13 ms·

Death by a thousand likes: Facebook and Twitter are killing the open web

263 points by snake117 11y ago

danieldk 11y ago
Slightly related: I only found out recently that The Guardian has a subscription option in their app (the 'Premium' tier, Euro 3.61 per month) that removes all ads: https://www.theguardian.com/info/2013/aug/12/1 https://www.theguardian.com/info/2013/aug/12/1 It's great to see that at least some publications are experimenting with models outside the traditional paper and the obvious plastering content with ads.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Does that mean they expect to extract 3.61 from the ad viewing portion and they've set that price for parity? Interesting. That's rather a lot more than one would expect.
  - corin_ 11y ago
    One of the biggest perceived problems with this business model is that the sort of person who would be willing to pay to remove adverts is the sort of person advertisers most want to reach, since the people who won't pay for a better experience are also less likely to either be able to or to want to spend money on whatever is being advertised. I don't know if any data supports that, but many people in the advertising industry have that opinion. As such... I don't know about the numbers, I know very little about mobile advertising in general, and while I am a Guardian reader I don't use their mobile app - but my vague overall opinion is that it wouldn't surprise me if they priced it higher to compensate for losing a higher quality segment of their ad-viewing audience.
    - vlehto 11y ago
      >sort of person who would be willing to pay to remove adverts is the sort of person advertisers most want to reach People who wish to buy shit also exist. Some of them might actually want info about their options. Then there are people who are not annoyed by commercials and who are easily manipulated to buy almost whatever. They ruin the adds for the rest of us. They are probably poor, because advertisers already got all their money. Personally I would love someone to advertice books to me. I've even subscribed to goodreads for that, but their recommendations suck big time. (Though it's still good for bookmarking what I want to read and reading reviews.)
      - corin_ 11y ago
        Certainly there wouldn't be a 100% match between "would be worth advertising to" and "would pay to remove adverts", but the problem is nobody (afaik) has any data on to what extent it might correlate, and so are scared by it. I wonder if companies like the Guardian have thought about trying to compare between the two audiences, i.e. how people who now subscribe interacted with adverts before subscring vs. audience that doesn't pay. Thinking of some of the tracking tools that could be used... it wouldn't be impossible (though wouldn't be imperfect data either), but it would be a rather complicated thing to set-up so it wouldn't surprise me if they don't have it in place.
        vlehto 11y ago
        Yes, your point still stands. Further problem is that most people would probably prefer adds, but only in very narrow subset of all products. And they might not want to share that subset, not with modern privacy concerns and rogue advertisers. So you would have almost infinite amount of groups and no way to find them.
      - jon-wood 11y ago
        > People who wish to buy shit also exist. Some of them might actually want info about their options. Sure, I'm sometimes one of them, but that doesn't mean I want information about my options mixed into the middle of a news article. If I'm in the mood to buy something I'll go to shopping and review sites to find information about it.
      - coldpie 11y ago
        Buddy, if you're making purchasing decisions based on advertisements, you're in for a world of hurt.
        vlehto 11y ago
        If solely on advertisements, then you're correct. But if you get some kind of intuition of normal price range of bicycles, then notice add of cheap bicycle, what's the problem? Originally adds we're about providing information that was beneficial to everybody. Now that is not true and the signal/noise ratio is terrible. But still adds could become usefull again if targeted enough. But targeting adds can be world hurt too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_order#/media/File:Sears_-_Aids_That_Every_Woman_Appreciates.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_order#/media/File:Sears_-... Imagine the effect of that in a small village with no competition?
    - venomsnake 11y ago
      I think that discount codes will come big time instead of ads. You buy subscription from Guardian and you get some promo codes for something. The add guys still pay to reach you, have perfect measure on effects, and you can just ignore the whole thing if you are not interested. Almost like simpler Massdrop (whose emails I mostly ignore but check from time to time)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
tmikaeld 11y ago
Also slightly related: Facebook is actively blocking a rival community that "pays" users by passing ad revenue to users (users get incentives to post content and invite friends) http://www.wired.com/2015/11/facebook-banning-tsu-rival-social-network/ http://www.wired.com/2015/11/facebook-banning-tsu-rival-soci...
- halflings 11y ago
  Tsu is basically a pyramid scheme where the investment is your time. The "payments" they would give to their users are tiny, not enough for people to actually get any money out (except some outliers), and all what people are talking about on Tsu is: getting referrals to Tsu, making money from Tsu. Somehow, Morocco was among the countries that used Tsu the most, and being Moroccan I was myself continuously spammed by people posting referral links to Tsu... so it's understandable that facebook blocked them.
  - chipsy 11y ago
    The pyramid scheme analogy only holds true if you are paying in with money, not time. Other social networks are investments of time too. Testimony: I registered for Tsu and have been active on it a for a few days after reading that story. There is nothing within the site that pushes monetization at you - there is a tab for payments, but it does not direct you there, and I didn't look at it until just now. When I did, I was presented with a terms of service, and then a "no spamming" click-through agreement. Therefore I have to conclude that all of the hubbub is generated by some combination of early external marketing efforts and the natural tendencies of wishful thinkers. They've decided to stop pushing that angle, most likely because they hit their critical mass targets and can move on towards more sustainable growth options.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    Yeah, I think this illustrates why "monetising content" is the antithesis of community.
pjc50 11y ago
A link recently discovered was blocked by facebook (and I had no idea they were actively blocking the posting of links by users!): eulawanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-partys-over-eu-data-protection-law.html
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Wow. Facebook actively blocking links discussing Facebook in a critical way is very bad. Are you sure?
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Multiple users reported it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10385612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10385612
    - onewaystreet 11y ago
      I find it strange that people are so quick to conclude censorship. Do they really think Facebook cares what some blogspot blog thinks? Facebook erroneously blocks links for a lot of reasons such as if many people report the link or if the link gets more shares than the domain usually gets.
      - pjc50 11y ago
        "erroneously blocks links for a lot of reasons" is also a problem, whether it's incompetence or conspiracy.
        onewaystreet 11y ago
        With billions of links being shared on Facebook every day I suspect that they error on the side of caution.
      - oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
        Facebook has definitely been known to suppress criticism in the past, though. I've shared articles about facebook, on facebook, and they've been removed.
Jgrubb 11y ago
Irony is http://imgur.com/mivdSRC http://imgur.com/mivdSRC
cubano 11y ago
Killing the open web? Not hardly... > I had a blog once. It wasn’t big, but I loved knowing who I was writing for. I loved knowing that the same couple hundred people would come back again and again... Had a "blog once"? And your a writer? Why did you stop writing for it? This is the same article that could have been written by musicians 12 years ago or the MPAA 8yo...yes yes existential threats to the fundamental nature blah blah fucking blah... Don't get me twisted tho...I don't even like Facebook and Twitter anymore due to their obscene popularity, but whining about them "killing the open web"? Please just stop the hyperbole.
