5 ms·

This is sort of like Amazon announcing that it wants to strengthen its partnership with mom-and-pop shops, and help those mom-and-pop shops sell products in new

by jawns 10y ago

This is sort of like Amazon announcing that it wants to strengthen its partnership with mom-and-pop shops, and help those mom-and-pop shops sell products in new and innovative ways. I'm a former journalist who used to work for a metro daily newspaper that has long suffered, as most newspapers have, from declining ad revenue. For these papers, the only reason to partner with Facebook is because they feel they have little choice. They would much rather have a healthy revenue stream and be self-sufficient. But so far, the news industry has not found anything that adequately replaces the print-ad-driven business model that served it so well for so long. So they're willing to try just about anything -- including, apparently, accepting a dinner invitation from a reputed cannibal.

cshenoy 10y ago
Interesting. Who is the reputed cannibal or was that said in jest?
- nerdponx 10y ago
  Facebook is the cannibal in this case I think.
- trequartista 10y ago
  Facebook is the cannibal because it's eating the businesses of these newspapers
- spdustin 10y ago
  It's used as a simile to anthropomorphize Facebook - FaceBook is like the cannibal that invites you, the business he's eating, over for dinner.
save_ferris 10y ago
This. I'm a back end dev at a small non-profit news org and it blows my mind how fast my employer wants us to integrate with FB instant articles and AMP without considering the consequences (AMP traffic staying in Google's network, etc.) Coming from a startup where our data was proprietary and execution meant everything, it feels weird sometimes that I get paid to make it as easy as possible for Google, FB, and others to access our content at scale (for free) while the news organization bears the infrastructure and engineering costs to do so. These big companies aren't in this to help media companies, they've successfully commoditized content production and demanded news organizations to get with their program or get buried and forgotten.
- devoply 10y ago
  Content is free, not just from the amateurs, from the pros too. Laughing all the way to the bank. One of the reasons why MySpace was bought, but at the time it was already dying.
- bitmapbrother 10y ago
  AMP is ad network agnostic.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  Google, Facebook, etc, are marketing platforms. They are giving you marketing in exchange for content. It's equivalent to what you would've had to do in the past, which is pay somebody to go door to door selling your newspaper, giving out free copies of the newspaper. The free newspapers aren't your product, they're an ad for your product. If you can't convert attention on Google/Facebook into your own ad revenue then you should stop purchasing advertising with content and you should focus on conversion.
philippnagel 10y ago
I am currently tinkering with something that might help. Basically you would "sell" your readers CPU/GPU time to us via a small JS-script embedded into your page to power ML/DL and scientific computation tasks (similar to BOINC). Thoughts?
- jawns 10y ago
  It's a very interesting idea, but I see two hurdles to adoption: 1) Getting readers to consent. Oh, sure, they might unknowingly "consent" if it's buried in the TOS. They might even explicitly consent if you present them with a one-time consent form that implies it's making use of resources that would otherwise be idle. But then their laptop starts to heat up every time they visit the site. If they leave the tab open, other apps appear sluggish. Eventually, they're going to notice that they're not actually giving away something that has no cost to them. It's more like loaning someone your car when it would otherwise sit parked in your driveway. Eventually you're going to notice wear on your car, and an empty gas tank. 2) Digital advertising revenue is insufficient, by a significant margin, to replace print-ad revenue. I would expect the revenue from this type of arrangement to be low enough that it doesn't solve the problem, but only stems the tide a bit. Perhaps some publishers would be willing to invest the time to integrate with this, even if it's a comparatively low revenue stream. But I think most publishers are investing most of their energy looking for the true game changer: a business model that can actually sustain their business.
- MasterScrat 10y ago
  Reminds me of the hackathon project made by MIT students. It was the same idea but it would mine BTC instead of doing ML in Javascript. Site archive here: https://web.archive.org/web/20140425180831/http://tidbit.co.in/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140425180831/http://tidbit.co.... To be honest if I had a dead simple way to pay a few cents to read an article I would do it for a number of publications. But I'm not willing to signup individually to each one.
  - richardboegli 10y ago
    Google's Contributor https://contributor.google.com/ https://contributor.google.com/ From Wikipedia: Google Contributor is a program run by Google that allows users in the Google Network of content sites to view the websites without any advertisements that are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor
Kalium 10y ago
> But so far, the news industry has not found anything that adequately replaces the print-ad-driven business model that served it so well for so long. I shell out of Nautilus and The Economist. The content is excellent and engaging. The access is reasonable. Ads are not obnoxious or intrusive. It seems to me that there are perfectly functional models here...
- huckyaus 10y ago
  The overall industry trends suggest that you're part of a tiny minority, so I don't think this model is an "adequate replacement" at present.
  - Kalium 10y ago
    I don't think it needs to be an adequate replacement for the whole industry. Just the parts worth preserving.
erikpukinskis 10y ago
> the only reason to partner with Facebook is because they feel they have little choice. What? Can you explain what you mean? Newspapers have more choices than ever before. The only choice they don't have is one very specific business model: paper routes supported by classified ads. Other than that, the world is your oyster. The periodicals industry is alive and well.

