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Online Publisher Dependent Upon Facebook Shuts Down, Blaming Algorithm Change (2018)

46 points by chalst 5y ago

chalst 5y ago
Excerpt for the "John Gruber; Didn't Click" types: ----- Here’s how utterly clueless Speiser was about getting into bed with Facebook. In June 2016, he told The Wall Street Journal there was no reason for publishers to be nervous about Facebook: Media companies are increasingly nervous about Facebook. While many now rely heavily on the social network to drive traffic to their content and to help generate revenue from their audiences, some media executives still question Facebook’s long-term commitment to helping their businesses. But according to Joe Speiser, chief executive of “feel-good” content publisher LittleThings, those concerns are unfounded. Facebook wants to control the experience users have on its platform, he said, but Facebook needs publishers just as much as publishers need Facebook. “I think we need each other. We need them for the traffic; they need us for the content,” Mr. Speiser said on this week’s WSJ Media Mix podcast. “I think [Facebook] cares very much. I think without the content all these media companies are providing there’d be that much less reason to go on to the news feed.” 18 months later exactly the thing Speiser said he wasn’t concerned about — Facebook fucking him over — forced him to shut down his company.
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  > Here’s how utterly clueless Speiser was about getting into bed with Facebook. In June 2016, he told The Wall Street Journal there was no reason for publishers to be nervous about Facebook: It is funny to read someone who has advocated developing for iOS for a decade to say things like this with no irony.
  - chalst 5y ago
    It's the difference between 30% fucked and 75% fucked.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      If Apple changes its app store search algorithm you're still mostly fucked. If Apple decides they like your app and want to copy it's features into their own app or iOS itself then you're 100% fucked. In general, relying on the good will and unchanging rules of a 3rd party platform for your business is inherently risky.
      - 6510 5y ago
        I like the part where you have to build the entire business before they will consider rejecting you.
        ineedasername 5y ago
        Yep, if you're trying to build a new business based on an app, going for the absolute MVP to get early approval or rejection seems like a big requirement. Then just add incrementally until/unless an update gets rejected or you've built the full product. And then just hope the rules don't change.
- philipov 5y ago
  In a sense, he's right that Facebook needs someone to provide content for them. But Facebook has billions of someones to do that for them. They don't need any particular someone, and there will still be plenty of someones left over even if they screw everyone over. This is why a company being too much bigger than its clients is an antitrust issue regardless of market share; B2B competition isn't the only thing that matters. A market must respond to signals from consumers to be healthy, and it won't do that if the individual customers are insignificantly small compared to the companies in that market. In such a market, collusion between the market leaders becomes more valuable than competition.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    why a company being too much bigger than its clients is an antitrust issue Content producers and Facebook users aren't the clients. Advertisers are the clients, people are the product.
    - philipov 5y ago
      That's a popular quip, but I think it's actually a form of thought-terminating cliche. If you want, they're clients in the sense that a government torturer's victim is their client.
      - ineedasername 5y ago
        I think that whoever is paying for something is the true client. I also think that calling something thought-terminating can, itself, be thought terminating. In this case, a way of dismissing a commonly made point under the assumption that I have not thought through the issue on a much deeper level, but I have done so. We may simply disagree on our conclusions.
        philipov 5y ago
        Users of facebook are paying for something, they're just not paying for it with cash. They're paying for it with their personal data.
yvoschaap 5y ago
Date published: 2018
- chalst 5y ago
  Oh, yes. I've had that tab open in my browser for days and not noticed. Sorry.
tempodox 5y ago
> The only platform publishers can count on is the open web. [...] Any publisher that is dependent on Facebook, or that trusts Facebook, is out of their goddamn mind. I'd have thought that the instinct for self-preservation would be more common, but that's not the first time I was wrong.
xiphias2 5y ago
Facebook has a monopoly position on being the social network that connects people, but not on monetizing video content. YouTube, TikTok, Netflix, Disney+, movie theatres all need and provide great content, but it's a hard business to be in and stay in.
movedx 5y ago