- Aoyagi 11y ago
  > your a writer? Amusing.
eertami 11y ago
Facebook is for closed networks. Twitter has literally no effect on the real world and is only cared about by the people on twitter. Neither are really a problem.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Twitter is tough because it's so useful and cool in one sense, but the majority of its use is keeping "social media managers" occupied with something the appears to be work. I've rarely seen non-IT people using it.
  - realityking 11y ago
    IT people and politicians in my experience And by politicians I mean not just those already established but also those in youth organizations.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > Twitter has literally no effect on the real world People have lost their jobs after twitter maulings.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Facebook and Apple News might be "killing the open web", but Twitter? I'd say Twitter is a great champion of the web. Linking is so fundamental to the Twitter experience. Half of Twitter is links to other websites.
- mattlutze 11y ago
  Does Twitter load other web content through a built-in web browser in the app? That seems to be the big "white-washing" problem with the various reader apps (Facebook, Flipboard, etc), that they're unifying the interaction experience.
  - chinathrow 11y ago
    They did that for some time but that isn't the case anymore these days, at least on Android.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    > Does Twitter load other web content through a built-in web browser in the app? On iOS, yes, it has a built-in browser. You can go to Safari if you like. They're not packaging up web content as if it's not web content, though. It's just to access sites quickly.
    - mattlutze 11y ago
      Facebook also shows what should/could be the whole page, but I'm not sure we know what all they strip out in the name of making things faster or more pleasant. I'd wager the same is true for any built-in browser that overrides the default action of sending a web link to the actual mobile browser. And I've gotta say, I'm really bothered by the way Facebook handles browsing. I have to copy the link, exit Facebook, open Safari, then paste and navigate to the link whenever I want to have a page I found on a Facebook post in my bookmarks, reading list, etc. Super frustrating.
      - JSoet 11y ago
ck2 11y ago
Remember how we were talking last week about how people seem to desire crowds and crowd-thinking, even if it literally kills them? Well that makes sites like Facebook and Twitter predictable and the power they wield.
acqq 11y ago
> Mostly, I get my news from Twitter. This should be the first thing to read in this article. The author seems to not have any preferred publisher anyway. He can consider and write why not, I'd also like to know. Then don't be surprised with the statement in a paragraph before: > And that’s why so many articles kinda sound the same these days.
oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
> But the larger point is that the logic of efficiency on the internet will always favor scale—which is to say, platforms—over publishers. I call bullshit on this one. It's unclear what the author means because they use such a meaningless term in "logic of efficiency", but the last time I looked, it was a lot more financially efficient to set up a website than a print publication. There is nothing at all inevitable about 'the biggest will win' online, as can be evidenced both by the disappearance of several former behmoths, and by the failure of several pre-Internet companies to 'make it big' online despite having unlimited capital to invest. Maybe, just maybe, the author is referring directly to advertising revenue here, as in "the more popular sites can make more money from advertising, and thus will grow and grow". Of course, that's totally dismissing the fact that many of the 'platforms' being discussed simply offer a far better experience, regardless of what content they offer or how big they already are. Here's a hint for the author and any other publishers reading: there is far greater variation in the packaging, delivery, and experience of content online than there is offline. Take advantage of that. Don't, as we've all been telling you for the last 20 years, just try to replicate your newspaper online: that makes for a horrible experience. Don't try to do advertising in the most obnoxious manner you can get away with; that may have worked in print, but it's been demonstrated pretty categorically now that it fails online. Or, you know, just carry on regardless, blame platforms for seizing the opportunity that you choose to ignore.
- thomasz 11y ago
  I think you are wrong to dismiss that point so harshly, when all empirical data shows it to be true. Engineering, Hosting, Marketing, Monetisation, all those things are massively cheaper when done by one big player. There is a reason publishers outsource advertisement to those shitty networks: They would be overwhelmed by the cost to operate, let alone create those beasts. And even when this problem would magically go away, they still lack the access to the petabytes of data the big platforms enjoy. Without this data, the advertisement will necessarily be crude and lacking focus.
  - oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
    I'm not saying those things aren't cheaper for bigger players, but that the playing field is more level online than it is off, at least in part because the production cost per unit is much, much less. I have yet to see the advertising that benefits from petabytes of data such that it isn't 'crude and lacking focus'. A lot of it has a focus, but it's often a nonsensical one.
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vlehto 11y ago
"It only really makes sense if you view writing as a fungible commodity" I have no sympathy for writers here. You view us readers as fungible commodity. I use Reddit, HN, Facebook and twitter to weed out the worst bullshit. There are lots of articles around just to keep me comfy long enough to show me adds. One of the worst these days is New Yorker, beautifully written articles about stuff people don't really care about. (Or atleast I don't care about.) Currently it survives on elitism. Web platforms are problematic. But lot better than ordering magazines at random, or paying for New Yorker monthly for that yearly gem. “Go where the readers are” It's more important to write what the readers want to read. I click stupid shit. I read mediocre pieces. I'm willing to pay for good stuff. I think there should be ordering/crowd funding service solely for written media. So that authors don't just babble nice sentences inside their comfort zone, but actually tackles things people are interested in. The real problem is that author doesn't know if s/he gets paid before the article is written, but also the reader doesn't know if the article is worth anything before reading it. I think the author of this piece has many good points, he just needs to dig deeper. This bleak context free future the author is painting is probably not true. People like context. Any social meeting is often first superficial introductions, then shallow gossip and only later dvelves into deep stuff. Internet is probably going to mirror that, but with more inertia.
ScottGillis 11y ago
I find the author’s argument regarding “publications losing their voice and not focusing on the preferences of their audience to meet the preference of the platform’s audience” self-contradictory. Is it not your own audience that is following you on these platforms? More so, the platforms give you real-time feedback and allow your audience to tell you which issues are most important. I find this to be the real issue here. The author is most interested in telling you what is important, instead of allowing you to decide for yourself. …And this is why certain publications struggle with these platforms.
- ArekDymalski 11y ago
  >platforms give real time feedback.. Unfortunately often it's not completely honest feedback about your content. It's feedback filtered / deformed by the fact that other people on the platform will see the likes, retweets, comments etc As a result it's not the best content that becomes popular. It's the one used to impress others.
Tloewald 11y ago
