3 ms·
The article is from 2015 but the actual story/experience is from 2010. FWIW, the onion has changed hands at least twice and the entire industry has cratered si
by cagenut 6y ago
The article is from 2015 but the actual story/experience is from 2010. FWIW, the onion has changed hands at least twice and the entire industry has cratered since then (hence them being owned by a PE firm now). The TV show mentioned is of course long canceled.
I know this is kinda dragging a tangential thing in here, but it really can't be overstated how much Facebook hollowed out the sector. We're talking rockefeller rolling up oil refineries, except instead of cutting them in zuck just middle-manned their entire distribution chain and squeezed them to death.
- ghaff 6y agoI don't know how much of it is Facebook specifically. The decline of revenue coming into ad-supported sites generally has been happening for a very long time. Facebook is part of the reason but it's not the only one.
- cagenut 6y agoIt was a one-two-three punch. First it was Craiglist, then it was Google, now its Facebook. The main difference between google and facebook is that search optimizes for sending you on your way, so the destination sites could still do something with their audience. Facebook is extremely optimized to keep you on facebook, so in a raw attention-economy eyeball-minutes sense FB hurt much more than google. And yes, if you're looking for full spectrum technicalities here amazon and microsoft and yahoo all shaved a few % each themselves too. But the high order bit, in 2020, is unequivocally FB.