Overview: Online Strategy

Pay models are gaining some traction... increased focus on appealing to smaller, but more dedicated, audiences ... 10 to 20 percent of revenues from digital...monetizing mobile of course remains an open question... “Honestly, now, I think there is no business model.” Here are a few interesting case studies

A financial incentive and a paid coordinator were essential to the success of the project. The intangible that made the project really work, however, was the willingness on the part of Media Consortium members to work with each other... not have been possible without a trust-based network in place... At the beginning of the project, outlets asked…

This paper will explore and critique the logic and motivations behind the position that these content providers/aggregators are technology companies rather than media companies, as well as the communications policy implications associated with accepting or rejecting this position... The final section discusses why it is important that these online…

Facebook wants to have the responsibility of a publisher but also to be seen as a neutral carrier of information that is not in the position of making news judgments... when Facebook was still censoring the napalm photo ... the site’s trending bar began posting ... a story suggesting September 11 were caused by a “controlled demolition”.

Another controversial Facebook takedown, another muddy explanation for an erroneous removal.

“a monopoly of content distribution that will be mainly driven by user-generated content, and by professional content by commercially interested players.... pretty traumatic scenario of information or propaganda. It will be very painful for democracies.”

“the news on Facebook is what Facebook says it is.”... before the arrival of the internet news in newspapers was what newspapers said it was... the controllers of news outlets - newspapers, TV and radio, online - make choices about what to publish and, more significantly, what not to publish. Facebook’s increasing dominance over advertising is c…

at The Information, the subscription-based tech news publisher, comments and community aren’t just intact — they’re a selling point... The Information puts its members front and center. Subscribers get their own bio pages... its subscription call to action entreats visitors not to get access to great information or level up their tech and media k…

One small tag for Facebook, one giant disaster for your favorite publishers... For publishers sharing native ads ... have to tag the brand in the post... that brand’s marketing team gets access to the post’s insights... allow savvy marketers to calculate just how big a margin publishers are taking on these campaigns — and potentially walk away fe…

Since Facebook made its livestreaming feature widely available earlier this year, publishers have been experimenting with on-the-spot video in a variety of ways... we are starting a series of in-depth articles chronicling their experiments IBTimes UK has been working on three different live video formats: Q&As; with columnists and reporters, panel…

“We were keen to test on small niche audience... Bots will work better when they are more targeted.”... On the transfer deadline day ... 43 percent of chatbot subscribers clicked through ... On an average day ... closer to 23 percent. engagement is high because an individual is choosing to engage with it and the experience is ... personal... ca…

Facebook found itself in the middle of another media controversy last week... like watching an old couple fight: they are nominally talking about the same episode, but in reality both are so wrapped up in their own issues and grievances that they are talking past each other... Facebook screwed this up. But that doesn’t change the fact that Facebo…

publishers are afraid that while the AMP project is nominally open-source, Google is using it to shape how the mobile web works, and in particular, to ensure a steady stream of advertising revenue

No matter what the original post was about, a handful of the loudest — or most committed — voices in the room hijacked the comments thread to push their own agendas. Anyone trying to urge the conversation back to the topic at hand ...was shouted down and shamed... comments sections aren't fostering conversation, they are killing it. A very small…

The feature enables Medium users to volunteer to translate Medium stories into the language of their choice. Approved translators see a “Translate” button on Medium stories and clicking that button clones the post and seeds the clone with a Google translate version of the story in the language that they select. They then go in and make the Google …

some advice on how to best approach analytics in the newsroom, helping journalists improve the quality of their content, and a build larger, more engaged readership. Here are five key takeaways

the first article in a series on “The Mobile Publisher,” a look at how publishers are tackling challenges in the shift to mobile, from design to content to monetization... People may spend most of their mobile screen time on apps, but the vast majority of that time is spent on just five apps. Meantime, publishers that haven’t invested in mobile a…

Facebook is a weird beast that a lot of journalists still don't understand. That is because it has taken the definition of "news" back to the era before mass media even existed. Yet, as a business, it looks exactly like a mass-media company and competes aggressively for the same advertising budgets... Facebook's flirtation with journalism wasn't d…

Today, we’re announcing an update to News Feed that helps you see more posts from your friends and family.

“I am actively searching through Facebook for people celebrating the Brexit leave victory,” ... to no avail. He called on his friends in the technology industry to act on this ‘echo-chamber problem’.... Why are they making the demand of social media companies — and not news organisations?...how we see technology now: both as something separate fro…

In April, Medium rolled out a suite of new tools for publishers, and began giving a beta group the option to make revenue from the platform as well. I spoke with five of these publishers ...

How do you make analytics interesting and useful for a newsroom?... When the Missourian was able to integrate the new digital analytics platform Parse.ly into its analytics reporting, we saw an opportunity to make significant changes to the report going to the newsroom every week.

The Atlantic expects native campaigns to drive 70 percent of its ad revenue this year, up from 60 percent in 2015... the NYTimes’ branded content division, T Brand Studio, now includes 70 staffers and will “deliver more than $50 million in revenue this year,” up from an estimated $35 million in 2014

well-known for its data-visualizations — half of the 60 daily articles published contain charts — and on May 10, it officially took the wrapper off Atlas, so anyone can sign up and create their own graphs.

This isn’t the first time I’ve covered the impact of social media on news; technologies like augmented reality; and the impact of both on society. It is the first time these Top3ics have meshed so perfectly in one month.

Instead of trying to bludgeon online companies to conform to some opaque standard of objectivity, we need to shift towards more fruitful endeavors... none of the outlets mentioned by name... are particularly well known news institutions... the underlying bias might not be based on institutional outlook, but an internal pressure to cite sources wit…

Facebook’s reputation for neutrality took a major hit...not all of the examples cited by the employee indicate journalistic malpractice. Curators were told to not “trend” a story if only Newsmax or Breitbart... reported it. This is just good editorial guidance: Breitbart and Newsmax have a reputation for playing fast and loose with xenophobia and …

...people are willing to engage with longer content (i.e., news stories over 1,000 words) on their phones... All of the articles studied here were read on the mobile web, not via apps. Since most apps are designed to deliver a better reading experience, “that could further the time people are willing to commit to longer stories,”... Pew found no s…

Newspapers, magazines and other publishers are "feeding on the scraps" of Facebook's multibillion-dollar ad business despite playing a central role in keeping the social network's users happy... "They keep the $16bn to $18bn they get in the news feed... with personal sharing down, is ... effectively just an aggregation of premium publishers' cont…

Facebook is not a friend of journalism.. Yes, Instant Articles are sexy and monetisable... a hugely important route to readers, but the more dependent we get on them, the more they’ll be able to charge us to access that audience... Facebook is seeing an alarming (to them) drop in sharing of personal information...we’ll see Facebook start to turn d…