A big part of the problem is that "content" insists on being wrapped up in "interactivity" that is confusing and subtracts value (or adds cost) in other ways (image carousels with ads, articles broken into lots of small pieces to generate impressions), and the internet routes around cost. The central thesis that "pretending that content is free" is the underlying problem is interesting. Perhaps part of the problem is bad pricing. E.g. content that ought to be cheap (e.g. e-books, streaming video) tends to be more expensive or certainly insufficiently cheaper than content that ought to be more expensive (e.g. physical books, bluray disks). Perhaps a big part of the problem is publishers "pretending" they add value. Some publishers definitely add some value, but then they subtract value in other ways -- it's great that the movie studio figures out who the good writers, directors, and actors are and risks its own money to make a good movie, but it's bad that it's provided on a bluray disk with annoying copy-and-other protection in a hard-to-open package, and that it's more expensive to buy the cheaper to distribute and generally more convenient electronic version. Similarly, newyorker.com has great writing (and I pay for it) but the actual presentation layer (the website) subtracts value from it.
transfire 11y ago
I wish that every ISP was required to collect a "Distributed Content Fee" that every domain would get a portion of according to the number of visits they get. I think that would really help level the playing field. A lot of good content goes unrewarded (or uncreated) b/c their is no good way to monetize it.
- alecco 11y ago
  You mean your ISP tracking every move you make? Seriously?
  - DanBC 11y ago
    You think your ISP doesn't already know exactly where you're going on the Internet?
    - alecco 11y ago
      That's why I use HTTPS and an independent DNS server with encryption. It's not exactly hard.
      - andreasvc 11y ago
        I don't get why you're so dismissive. Your ISP still sees that your IP connects to the IP of some server, at what time, for how long, how much data, etc. That's plenty of information.
SeanDav 11y ago
Completely OT: You know that phenomenon that when you hear a word for the first time in a long time or first time ever - and then you suddenly hear it again and again? Just happened to me with the word "Fungible". I happen to know what the word means, coming from a financial/trading background but don't recall hearing it for some time now. Then 2 completely unrelated Hacker News articles I read, almost in a row, had the word "Fungible" in them - neither of which had anything to do with finance/trading! I know it is just random chance, but it feels really strange!
- mnx 11y ago
  baader meinhof phenomenon
- FlailFast 11y ago
  Good ole Baader Meinhof phenomenon. True story: I learned about it after hearing "Baader Meinhof" thrown around one too many times. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_phenomenon#Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_phenomenon#Freq...
  - rogeryu 11y ago
    That page doesn't explain it properly. Try this one: http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/theres-a-name-for-that-the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon-59670 http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/theres-a-name-for-tha... > Stanford linguistics professor Arnold Zwicky coined the former term in 2006 to describe the syndrome in which a concept or thing you just found out about suddenly seems to crop up everywhere. It’s caused, he wrote, by two psychological processes. The first, selective attention, kicks in when you’re struck by a new word, thing, or idea; after that, you unconsciously keep an eye out for it, and as a result find it surprisingly often. The second process, confirmation bias, reassures you that each sighting is further proof of your impression that the thing has gained overnight omnipresence. > The considerably catchier sobriquet Baader-Meinhof phenomenon was invented in 1994 by a commenter on the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ online discussion board, who came up with it after hearing the name of the ultra-left-wing German terrorist group twice in 24 hours. The phrase became a meme on the newspaper’s boards, where it still pops up regularly, and has since spread to the wider Internet. It even has its own Facebook page. Got all that? Don’t worry. You’ll hear about it again soon.
draw_down 11y ago
No, no. Not Facebook and Twitter. This is coming from everywhere. Because you can't sell the open internet as a branded experience. (And you can't force people to look at ads on it either)
phkahler 11y ago
I don't need an ad-blocker. I need a like blocker. When I go on facebook I want to see personal things my friends share, not a bunch of shit they saw and clicked "like" on. And I'm guilty of "liking" crap too. Maybe they could prioritize personal plain text posts, since those are actually the most relevant to me. But that is least relevant to advertisers. If they don't focus more on the users, a distributed replacement will eventually come out and there will be zero ad revenue to be had from that social platform. I've got some ideas in this space, but no time and no team.
- intrasight 11y ago
  FB Purity does a pretty good job of this
  - phkahler 11y ago
    Thank you. I was not aware of that!
- yeukhon 11y ago
  I am on the opposite. What my friends like actually come out to be what I am probably going to like and I quite enjoy most of those likes. There are a few spammy one or useless crap, but overall the situation has been much better compare to, say, 2-3 years ago. I think the way Facebook and Twitter present stream is inconvenient for users who have a lot of friends or following a lot of people. It is simply a long linear scan and it literally takes me ~10 mins to review when I am on at the end of the day, I just want to see what's going on in everyone's world, ya know. I don't think gallery style will work either. I don't know, but linear scan is just not working.
intrasight 11y ago
Apps are doing much more to kill the open web than is any browser-based service.
chillingeffect 11y ago
Just like cable and CB radio, we need the government to reserve a section of the internet for non-commercial open access.
- noarchy 11y ago
  Why does the government need to do such a thing? You're free to set up your own corner of the Internet, unless the government itself tries to stop you, which does happen to some people in this world.
  - chillingeffect 11y ago
    brb, digging along the highway to lay my fibers. srsly, it depends on the medium. With Citizen's Band radio, the government only had to step out of the way. With Cable public-access, the government had to require cable companies to give access to communities to equipment such as a cameras, studios, video players, etc. Public access internet's needs are much closer to those of community access television than Citizen's band.
    - noarchy 11y ago
      >With Cable public-access, the government had to require cable companies to give access to communities to equipment such as a cameras, studios, video players, etc. I don't even see why public access cable was forced on any company to begin with. The only reason that comes to mind that the public would even be entitled to free access to the company's facilities is the monopoly status that telecoms have often enjoyed in North America. In that case, a bit of give-and-take might be expected. But otherwise, I don't see much of a case for forcing a company to let people use its facilities for free. > Public access internet's needs are much closer to those of community access television than Citizen's band. This seems like a dubious "need". I can rent a VPS for a few dollars a month and generally do with it whatever I'd like. The barrier to entry is surprisingly-low, in that regard.
      - chillingeffect 11y ago
api 11y ago
I think this is hyperbole. I rarely use either and the open web seems fine.
- m1sta_ 11y ago
  How's your blackberry ;)
morninj 11y ago
On mobile, this page has a sticky banner at the bottom of the screen with a Facebook "like" button and a message asking me to "stay connected."
cwyers 11y ago