by jawns 10y ago

cshenoy 10y ago

Interesting. Who is the reputed cannibal or was that said in jest?

nerdponx 10y ago
Facebook is the cannibal in this case I think.
trequartista 10y ago
Facebook is the cannibal because it's eating the businesses of these newspapers
spdustin 10y ago
It's used as a simile to anthropomorphize Facebook - FaceBook is like the cannibal that invites you, the business he's eating, over for dinner.

save_ferris 10y ago

This. I'm a back end dev at a small non-profit news org and it blows my mind how fast my employer wants us to integrate with FB instant articles and AMP without considering the consequences (AMP traffic staying in Google's network, etc.) Coming from a startup where our data was proprietary and execution meant everything, it feels weird sometimes that I get paid to make it as easy as possible for Google, FB, and others to access our content at scale (for free) while the news organization bears the infrastructure and engineering costs to do so. These big companies aren't in this to help media companies, they've successfully commoditized content production and demanded news organizations to get with their program or get buried and forgotten.

devoply 10y ago
Content is free, not just from the amateurs, from the pros too. Laughing all the way to the bank. One of the reasons why MySpace was bought, but at the time it was already dying.
bitmapbrother 10y ago
AMP is ad network agnostic.
erikpukinskis 10y ago
Google, Facebook, etc, are marketing platforms. They are giving you marketing in exchange for content. It's equivalent to what you would've had to do in the past, which is pay somebody to go door to door selling your newspaper, giving out free copies of the newspaper. The free newspapers aren't your product, they're an ad for your product. If you can't convert attention on Google/Facebook into your own ad revenue then you should stop purchasing advertising with content and you should focus on conversion.

philippnagel 10y ago

I am currently tinkering with something that might help. Basically you would "sell" your readers CPU/GPU time to us via a small JS-script embedded into your page to power ML/DL and scientific computation tasks (similar to BOINC). Thoughts?

jawns 10y ago
It's a very interesting idea, but I see two hurdles to adoption: 1) Getting readers to consent. Oh, sure, they might unknowingly "consent" if it's buried in the TOS. They might even explicitly consent if you present them with a one-time consent form that implies it's making use of resources that would otherwise be idle. But then their laptop starts to heat up every time they visit the site. If they leave the tab open, other apps appear sluggish. Eventually, they're going to notice that they're not actually giving away something that has no cost to them. It's more like loaning someone your car when it would otherwise sit parked in your driveway. Eventually you're going to notice wear on your car, and an empty gas tank. 2) Digital advertising revenue is insufficient, by a significant margin, to replace print-ad revenue. I would expect the revenue from this type of arrangement to be low enough that it doesn't solve the problem, but only stems the tide a bit. Perhaps some publishers would be willing to invest the time to integrate with this, even if it's a comparatively low revenue stream. But I think most publishers are investing most of their energy looking for the true game changer: a business model that can actually sustain their business.
MasterScrat 10y ago
Reminds me of the hackathon project made by MIT students. It was the same idea but it would mine BTC instead of doing ML in Javascript. Site archive here: https://web.archive.org/web/20140425180831/http://tidbit.co.in/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140425180831/http://tidbit.co.... To be honest if I had a dead simple way to pay a few cents to read an article I would do it for a number of publications. But I'm not willing to signup individually to each one.
- richardboegli 10y ago
  Google's Contributor https://contributor.google.com/ https://contributor.google.com/ From Wikipedia: Google Contributor is a program run by Google that allows users in the Google Network of content sites to view the websites without any advertisements that are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

Kalium 10y ago

> But so far, the news industry has not found anything that adequately replaces the print-ad-driven business model that served it so well for so long. I shell out of Nautilus and The Economist. The content is excellent and engaging. The access is reasonable. Ads are not obnoxious or intrusive. It seems to me that there are perfectly functional models here...

huckyaus 10y ago
The overall industry trends suggest that you're part of a tiny minority, so I don't think this model is an "adequate replacement" at present.
- Kalium 10y ago
  I don't think it needs to be an adequate replacement for the whole industry. Just the parts worth preserving.

erikpukinskis 10y ago

> the only reason to partner with Facebook is because they feel they have little choice. What? Can you explain what you mean? Newspapers have more choices than ever before. The only choice they don't have is one very specific business model: paper routes supported by classified ads. Other than that, the world is your oyster. The periodicals industry is alive and well.