Overview: Media

"Since it launched in March 2012, I F*cking Love Science has attracted more than 17.9 million Facebook followers—more than Popular Science (2.7 million), Discover (2.7 million), Scientific American (1.9 million), and The New York Times (8 million) combined. ... Her empire has since expanded to include a website, IFLscience.com, which has a staff a…

"Buying traffic isn’t so much a taboo as it is a poor business decision for most publishers in most instances ... It’s expensive, and the money could usually be better invested in editors who reach an organic audience.... There are times when paid promotion makes sense. Some do paid promotion on posts that have particularly high engagement alread…

It wasn't supposed to be this way... "The internet is ballooning with fluff, and bad content marketing is to blame. In our obsession with "engaging" our "audience" in "real-time" with "targeted content" that goes "viral," we are driving people insane... Although word on the street is that people want short, “snackable” content, the data says…

Unsurprising that LinkedIn promoted this post.... the comments rapidly turned into an interesting conversation on Linkedin v. Facebook... people seem to comment more on LinkedIn posts than elsewhere. Perhaps the return of blogging that people are starting to talk about is next.

A wonderful presentation from Jonathan Corum, science graphics editor at The New York Times, on creating infographics and data visualisations that truly add value: "Sometimes, I feel more like a translator than a designer. Trying to translate the point the scientist is trying to make to a wider audience, and removing all of the jargon. ... If I …

At least 1 year's reading right here: " ... the main projects, events, new sites, trends, personalities and general observations that have struck me as being important to help further the development of this field." A well-timed survey, given the recent publication of the UpShot's opus on the US economy and other daa visualisation ventures. But t…

Tracking #Ferguson on Twitter. Via @Mathewi, GigaOm

"... envisions a Yahoo that’s as ubiquitous as computers seem destined to be. Phones, watches, public terminals, brain implants — Yahoo wants to be able to deliver content to all of them... Yahoo Labs’ biggest focus appears to be on machine learning... a dedicated machine learning group based in New York; ... “hardcore science and some theory,…

"But the ramification of this fundamental shift in design is that we now consume content in headlines, thumbnails and mini descriptions. According to a recent study by Copyblogger, on average 8/10 people will read headline copy, but only 2/10 will read the rest. We have all become headline hunters." While I dispute the idea here that Facebook inv…

"Continuing its tradition of airing its internal discussions outside the office, the staff at Jezebel today called out the higher-ups at parent Gawker Media today over some pretty disgusting trolling at the site." I wonder how much more loyalty Jezebel's community feel for the site because they air their internal problems so publicly? I wonder ho…

Awesome takedown of native advertising. Via AdAge.

Lovely reflective longread. Anyone who can explore how we are being transformed by the digital media that we ourselves are transforming as we explore its transformative possibilities (did I get that right?), and succeeds in tying Lou Reed into that discussion, has to be worth a read. "... this eruption of knowledge-sharing is usually ... dismisse…

Loved the spoken word form, was surprised at importance of paper quarterlies. "the 200 platforms at the Youth Media Summit had a combined audience of almost 4 million. With a new Ofcom study showing that 16- to 24-year-olds now use communications for an average of 14 hours and seven minutes a day, we asked them what youth media can teach the mai…

"There has been a lot of discussion lately about long-form content and how it is changing the content marketing playbook.... Is long-form content really worth the extra effort? It seems that way. SERPIQ recently completed an analysis of the top 10 search results for more than 20,000 keywords and revealed a surprising pattern. The length of cont…

Personalise your storytelling by mining your archives: The Australian launches Storyline: getting something out of its first 50 years and making it relevant to readers.

These figures need to be compared with other research shows that people seem happy to consume long articles on their mobiles. "Ad Age looked at ... Tumblr, WordPress, Blogger to see how their traffic has changed over the last year and what effect [mobile] has had on the time people spend with each service...." On the one hand we read about the …

"the data say longer form media is moving slowly across the social networks of distribution... two opposing trends going on simultaneously. On one end of the curve rabid sharing is driving an attention cycle of seconds but on the other end people are reading and watching more.... The social web has flattened web sites and made the home page…

In Germany, "the government forced Google to pay newspaper editors if they were included in Google News... Google excluded all newspapers from Google News and asked anyone wanting to be listed to reapply explicitly declaring that they renounced to be compensated. All newspaper did reapply not wanting to miss out on the traffic it generates. Google…

"Canadian researchers have confirmed what most people suspected all along: that internet trolls are archetypal Machiavellian sadists.... via Heather-Anne MacLean's post: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140730175026-5723090-don-t-feed-the-trolls-research-reveals-psychopathy - Online trolls are psychopaths and sadists, psychologists …

"The original converted 7.6% better than the new variation... The leads from the long form version of the page were better in quality ... in most cases long form copy doesn't just boost your conversions, but it also increases your rankings too." Indepth and (inevitably) long analysis. Huge feedback. - How Content Length Affects Rankings and…

"Readers want short, snappy content, ideally under 140 characters or at most a list, right? Well, actually, wrong.... 7 recent studies: long form content is alive, thriving and driving high levels of content performance." Full article summarises 7 more, so I won't summarise it here - read it yourself: - Improve Your Content Marketing with Long …

Sometimes long form content helps with conversions, and sometimes it hurts, and sometimes, long form content is better for SEO, but other times it’s worse" Read the full article to understand why ... and how, and when. Key point: " the best long form content marketing doesn’t make one feel like they’re being marketed to...." - Why Long Form Cont…

"a new media startup aims to bring the ProPublica approach abroad, creating Germany’s first nonprofit investigative news organization... completely focused on data journalism... The team intends to compile and share large datasets that map people in power to the money behind them, collaborating with local open data organizations as well as other n…

"there is a hierarchy of information consumers are looking for.... consumers seem much less concerned with how they receive it than with whether the content itself is well conceived, well executed, useful and honest." - Survey: What Types of Content Consumers Do Want From Brands | FleishmanHillard

Brown Moses made his name crowdsourcing information in conflict zones, such as analysing weapons in Syria ... from his front room in Leicester, England... using social media, open source tools, and public information to verify details that news organizations can miss. Today, he's launching a site to pool his and others knowledge together in one…

"Could “all you need to know” be the most insidious, reductive, and lame story formula currently conquering our reading life? Everywhere you turn there’s another purported ne plus ultra explainer purporting to tell us “absolutely everything we could possibly need to know” about some current event, some curiosity of history, some deep mystery of li…

"the Orange is the New Black-inspired content series on women inmates in America cracked the top 10 most read articles on the site, with fifty percent of its traffic coming from social media and 60 percent from mobile. ... time spent ... rivaled time spent with the top New York Times editorial. “ - New York Times adman gushes over native advertis…

Apart from 3 good videos to watch, a good example of content curation... "We have all heard (ad nauseam) about the “power of brand storytelling,” and I know that I have read more than one blog that spits off a numeric list of tips that I just “can’t live without” as a content marketer..." - 3 TED Talks That Uncover the Secrets of Storytelling | …

Key "takeaways" (gag), of which the last is hilarious: "- Two-thirds of readers have felt deceived upon realizing that an article or video was sponsored by a brand. - 54 percent of readers don’t trust sponsored content. - 59 percent of readers believe a news site loses credibility if it runs articles sponsored by a brand. - As education level …

"As media companies seek out new ways to make money, is a crisis of trust brewing?"