The article doesn't define the "open web," and platforms like Facebook and Twitter would seem to mostly follow the dictates set out in Tantek's original definition.[1] So it's hard to guess at what the author means -- Facebook and Twitter aren't "the open web" by tautology, basically. It's really hard to engage with the author's arguments that way. What is trivial to understand is that the author's proposed remedy doesn't work: > The answer is simple, but it isn’t easy. We need to stop pretending that content is free. Publications need to ask readers to pay for their content directly, and readers need to be willing to give up money, as opposed to their privacy and attention. This means that publications will have to abandon the rapid-growth business models driven by display ads, which have driven them to rely on Facebook for millions of pageviews a month. The fundamental problem with this is that siloing content the way the author suggests (publications with strong identities and paywalls to get readers to give money in exchange for content) breaks hyperlinks. It breaks sharing. Paywalls work when there's a marginal benefit to knowing something that someone else doesn't -- say, it helps you pick stocks better than the next guys. Otherwise, all else being equal, the article I can share with my friends, link to in my blog post, that I can engage with and respond to and have other people able to read the same article I am -- that's far more valuable than the article that I can read but can't share. We didn't get here because we're all stupid, or because people are unwilling to pay for anything ever. We got here because we were trying to come up with a model that allows people who make content to be compensated for it without betraying the fundamental thing that made the Web the Web -- the hyperlink. If your proposed alternative business model doesn't even TRY to engage with the question of linking and sharing, it's not going to work. 1) http://tantek.com/2010/281/b1/what-is-the-open-web http://tantek.com/2010/281/b1/what-is-the-open-web
- romaniv 11y ago
  Paywalls do not work, but Kickstarter and Patreon do work. Also, hosting a website for several thousand people (as opposed to hundreds of thousands) it so cheap this days that the cost becomes negligible. It maintenance becomes the most "expensive" - or annoying if you're doing it yourself - part of it all.
- pauleastlund 11y ago
  What is a page view on an article worth these days? A couple cents? Less? If the micropayments implementation was right, and if paying for content became a more mainstream idea, I don't think you'd feel that you "[could] read but [couldn't] share" an article just because it charged a nickel to continue past the intro paragraph. I don't see how that would break hyperlinks.
softyeti 11y ago
The article seems to be confused over content viewed by way of advertisement and content delivered by users actively seeking content. When I want to read up on some news, I go to the publisher's site directly or to a preferred aggregator, which is not going to be facebook/twitter/etc. Advertised content is typically very poor, and really not worth defending.
Kinnard 11y ago
Beautifully written article on articles.
thadd 11y ago
Probably not a dumb hypothesis, but this author turns this into a lament about the changes in publishing. Next.
benten10 11y ago
Disclaimer: I like twitter over facebook, which I don't use that much, and my comment history will show that I'm a twitter 'lackey', so to speak. Does anyone else feel that the facebook moment is fading away? People have compared information to food, and I can see the similarities. When you come from a place where there's little or no food, you want to hoard all you can -- why yes, I would love to see your babies pics every day, of course, post three dozen photos of the same party from different angles, I love it, why yes, this memory from seven years ago is exactly what I need. When you're saturated with information (in this case, social media information), it doesn't feel as special anymore. Soon, you realize that while looking at Christmas photos from people you went to high school with, was fun for a while, there is only so much space in your head and social energy. The marginal value of that extra bit goes down, and averages start leveling off or going down. There's too much food everywhere, you don't want to be forced with another plate of who-gives-an-eff-about-your-fifth-Halloween-in-a-row. What was originally curiosity and genuine excitement about other people's lives becomes social courtesy: of course you will like your almost-friend's child's photos because that's what good friends would do. Social networking (in facebook form) becomes ritualistic. So the solution is social networks that (artificially) limit your access to information, such as snapchat and twitter. You want to only share a few things, with a few people at a time, and perhaps that shared thing will disappear in a couple of days/hours/views. To me that sounds like the long-term future of social media. Anyone have any thoughts?
- ljk 11y ago
  > So the solution is social networks that (artificially) limit your access to information, such as snapchat and twitter. You want to only share a few things, with a few people at a time, and perhaps that shared thing will disappear in a couple of days/hours/views. To me that sounds like the long-term future of social media. not a heavy user of social network sites, so this probably won't be everyone's experience, but the features you mentioned(limit of access to information, sharing only a few things, etc) can be done on any platform. It's really how you use it; none of the sites force you to share every moment with the world imo the long-term future of social media is to get you to use it as much as you can so they can sell ads to you
- leviathant 11y ago
n0us 11y ago
I do have to say, my experience with Apple News has been very nice. These apps seem to affect publishers more than the 'open web' and at that they are little more than nice RSS readers that don't ruin your experience with ads even though there are still ads there. I don't particularly see anything wrong with separating publishers from content producers. It now seems more appropriate to think of news magazines and traditional 'publishers' as content producers who rely on the new 'publishers' a la Facebook, Apple, Twitter to distribute their content because they cannot and should not be focused on building an enormous infrastructure to do this. Print media is 'open' in that anyone can print something and distribute it but the ability to do so effectively has pretty much been consolidated into the hands of very few for a long time. Now a days you can publish your own music, your own books, and your own news and its popularity will be determined by the masses, not some worn out talent scout trying to please a boss who is using focus groups to figure out what might make him a buck. Ultimately I think we will see a more open and democratic future for publishing, not the death of the open web. Control is shifting hands to a new set of publishers, one that puts the visibility of content into the hands of the readers in the form of likes and tweets. Maybe the news produced by these traditional outlets just doesn't have as much value as it once did. That is what likely scares them in my mind.
calebm 11y ago
Gotta love the Facebook and Twitter buttons at the bottom of the article :)
zxcvvcxz 11y ago
I never understand these articles. No they're not. You're not required to use these two (out of billions of) websites. Vote with your time and attention. For better or worse, the majority of people vote for these sites.
bitcuration 11y ago
This is simpler than most people think. If there is no ad time/place, the platform won't be able to monetize it. Google makes people go away, but right before that people look at their search result where the Ads are displayed. Why it doesn't work twitter, probably nobody follow the news link and bother come back to strike a conversation on twitter. Mostly the conversation takes place right below the news article and with the author not the tweet. Most online conversation took place right where the content is at, on Youtube, on NYtimes, on Forbes, unless compassion with twitter but now we that passion is going down. There is also a subtle difference of the social relation where the news feed is from, which is why facebook news feed is a BAD idea. Why would I have my mother in law in my facebook circle yet sharing the latest Intel acquisition news, or even makeing comment. Never mix life and work, even hobby or side projects, that's social network 101, or platform 101. I know a friend who has 9 facebook Ids, I personally have 3,4 twitter accounts, for the purpose explained here. From a news consumption standpoint, iOS news is a joke, facebook news is meaningless, twitter is inconvenient, therefore I use Zite, which connects to my twitter. From a conversation standpoint, Hacker news format is idea, but lack of twitter's networking. Something has all these together would be a hit.

