the time being, you can get all the teaching materials here.
Parse.ly / Allie VanNest
You can use your homepage as an indicator of how stories will perform on social →
Post a story in a prime spot on your homepage and look at where referral traffic is coming from after just 500 pageviews. If it has a higher ratio of social referrers to homepage referrers, there’s a good chance it’ll continue to receive more traffic via social, according to Parse.ly data.
Digiday / Shareen Pathak
Emojicon, the first conference for emojis, is coming this November →
"We want to create a space open for discussion about whether hummus should be an emoji.”