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> One former employee familiar with the matter said media companies' business models had initially been all but an afterthought. "The idea that these products c
by apozem 10y ago
> One former employee familiar with the matter said media companies' business models had initially been all but an afterthought. "The idea that these products could meaningfully impact the revenue of the news industry just didn’t really come up," the former employee said. "I don’t know that anyone [at Facebook] took that piece all that seriously."
Whoops! Almost accidentally destroyed the business model of a free press! Good thing we encouraged all those bullshit clickbait meme Facebook pages to grow on our platform. They'll do the hard, non-profitable accountability journalism.
- AlexandrB 10y agoMove fast and break things.
- mschuster91 10y ago> Whoops! Almost accidentally destroyed the business model of a free press! Good thing we encouraged all those bullshit clickbait meme Facebook pages to grow on our platform. They'll do the hard, non-profitable accountability journalism. Well, Buzzfeed (which grew to its size mainly due to FB) for example doesn't just produce clickbait crxp, but also high quality journalism these days.
- Tokkemon 10y agoIs that sarcasm? Really?
- Trill-I-Am 10y agoWere you unaware that buzzfeed produced feature longform journalism?
- azernik 10y agoReally. https://www.poynter.org/2016/how-buzzfeed-built-an-investigative-team-from-the-ground-up/396656/ https://www.poynter.org/2016/how-buzzfeed-built-an-investiga... Of course, that includes some irresponsible journalism too. http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/media/314042-buzzfeeds-report-just-made-life-harder-for-journalists http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/media/314042-buzzfeeds...
- MarkMc 10y agoI was as surprised as you. Here's an example of a quality BuzzFeed article: https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-trump-around-the-world https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/fake-news-spreads-tru...
- untog 10y agoYes, Buzzfeed has a well staffed news operation that has covered some huge stories. In fact, Buzzfeed seems like one of the few news operations with a business plan: clickbait and "sponsored content" successfully subsidising actual news output. The problem comes either when a news story conflicts with an advertiser's promoted content, or when shareholders start insisting on better returns and look at the news operation as a liability.
- bigbugbag 10y agoNo. buzzfeed has actually broken out a few real investigate journalism stories and news coverage. I don't know what the business model is, I suppose they use some of the money they make from the crap they do to pay third parties for good content that has a high potential of buzzing the feed. But this is buzzfeed so I won't go there ever for any reason, and certainly not for the handful of stories that may interest me.