263 points by snake117 11y ago

Slightly related: I only found out recently that The Guardian has a subscription option in their app (the 'Premium' tier, Euro 3.61 per month) that removes all ads: https://www.theguardian.com/info/2013/aug/12/1 https://www.theguardian.com/info/2013/aug/12/1 It's great to see that at least some publications are experimenting with models outside the traditional paper and the obvious plastering content with ads.

jacquesm 11y ago
Does that mean they expect to extract 3.61 from the ad viewing portion and they've set that price for parity? Interesting. That's rather a lot more than one would expect.
- corin_ 11y ago
  One of the biggest perceived problems with this business model is that the sort of person who would be willing to pay to remove adverts is the sort of person advertisers most want to reach, since the people who won't pay for a better experience are also less likely to either be able to or to want to spend money on whatever is being advertised. I don't know if any data supports that, but many people in the advertising industry have that opinion. As such... I don't know about the numbers, I know very little about mobile advertising in general, and while I am a Guardian reader I don't use their mobile app - but my vague overall opinion is that it wouldn't surprise me if they priced it higher to compensate for losing a higher quality segment of their ad-viewing audience.
  - vlehto 11y ago
    >sort of person who would be willing to pay to remove adverts is the sort of person advertisers most want to reach People who wish to buy shit also exist. Some of them might actually want info about their options. Then there are people who are not annoyed by commercials and who are easily manipulated to buy almost whatever. They ruin the adds for the rest of us. They are probably poor, because advertisers already got all their money. Personally I would love someone to advertice books to me. I've even subscribed to goodreads for that, but their recommendations suck big time. (Though it's still good for bookmarking what I want to read and reading reviews.)
    - corin_ 11y ago
      Certainly there wouldn't be a 100% match between "would be worth advertising to" and "would pay to remove adverts", but the problem is nobody (afaik) has any data on to what extent it might correlate, and so are scared by it. I wonder if companies like the Guardian have thought about trying to compare between the two audiences, i.e. how people who now subscribe interacted with adverts before subscring vs. audience that doesn't pay. Thinking of some of the tracking tools that could be used... it wouldn't be impossible (though wouldn't be imperfect data either), but it would be a rather complicated thing to set-up so it wouldn't surprise me if they don't have it in place.
      - vlehto 11y ago
        Yes, your point still stands. Further problem is that most people would probably prefer adds, but only in very narrow subset of all products. And they might not want to share that subset, not with modern privacy concerns and rogue advertisers. So you would have almost infinite amount of groups and no way to find them.
    - jon-wood 11y ago
      > People who wish to buy shit also exist. Some of them might actually want info about their options. Sure, I'm sometimes one of them, but that doesn't mean I want information about my options mixed into the middle of a news article. If I'm in the mood to buy something I'll go to shopping and review sites to find information about it.
    - coldpie 11y ago
      Buddy, if you're making purchasing decisions based on advertisements, you're in for a world of hurt.
      - vlehto 11y ago
        If solely on advertisements, then you're correct. But if you get some kind of intuition of normal price range of bicycles, then notice add of cheap bicycle, what's the problem? Originally adds we're about providing information that was beneficial to everybody. Now that is not true and the signal/noise ratio is terrible. But still adds could become usefull again if targeted enough. But targeting adds can be world hurt too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_order#/media/File:Sears_-_Aids_That_Every_Woman_Appreciates.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_order#/media/File:Sears_-... Imagine the effect of that in a small village with no competition?
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    I think that discount codes will come big time instead of ads. You buy subscription from Guardian and you get some promo codes for something. The add guys still pay to reach you, have perfect measure on effects, and you can just ignore the whole thing if you are not interested. Almost like simpler Massdrop (whose emails I mostly ignore but check from time to time)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

tmikaeld 11y ago

Also slightly related: Facebook is actively blocking a rival community that "pays" users by passing ad revenue to users (users get incentives to post content and invite friends) http://www.wired.com/2015/11/facebook-banning-tsu-rival-social-network/ http://www.wired.com/2015/11/facebook-banning-tsu-rival-soci...

halflings 11y ago
Tsu is basically a pyramid scheme where the investment is your time. The "payments" they would give to their users are tiny, not enough for people to actually get any money out (except some outliers), and all what people are talking about on Tsu is: getting referrals to Tsu, making money from Tsu. Somehow, Morocco was among the countries that used Tsu the most, and being Moroccan I was myself continuously spammed by people posting referral links to Tsu... so it's understandable that facebook blocked them.
- chipsy 11y ago
  The pyramid scheme analogy only holds true if you are paying in with money, not time. Other social networks are investments of time too. Testimony: I registered for Tsu and have been active on it a for a few days after reading that story. There is nothing within the site that pushes monetization at you - there is a tab for payments, but it does not direct you there, and I didn't look at it until just now. When I did, I was presented with a terms of service, and then a "no spamming" click-through agreement. Therefore I have to conclude that all of the hubbub is generated by some combination of early external marketing efforts and the natural tendencies of wishful thinkers. They've decided to stop pushing that angle, most likely because they hit their critical mass targets and can move on towards more sustainable growth options.
- pjc50 11y ago
  Yeah, I think this illustrates why "monetising content" is the antithesis of community.

pjc50 11y ago

A link recently discovered was blocked by facebook (and I had no idea they were actively blocking the posting of links by users!): eulawanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-partys-over-eu-data-protection-law.html

jacquesm 11y ago
Wow. Facebook actively blocking links discussing Facebook in a critical way is very bad. Are you sure?
- icebraining 11y ago
  Multiple users reported it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10385612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10385612
  - onewaystreet 11y ago
    I find it strange that people are so quick to conclude censorship. Do they really think Facebook cares what some blogspot blog thinks? Facebook erroneously blocks links for a lot of reasons such as if many people report the link or if the link gets more shares than the domain usually gets.
    - pjc50 11y ago
      "erroneously blocks links for a lot of reasons" is also a problem, whether it's incompetence or conspiracy.
      - onewaystreet 11y ago
        With billions of links being shared on Facebook every day I suspect that they error on the side of caution.
    - oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
      Facebook has definitely been known to suppress criticism in the past, though. I've shared articles about facebook, on facebook, and they've been removed.

Jgrubb 11y ago

Irony is http://imgur.com/mivdSRC http://imgur.com/mivdSRC

cubano 11y ago

Killing the open web? Not hardly... > I had a blog once. It wasn’t big, but I loved knowing who I was writing for. I loved knowing that the same couple hundred people would come back again and again... Had a "blog once"? And your a writer? Why did you stop writing for it? This is the same article that could have been written by musicians 12 years ago or the MPAA 8yo...yes yes existential threats to the fundamental nature blah blah fucking blah... Don't get me twisted tho...I don't even like Facebook and Twitter anymore due to their obscene popularity, but whining about them "killing the open web"? Please just stop the hyperbole.