I know this sounds like dramatic, but this is why I decided to self-host (DigitalOcean) MkDocs + Material and use plugins and other add-ons to create the self-publishing platform for my book: https://learndevops.com.au https://learndevops.com.au I don't want to put hundreds of hours into something and then an algorithm changes, the policies of the platform change (or its direction), or it simply shuts down. I believe in some cases it makes sense to self-host and go bespoke.
- CodesInChaos 5y ago
  Even if you is selfhost google, facebook & co still have a big influence over the traffic you receive, so alhorithm changes still affect you. For a book, other ways of advertising are effective, so you're reasonably independent. For news and other small pieces of content, it's much harder to avoid dependence on big aggregators.
- helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  The difference is that you’ve effectively created one piece of content - a big book on dev ops - that will be very interesting to a small set of people. People can visit, decide they like what they see, read a bit, bookmark, come back later and read a bit more and perhaps pay for the paywall stuff. LittleThings is creating lots of articles slightly interesting to a larger set of people that requires a constant stream of new viewers - because people appear to not come back voluntarily unless they see a new interesting article in their Facebook feed.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
57844743385 5y ago
“ Any publisher that is dependent on Facebook, or that trusts Facebook, is out of their goddamn mind.” Or google. Or Apple. Or any platform.
- mnd999 5y ago
  What choice do you have at this point? If you’re not on these platforms how does anyone find you?
lbriner 5y ago
There is a logical flaw in his comment that "Facebook needs publishers". Although that is true in general, it does not follow that they need you as a publisher. As others have said, it is insanity to invest time and money into a business that is partly controlled by somebody that you have exactly zero control over. Same as having a single supplier or a single customer.
- rjtavares 5y ago
  Thousands of companies in the world are built around a single customer or supplier. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it treated as an existential risk (which doesn't seem to be the case here).
  - Retric 5y ago
    There is very much something wrong with it or it wouldn’t be an existential risk.
    - dspillett 5y ago
      It is fine to initially build around a single source/sink, often you have to as you lack the resources to successfully be any more generalist, and often a new product/service evolves out of an interaction with that one entity (or pair of entities if the product acts as a bridge). The risk is staying in that state too long, and the trick is knowing how and when to start diversifying, or at least having a plan for diversification in case it is needed at short notice.
  - nonameiguess 5y ago
    That's what contracts are for. Lockheed would be screwed if the government just decided to up and cancel every program that purchases Lockheed products, but they can't. They placed an order, agreed in writing, and can't just change their mind and not pay.
- dspillett 5y ago
  > it does not follow that they need you as a publisher This is a large part of why eBay favours the buyer[†]. Yes, they need sellers, but if you stop selling the buyers don't go away so someone else will take your position in their market (no change for eBay overall) or increased competition will increase prices (so eBay make the same despite lower sales due to % of sale based fees). People buying from sellers using eBay as a platform are the more treasured resource, much the same as the people reading from publishers who are using facebook as a platform, and the same dynamic exists in many other places. Only when a resource is truly both in specific demand and scarce does this situation reverse. [†] or at least it feels that way to most sellers, buyers still sometimes feel shafted too though that are shafted less than sellers.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ashtonkem 5y ago
One of my former employers lost 8 digits worth of revenue because of a change to Google’s SEO rules. And this is a company that had alternative sources of revenue and a decades long history. It’s easy to say “don’t depend on FAANG companies”, but in practice it’s very hard.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
For those that say you shouldn't trust Facebook and should build your own platform - they had and they had 12 million Facebook followers that could have signed up to a mailing list or gone to use their website more regularly but the sad truth is that I imagine only a tiny percentage of those followers are interested enough in making any kind of effort to read LittleThings content. They are producing (in my view) low quality, ad heavy, list style, click bait articles copying FB/IG/Twitter images and content that CAN ONLY EXIST inside of the Facebook feed. Their business model relies on creating clickable/likeable headlines and images that the FB algorithm shows to millions of people so a handful will click through to visit the site and make them ad revenue and a sprinkling promoted/paid for ‘news’ articles. The algorithm may have killed them but it made them too. The real problem is that this kind of drivel is forcing out real news stories, in-depth original articles, opinion pieces, proper product reviews and well written blogs.

