Death by a thousand likes: Facebook and Twitter are killing the open web
Facebook and Apple News might be "killing the open web", but Twitter? I'd say Twitter is a great champion of the web. Linking is so fundamental to the Twitter experience. Half of Twitter is links to other websites.
Disclaimer: I like twitter over facebook, which I don't use that much, and my comment history will show that I'm a twitter 'lackey', so to speak.
Does anyone else feel that the facebook moment is fading away? People have compared information to food, and I can see the similarities. When you come from a place where there's little or no food, you want to hoard all you can -- why yes, I would love to see your babies pics every day, of course, post three dozen photos of the same party from different angles, I love it, why yes, this memory from seven years ago is exactly what I need. When you're saturated with information (in this case, social media information), it doesn't feel as special anymore. Soon, you realize that while looking at Christmas photos from people you went to high school with, was fun for a while, there is only so much space in your head and social energy. The marginal value of that extra bit goes down, and averages start leveling off or going down. There's too much food everywhere, you don't want to be forced with another plate of who-gives-an-eff-about-your-fifth-Halloween-in-a-row. What was originally curiosity and genuine excitement about other people's lives becomes social courtesy: of course you will like your almost-friend's child's photos because that's what good friends would do. Social networking (in facebook form) becomes ritualistic.
So the solution is social networks that (artificially) limit your access to information, such as snapchat and twitter. You want to only share a few things, with a few people at a time, and perhaps that shared thing will disappear in a couple of days/hours/views. To me that sounds like the long-term future of social media.
Anyone have any thoughts?
A big part of the problem is that "content" insists on being wrapped up in "interactivity" that is confusing and subtracts value (or adds cost) in other ways (image carousels with ads, articles broken into lots of small pieces to generate impressions), and the internet routes around cost.
The central thesis that "pretending that content is free" is the underlying problem is interesting. Perhaps part of the problem is bad pricing. E.g. content that ought to be cheap (e.g. e-books, streaming video) tends to be more expensive or certainly insufficiently cheaper than content that ought to be more expensive (e.g. physical books, bluray disks).
Perhaps a big part of the problem is publishers "pretending" they add value.
Some publishers definitely add some value, but then they subtract value in other ways -- it's great that the movie studio figures out who the good writers, directors, and actors are and risks its own money to make a good movie, but it's bad that it's provided on a bluray disk with annoying copy-and-other protection in a hard-to-open package, and that it's more expensive to buy the cheaper to distribute and generally more convenient electronic version. Similarly, newyorker.com has great writing (and I pay for it) but the actual presentation layer (the website) subtracts value from it.
> But the larger point is that the logic of efficiency on the internet will always favor scale—which is to say, platforms—over publishers.
I call bullshit on this one. It's unclear what the author means because they use such a meaningless term in "logic of efficiency", but the last time I looked, it was a lot more financially efficient to set up a website than a print publication. There is nothing at all inevitable about 'the biggest will win' online, as can be evidenced both by the disappearance of several former behmoths, and by the failure of several pre-Internet companies to 'make it big' online despite having unlimited capital to invest.
Maybe, just maybe, the author is referring directly to advertising revenue here, as in "the more popular sites can make more money from advertising, and thus will grow and grow". Of course, that's totally dismissing the fact that many of the 'platforms' being discussed simply offer a far better experience, regardless of what content they offer or how big they already are. Here's a hint for the author and any other publishers reading: there is far greater variation in the packaging, delivery, and experience of content online than there is offline. Take advantage of that. Don't, as we've all been telling you for the last 20 years, just try to replicate your newspaper online: that makes for a horrible experience. Don't try to do advertising in the most obnoxious manner you can get away with; that may have worked in print, but it's been demonstrated pretty categorically now that it fails online.
Or, you know, just carry on regardless, blame platforms for seizing the opportunity that you choose to ignore.
A link recently discovered was blocked by facebook (and I had no idea they were actively blocking the posting of links by users!): eulawanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-partys-over-eu-data-protection-law.html
Slightly related: I only found out recently that The Guardian has a subscription option in their app (the 'Premium' tier, Euro 3.61 per month) that removes all ads:
https://www.theguardian.com/info/2013/aug/12/1
It's great to see that at least some publications are experimenting with models outside the traditional paper and the obvious plastering content with ads.