Aoyagi 11y ago
> your a writer? Amusing.

eertami 11y ago

Facebook is for closed networks. Twitter has literally no effect on the real world and is only cared about by the people on twitter. Neither are really a problem.

Spooky23 11y ago
Twitter is tough because it's so useful and cool in one sense, but the majority of its use is keeping "social media managers" occupied with something the appears to be work. I've rarely seen non-IT people using it.
- realityking 11y ago
  IT people and politicians in my experience And by politicians I mean not just those already established but also those in youth organizations.
DanBC 11y ago
> Twitter has literally no effect on the real world People have lost their jobs after twitter maulings.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

Facebook and Apple News might be "killing the open web", but Twitter? I'd say Twitter is a great champion of the web. Linking is so fundamental to the Twitter experience. Half of Twitter is links to other websites.

mattlutze 11y ago
Does Twitter load other web content through a built-in web browser in the app? That seems to be the big "white-washing" problem with the various reader apps (Facebook, Flipboard, etc), that they're unifying the interaction experience.
- chinathrow 11y ago
  They did that for some time but that isn't the case anymore these days, at least on Android.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  > Does Twitter load other web content through a built-in web browser in the app? On iOS, yes, it has a built-in browser. You can go to Safari if you like. They're not packaging up web content as if it's not web content, though. It's just to access sites quickly.
  - mattlutze 11y ago
    Facebook also shows what should/could be the whole page, but I'm not sure we know what all they strip out in the name of making things faster or more pleasant. I'd wager the same is true for any built-in browser that overrides the default action of sending a web link to the actual mobile browser. And I've gotta say, I'm really bothered by the way Facebook handles browsing. I have to copy the link, exit Facebook, open Safari, then paste and navigate to the link whenever I want to have a page I found on a Facebook post in my bookmarks, reading list, etc. Super frustrating.
    - JSoet 11y ago

ck2 11y ago

Remember how we were talking last week about how people seem to desire crowds and crowd-thinking, even if it literally kills them? Well that makes sites like Facebook and Twitter predictable and the power they wield.

acqq 11y ago

> Mostly, I get my news from Twitter. This should be the first thing to read in this article. The author seems to not have any preferred publisher anyway. He can consider and write why not, I'd also like to know. Then don't be surprised with the statement in a paragraph before: > And that’s why so many articles kinda sound the same these days.

oneeyedpigeon 11y ago

> But the larger point is that the logic of efficiency on the internet will always favor scale—which is to say, platforms—over publishers. I call bullshit on this one. It's unclear what the author means because they use such a meaningless term in "logic of efficiency", but the last time I looked, it was a lot more financially efficient to set up a website than a print publication. There is nothing at all inevitable about 'the biggest will win' online, as can be evidenced both by the disappearance of several former behmoths, and by the failure of several pre-Internet companies to 'make it big' online despite having unlimited capital to invest. Maybe, just maybe, the author is referring directly to advertising revenue here, as in "the more popular sites can make more money from advertising, and thus will grow and grow". Of course, that's totally dismissing the fact that many of the 'platforms' being discussed simply offer a far better experience, regardless of what content they offer or how big they already are. Here's a hint for the author and any other publishers reading: there is far greater variation in the packaging, delivery, and experience of content online than there is offline. Take advantage of that. Don't, as we've all been telling you for the last 20 years, just try to replicate your newspaper online: that makes for a horrible experience. Don't try to do advertising in the most obnoxious manner you can get away with; that may have worked in print, but it's been demonstrated pretty categorically now that it fails online. Or, you know, just carry on regardless, blame platforms for seizing the opportunity that you choose to ignore.

thomasz 11y ago
I think you are wrong to dismiss that point so harshly, when all empirical data shows it to be true. Engineering, Hosting, Marketing, Monetisation, all those things are massively cheaper when done by one big player. There is a reason publishers outsource advertisement to those shitty networks: They would be overwhelmed by the cost to operate, let alone create those beasts. And even when this problem would magically go away, they still lack the access to the petabytes of data the big platforms enjoy. Without this data, the advertisement will necessarily be crude and lacking focus.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
  I'm not saying those things aren't cheaper for bigger players, but that the playing field is more level online than it is off, at least in part because the production cost per unit is much, much less. I have yet to see the advertising that benefits from petabytes of data such that it isn't 'crude and lacking focus'. A lot of it has a focus, but it's often a nonsensical one.

Cartking5522 11y ago

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vlehto 11y ago

"It only really makes sense if you view writing as a fungible commodity" I have no sympathy for writers here. You view us readers as fungible commodity. I use Reddit, HN, Facebook and twitter to weed out the worst bullshit. There are lots of articles around just to keep me comfy long enough to show me adds. One of the worst these days is New Yorker, beautifully written articles about stuff people don't really care about. (Or atleast I don't care about.) Currently it survives on elitism. Web platforms are problematic. But lot better than ordering magazines at random, or paying for New Yorker monthly for that yearly gem. “Go where the readers are” It's more important to write what the readers want to read. I click stupid shit. I read mediocre pieces. I'm willing to pay for good stuff. I think there should be ordering/crowd funding service solely for written media. So that authors don't just babble nice sentences inside their comfort zone, but actually tackles things people are interested in. The real problem is that author doesn't know if s/he gets paid before the article is written, but also the reader doesn't know if the article is worth anything before reading it. I think the author of this piece has many good points, he just needs to dig deeper. This bleak context free future the author is painting is probably not true. People like context. Any social meeting is often first superficial introductions, then shallow gossip and only later dvelves into deep stuff. Internet is probably going to mirror that, but with more inertia.

ScottGillis 11y ago

I find the author’s argument regarding “publications losing their voice and not focusing on the preferences of their audience to meet the preference of the platform’s audience” self-contradictory. Is it not your own audience that is following you on these platforms? More so, the platforms give you real-time feedback and allow your audience to tell you which issues are most important. I find this to be the real issue here. The author is most interested in telling you what is important, instead of allowing you to decide for yourself. …And this is why certain publications struggle with these platforms.

ArekDymalski 11y ago
>platforms give real time feedback.. Unfortunately often it's not completely honest feedback about your content. It's feedback filtered / deformed by the fact that other people on the platform will see the likes, retweets, comments etc As a result it's not the best content that becomes popular. It's the one used to impress others.