46 points by chalst 5y ago

Excerpt for the "John Gruber; Didn't Click" types: ----- Here’s how utterly clueless Speiser was about getting into bed with Facebook. In June 2016, he told The Wall Street Journal there was no reason for publishers to be nervous about Facebook: Media companies are increasingly nervous about Facebook. While many now rely heavily on the social network to drive traffic to their content and to help generate revenue from their audiences, some media executives still question Facebook’s long-term commitment to helping their businesses. But according to Joe Speiser, chief executive of “feel-good” content publisher LittleThings, those concerns are unfounded. Facebook wants to control the experience users have on its platform, he said, but Facebook needs publishers just as much as publishers need Facebook. “I think we need each other. We need them for the traffic; they need us for the content,” Mr. Speiser said on this week’s WSJ Media Mix podcast. “I think [Facebook] cares very much. I think without the content all these media companies are providing there’d be that much less reason to go on to the news feed.” 18 months later exactly the thing Speiser said he wasn’t concerned about — Facebook fucking him over — forced him to shut down his company.

Mindwipe 5y ago
> Here’s how utterly clueless Speiser was about getting into bed with Facebook. In June 2016, he told The Wall Street Journal there was no reason for publishers to be nervous about Facebook: It is funny to read someone who has advocated developing for iOS for a decade to say things like this with no irony.
- chalst 5y ago
  It's the difference between 30% fucked and 75% fucked.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    If Apple changes its app store search algorithm you're still mostly fucked. If Apple decides they like your app and want to copy it's features into their own app or iOS itself then you're 100% fucked. In general, relying on the good will and unchanging rules of a 3rd party platform for your business is inherently risky.
    - 6510 5y ago
      I like the part where you have to build the entire business before they will consider rejecting you.
      - ineedasername 5y ago
        Yep, if you're trying to build a new business based on an app, going for the absolute MVP to get early approval or rejection seems like a big requirement. Then just add incrementally until/unless an update gets rejected or you've built the full product. And then just hope the rules don't change.
philipov 5y ago
In a sense, he's right that Facebook needs someone to provide content for them. But Facebook has billions of someones to do that for them. They don't need any particular someone, and there will still be plenty of someones left over even if they screw everyone over. This is why a company being too much bigger than its clients is an antitrust issue regardless of market share; B2B competition isn't the only thing that matters. A market must respond to signals from consumers to be healthy, and it won't do that if the individual customers are insignificantly small compared to the companies in that market. In such a market, collusion between the market leaders becomes more valuable than competition.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  why a company being too much bigger than its clients is an antitrust issue Content producers and Facebook users aren't the clients. Advertisers are the clients, people are the product.
  - philipov 5y ago
    That's a popular quip, but I think it's actually a form of thought-terminating cliche. If you want, they're clients in the sense that a government torturer's victim is their client.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      I think that whoever is paying for something is the true client. I also think that calling something thought-terminating can, itself, be thought terminating. In this case, a way of dismissing a commonly made point under the assumption that I have not thought through the issue on a much deeper level, but I have done so. We may simply disagree on our conclusions.
      - philipov 5y ago
        Users of facebook are paying for something, they're just not paying for it with cash. They're paying for it with their personal data.

yvoschaap 5y ago

Date published: 2018

chalst 5y ago
Oh, yes. I've had that tab open in my browser for days and not noticed. Sorry.

tempodox 5y ago

> The only platform publishers can count on is the open web. [...] Any publisher that is dependent on Facebook, or that trusts Facebook, is out of their goddamn mind. I'd have thought that the instinct for self-preservation would be more common, but that's not the first time I was wrong.

xiphias2 5y ago

Facebook has a monopoly position on being the social network that connects people, but not on monetizing video content. YouTube, TikTok, Netflix, Disney+, movie theatres all need and provide great content, but it's a hard business to be in and stay in.

movedx 5y ago

I know this sounds like dramatic, but this is why I decided to self-host (DigitalOcean) MkDocs + Material and use plugins and other add-ons to create the self-publishing platform for my book: https://learndevops.com.au https://learndevops.com.au I don't want to put hundreds of hours into something and then an algorithm changes, the policies of the platform change (or its direction), or it simply shuts down. I believe in some cases it makes sense to self-host and go bespoke.