Tloewald 11y ago

A big part of the problem is that "content" insists on being wrapped up in "interactivity" that is confusing and subtracts value (or adds cost) in other ways (image carousels with ads, articles broken into lots of small pieces to generate impressions), and the internet routes around cost. The central thesis that "pretending that content is free" is the underlying problem is interesting. Perhaps part of the problem is bad pricing. E.g. content that ought to be cheap (e.g. e-books, streaming video) tends to be more expensive or certainly insufficiently cheaper than content that ought to be more expensive (e.g. physical books, bluray disks). Perhaps a big part of the problem is publishers "pretending" they add value. Some publishers definitely add some value, but then they subtract value in other ways -- it's great that the movie studio figures out who the good writers, directors, and actors are and risks its own money to make a good movie, but it's bad that it's provided on a bluray disk with annoying copy-and-other protection in a hard-to-open package, and that it's more expensive to buy the cheaper to distribute and generally more convenient electronic version. Similarly, newyorker.com has great writing (and I pay for it) but the actual presentation layer (the website) subtracts value from it.

transfire 11y ago

I wish that every ISP was required to collect a "Distributed Content Fee" that every domain would get a portion of according to the number of visits they get. I think that would really help level the playing field. A lot of good content goes unrewarded (or uncreated) b/c their is no good way to monetize it.

alecco 11y ago
You mean your ISP tracking every move you make? Seriously?
- DanBC 11y ago
  You think your ISP doesn't already know exactly where you're going on the Internet?
  - alecco 11y ago
    That's why I use HTTPS and an independent DNS server with encryption. It's not exactly hard.
    - andreasvc 11y ago
      I don't get why you're so dismissive. Your ISP still sees that your IP connects to the IP of some server, at what time, for how long, how much data, etc. That's plenty of information.

SeanDav 11y ago

Completely OT: You know that phenomenon that when you hear a word for the first time in a long time or first time ever - and then you suddenly hear it again and again? Just happened to me with the word "Fungible". I happen to know what the word means, coming from a financial/trading background but don't recall hearing it for some time now. Then 2 completely unrelated Hacker News articles I read, almost in a row, had the word "Fungible" in them - neither of which had anything to do with finance/trading! I know it is just random chance, but it feels really strange!

mnx 11y ago
baader meinhof phenomenon
FlailFast 11y ago
Good ole Baader Meinhof phenomenon. True story: I learned about it after hearing "Baader Meinhof" thrown around one too many times. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_phenomenon#Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_phenomenon#Freq...
- rogeryu 11y ago
  That page doesn't explain it properly. Try this one: http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/theres-a-name-for-that-the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon-59670 http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/theres-a-name-for-tha... > Stanford linguistics professor Arnold Zwicky coined the former term in 2006 to describe the syndrome in which a concept or thing you just found out about suddenly seems to crop up everywhere. It’s caused, he wrote, by two psychological processes. The first, selective attention, kicks in when you’re struck by a new word, thing, or idea; after that, you unconsciously keep an eye out for it, and as a result find it surprisingly often. The second process, confirmation bias, reassures you that each sighting is further proof of your impression that the thing has gained overnight omnipresence. > The considerably catchier sobriquet Baader-Meinhof phenomenon was invented in 1994 by a commenter on the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ online discussion board, who came up with it after hearing the name of the ultra-left-wing German terrorist group twice in 24 hours. The phrase became a meme on the newspaper’s boards, where it still pops up regularly, and has since spread to the wider Internet. It even has its own Facebook page. Got all that? Don’t worry. You’ll hear about it again soon.

draw_down 11y ago

No, no. Not Facebook and Twitter. This is coming from everywhere. Because you can't sell the open internet as a branded experience. (And you can't force people to look at ads on it either)

phkahler 11y ago

I don't need an ad-blocker. I need a like blocker. When I go on facebook I want to see personal things my friends share, not a bunch of shit they saw and clicked "like" on. And I'm guilty of "liking" crap too. Maybe they could prioritize personal plain text posts, since those are actually the most relevant to me. But that is least relevant to advertisers. If they don't focus more on the users, a distributed replacement will eventually come out and there will be zero ad revenue to be had from that social platform. I've got some ideas in this space, but no time and no team.

intrasight 11y ago
FB Purity does a pretty good job of this
- phkahler 11y ago
  Thank you. I was not aware of that!
yeukhon 11y ago
I am on the opposite. What my friends like actually come out to be what I am probably going to like and I quite enjoy most of those likes. There are a few spammy one or useless crap, but overall the situation has been much better compare to, say, 2-3 years ago. I think the way Facebook and Twitter present stream is inconvenient for users who have a lot of friends or following a lot of people. It is simply a long linear scan and it literally takes me ~10 mins to review when I am on at the end of the day, I just want to see what's going on in everyone's world, ya know. I don't think gallery style will work either. I don't know, but linear scan is just not working.

intrasight 11y ago

Apps are doing much more to kill the open web than is any browser-based service.

chillingeffect 11y ago

Just like cable and CB radio, we need the government to reserve a section of the internet for non-commercial open access.

noarchy 11y ago
Why does the government need to do such a thing? You're free to set up your own corner of the Internet, unless the government itself tries to stop you, which does happen to some people in this world.
- chillingeffect 11y ago
  brb, digging along the highway to lay my fibers. srsly, it depends on the medium. With Citizen's Band radio, the government only had to step out of the way. With Cable public-access, the government had to require cable companies to give access to communities to equipment such as a cameras, studios, video players, etc. Public access internet's needs are much closer to those of community access television than Citizen's band.
  - noarchy 11y ago
    >With Cable public-access, the government had to require cable companies to give access to communities to equipment such as a cameras, studios, video players, etc. I don't even see why public access cable was forced on any company to begin with. The only reason that comes to mind that the public would even be entitled to free access to the company's facilities is the monopoly status that telecoms have often enjoyed in North America. In that case, a bit of give-and-take might be expected. But otherwise, I don't see much of a case for forcing a company to let people use its facilities for free. > Public access internet's needs are much closer to those of community access television than Citizen's band. This seems like a dubious "need". I can rent a VPS for a few dollars a month and generally do with it whatever I'd like. The barrier to entry is surprisingly-low, in that regard.
    - chillingeffect 11y ago

api 11y ago

I think this is hyperbole. I rarely use either and the open web seems fine.

m1sta_ 11y ago
How's your blackberry ;)

morninj 11y ago

On mobile, this page has a sticky banner at the bottom of the screen with a Facebook "like" button and a message asking me to "stay connected."

cwyers 11y ago

The article doesn't define the "open web," and platforms like Facebook and Twitter would seem to mostly follow the dictates set out in Tantek's original definition.[1] So it's hard to guess at what the author means -- Facebook and Twitter aren't "the open web" by tautology, basically. It's really hard to engage with the author's arguments that way. What is trivial to understand is that the author's proposed remedy doesn't work: > The answer is simple, but it isn’t easy. We need to stop pretending that content is free. Publications need to ask readers to pay for their content directly, and readers need to be willing to give up money, as opposed to their privacy and attention. This means that publications will have to abandon the rapid-growth business models driven by display ads, which have driven them to rely on Facebook for millions of pageviews a month. The fundamental problem with this is that siloing content the way the author suggests (publications with strong identities and paywalls to get readers to give money in exchange for content) breaks hyperlinks. It breaks sharing. Paywalls work when there's a marginal benefit to knowing something that someone else doesn't -- say, it helps you pick stocks better than the next guys. Otherwise, all else being equal, the article I can share with my friends, link to in my blog post, that I can engage with and respond to and have other people able to read the same article I am -- that's far more valuable than the article that I can read but can't share. We didn't get here because we're all stupid, or because people are unwilling to pay for anything ever. We got here because we were trying to come up with a model that allows people who make content to be compensated for it without betraying the fundamental thing that made the Web the Web -- the hyperlink. If your proposed alternative business model doesn't even TRY to engage with the question of linking and sharing, it's not going to work. 1) http://tantek.com/2010/281/b1/what-is-the-open-web http://tantek.com/2010/281/b1/what-is-the-open-web

romaniv 11y ago
Paywalls do not work, but Kickstarter and Patreon do work. Also, hosting a website for several thousand people (as opposed to hundreds of thousands) it so cheap this days that the cost becomes negligible. It maintenance becomes the most "expensive" - or annoying if you're doing it yourself - part of it all.
pauleastlund 11y ago
What is a page view on an article worth these days? A couple cents? Less? If the micropayments implementation was right, and if paying for content became a more mainstream idea, I don't think you'd feel that you "[could] read but [couldn't] share" an article just because it charged a nickel to continue past the intro paragraph. I don't see how that would break hyperlinks.

softyeti 11y ago

The article seems to be confused over content viewed by way of advertisement and content delivered by users actively seeking content. When I want to read up on some news, I go to the publisher's site directly or to a preferred aggregator, which is not going to be facebook/twitter/etc. Advertised content is typically very poor, and really not worth defending.

Kinnard 11y ago

Beautifully written article on articles.

thadd 11y ago

Probably not a dumb hypothesis, but this author turns this into a lament about the changes in publishing. Next.

benten10 11y ago

Disclaimer: I like twitter over facebook, which I don't use that much, and my comment history will show that I'm a twitter 'lackey', so to speak. Does anyone else feel that the facebook moment is fading away? People have compared information to food, and I can see the similarities. When you come from a place where there's little or no food, you want to hoard all you can -- why yes, I would love to see your babies pics every day, of course, post three dozen photos of the same party from different angles, I love it, why yes, this memory from seven years ago is exactly what I need. When you're saturated with information (in this case, social media information), it doesn't feel as special anymore. Soon, you realize that while looking at Christmas photos from people you went to high school with, was fun for a while, there is only so much space in your head and social energy. The marginal value of that extra bit goes down, and averages start leveling off or going down. There's too much food everywhere, you don't want to be forced with another plate of who-gives-an-eff-about-your-fifth-Halloween-in-a-row. What was originally curiosity and genuine excitement about other people's lives becomes social courtesy: of course you will like your almost-friend's child's photos because that's what good friends would do. Social networking (in facebook form) becomes ritualistic. So the solution is social networks that (artificially) limit your access to information, such as snapchat and twitter. You want to only share a few things, with a few people at a time, and perhaps that shared thing will disappear in a couple of days/hours/views. To me that sounds like the long-term future of social media. Anyone have any thoughts?

ljk 11y ago
> So the solution is social networks that (artificially) limit your access to information, such as snapchat and twitter. You want to only share a few things, with a few people at a time, and perhaps that shared thing will disappear in a couple of days/hours/views. To me that sounds like the long-term future of social media. not a heavy user of social network sites, so this probably won't be everyone's experience, but the features you mentioned(limit of access to information, sharing only a few things, etc) can be done on any platform. It's really how you use it; none of the sites force you to share every moment with the world imo the long-term future of social media is to get you to use it as much as you can so they can sell ads to you
leviathant 11y ago

n0us 11y ago

I do have to say, my experience with Apple News has been very nice. These apps seem to affect publishers more than the 'open web' and at that they are little more than nice RSS readers that don't ruin your experience with ads even though there are still ads there. I don't particularly see anything wrong with separating publishers from content producers. It now seems more appropriate to think of news magazines and traditional 'publishers' as content producers who rely on the new 'publishers' a la Facebook, Apple, Twitter to distribute their content because they cannot and should not be focused on building an enormous infrastructure to do this. Print media is 'open' in that anyone can print something and distribute it but the ability to do so effectively has pretty much been consolidated into the hands of very few for a long time. Now a days you can publish your own music, your own books, and your own news and its popularity will be determined by the masses, not some worn out talent scout trying to please a boss who is using focus groups to figure out what might make him a buck. Ultimately I think we will see a more open and democratic future for publishing, not the death of the open web. Control is shifting hands to a new set of publishers, one that puts the visibility of content into the hands of the readers in the form of likes and tweets. Maybe the news produced by these traditional outlets just doesn't have as much value as it once did. That is what likely scares them in my mind.

calebm 11y ago

Gotta love the Facebook and Twitter buttons at the bottom of the article :)

zxcvvcxz 11y ago

I never understand these articles. No they're not. You're not required to use these two (out of billions of) websites. Vote with your time and attention. For better or worse, the majority of people vote for these sites.

bitcuration 11y ago

This is simpler than most people think. If there is no ad time/place, the platform won't be able to monetize it. Google makes people go away, but right before that people look at their search result where the Ads are displayed. Why it doesn't work twitter, probably nobody follow the news link and bother come back to strike a conversation on twitter. Mostly the conversation takes place right below the news article and with the author not the tweet. Most online conversation took place right where the content is at, on Youtube, on NYtimes, on Forbes, unless compassion with twitter but now we that passion is going down. There is also a subtle difference of the social relation where the news feed is from, which is why facebook news feed is a BAD idea. Why would I have my mother in law in my facebook circle yet sharing the latest Intel acquisition news, or even makeing comment. Never mix life and work, even hobby or side projects, that's social network 101, or platform 101. I know a friend who has 9 facebook Ids, I personally have 3,4 twitter accounts, for the purpose explained here. From a news consumption standpoint, iOS news is a joke, facebook news is meaningless, twitter is inconvenient, therefore I use Zite, which connects to my twitter. From a conversation standpoint, Hacker news format is idea, but lack of twitter's networking. Something has all these together would be a hit.