CodesInChaos 5y ago
Even if you is selfhost google, facebook & co still have a big influence over the traffic you receive, so alhorithm changes still affect you. For a book, other ways of advertising are effective, so you're reasonably independent. For news and other small pieces of content, it's much harder to avoid dependence on big aggregators.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
The difference is that you’ve effectively created one piece of content - a big book on dev ops - that will be very interesting to a small set of people. People can visit, decide they like what they see, read a bit, bookmark, come back later and read a bit more and perhaps pay for the paywall stuff. LittleThings is creating lots of articles slightly interesting to a larger set of people that requires a constant stream of new viewers - because people appear to not come back voluntarily unless they see a new interesting article in their Facebook feed.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

57844743385 5y ago

“ Any publisher that is dependent on Facebook, or that trusts Facebook, is out of their goddamn mind.” Or google. Or Apple. Or any platform.

mnd999 5y ago
What choice do you have at this point? If you’re not on these platforms how does anyone find you?

lbriner 5y ago

There is a logical flaw in his comment that "Facebook needs publishers". Although that is true in general, it does not follow that they need you as a publisher. As others have said, it is insanity to invest time and money into a business that is partly controlled by somebody that you have exactly zero control over. Same as having a single supplier or a single customer.

rjtavares 5y ago
Thousands of companies in the world are built around a single customer or supplier. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it treated as an existential risk (which doesn't seem to be the case here).
- Retric 5y ago
  There is very much something wrong with it or it wouldn’t be an existential risk.
  - dspillett 5y ago
    It is fine to initially build around a single source/sink, often you have to as you lack the resources to successfully be any more generalist, and often a new product/service evolves out of an interaction with that one entity (or pair of entities if the product acts as a bridge). The risk is staying in that state too long, and the trick is knowing how and when to start diversifying, or at least having a plan for diversification in case it is needed at short notice.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  That's what contracts are for. Lockheed would be screwed if the government just decided to up and cancel every program that purchases Lockheed products, but they can't. They placed an order, agreed in writing, and can't just change their mind and not pay.
dspillett 5y ago
> it does not follow that they need you as a publisher This is a large part of why eBay favours the buyer[†]. Yes, they need sellers, but if you stop selling the buyers don't go away so someone else will take your position in their market (no change for eBay overall) or increased competition will increase prices (so eBay make the same despite lower sales due to % of sale based fees). People buying from sellers using eBay as a platform are the more treasured resource, much the same as the people reading from publishers who are using facebook as a platform, and the same dynamic exists in many other places. Only when a resource is truly both in specific demand and scarce does this situation reverse. [†] or at least it feels that way to most sellers, buyers still sometimes feel shafted too though that are shafted less than sellers.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ashtonkem 5y ago

One of my former employers lost 8 digits worth of revenue because of a change to Google’s SEO rules. And this is a company that had alternative sources of revenue and a decades long history. It’s easy to say “don’t depend on FAANG companies”, but in practice it’s very hard.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

For those that say you shouldn't trust Facebook and should build your own platform - they had and they had 12 million Facebook followers that could have signed up to a mailing list or gone to use their website more regularly but the sad truth is that I imagine only a tiny percentage of those followers are interested enough in making any kind of effort to read LittleThings content. They are producing (in my view) low quality, ad heavy, list style, click bait articles copying FB/IG/Twitter images and content that CAN ONLY EXIST inside of the Facebook feed. Their business model relies on creating clickable/likeable headlines and images that the FB algorithm shows to millions of people so a handful will click through to visit the site and make them ad revenue and a sprinkling promoted/paid for ‘news’ articles. The algorithm may have killed them but it made them too. The real problem is that this kind of drivel is forcing out real news stories, in-depth original articles, opinion pieces, proper product reviews and well written blogs.