Irony is http://imgur.com/mivdSRC
I do have to say, my experience with Apple News has been very nice. These apps seem to affect publishers more than the 'open web' and at that they are little more than nice RSS readers that don't ruin your experience with ads even though there are still ads there.
I don't particularly see anything wrong with separating publishers from content producers. It now seems more appropriate to think of news magazines and traditional 'publishers' as content producers who rely on the new 'publishers' a la Facebook, Apple, Twitter to distribute their content because they cannot and should not be focused on building an enormous infrastructure to do this.
Print media is 'open' in that anyone can print something and distribute it but the ability to do so effectively has pretty much been consolidated into the hands of very few for a long time. Now a days you can publish your own music, your own books, and your own news and its popularity will be determined by the masses, not some worn out talent scout trying to please a boss who is using focus groups to figure out what might make him a buck.
Ultimately I think we will see a more open and democratic future for publishing, not the death of the open web. Control is shifting hands to a new set of publishers, one that puts the visibility of content into the hands of the readers in the form of likes and tweets.
Maybe the news produced by these traditional outlets just doesn't have as much value as it once did. That is what likely scares them in my mind.
> Mostly, I get my news from Twitter.
This should be the first thing to read in this article. The author seems to not have any preferred publisher anyway. He can consider and write why not, I'd also like to know.
Then don't be surprised with the statement in a paragraph before:
> And that’s why so many articles kinda sound the same these days.
I find the author’s argument regarding “publications losing their voice and not focusing on the preferences of their audience to meet the preference of the platform’s audience” self-contradictory. Is it not your own audience that is following you on these platforms? More so, the platforms give you real-time feedback and allow your audience to tell you which issues are most important. I find this to be the real issue here. The author is most interested in telling you what is important, instead of allowing you to decide for yourself. …And this is why certain publications struggle with these platforms.
I don't need an ad-blocker. I need a like blocker. When I go on facebook I want to see personal things my friends share, not a bunch of shit they saw and clicked "like" on. And I'm guilty of "liking" crap too. Maybe they could prioritize personal plain text posts, since those are actually the most relevant to me. But that is least relevant to advertisers.
If they don't focus more on the users, a distributed replacement will eventually come out and there will be zero ad revenue to be had from that social platform. I've got some ideas in this space, but no time and no team.
Completely OT: You know that phenomenon that when you hear a word for the first time in a long time or first time ever - and then you suddenly hear it again and again? Just happened to me with the word "Fungible". I happen to know what the word means, coming from a financial/trading background but don't recall hearing it for some time now. Then 2 completely unrelated Hacker News articles I read, almost in a row, had the word "Fungible" in them - neither of which had anything to do with finance/trading!
I know it is just random chance, but it feels really strange!
This is simpler than most people think. If there is no ad time/place, the platform won't be able to monetize it. Google makes people go away, but right before that people look at their search result where the Ads are displayed.
Why it doesn't work twitter, probably nobody follow the news link and bother come back to strike a conversation on twitter. Mostly the conversation takes place right below the news article and with the author not the tweet.
Most online conversation took place right where the content is at, on Youtube, on NYtimes, on Forbes, unless compassion with twitter but now we that passion is going down.
There is also a subtle difference of the social relation where the news feed is from, which is why facebook news feed is a BAD idea. Why would I have my mother in law in my facebook circle yet sharing the latest Intel acquisition news, or even makeing comment.
Never mix life and work, even hobby or side projects, that's social network 101, or platform 101. I know a friend who has 9 facebook Ids, I personally have 3,4 twitter accounts, for the purpose explained here.
From a news consumption standpoint, iOS news is a joke, facebook news is meaningless, twitter is inconvenient, therefore I use Zite, which connects to my twitter.
From a conversation standpoint, Hacker news format is idea, but lack of twitter's networking.
Something has all these together would be a hit.
The article doesn't define the "open web," and platforms like Facebook and Twitter would seem to mostly follow the dictates set out in Tantek's original definition.[1] So it's hard to guess at what the author means -- Facebook and Twitter aren't "the open web" by tautology, basically. It's really hard to engage with the author's arguments that way.
What is trivial to understand is that the author's proposed remedy doesn't work:
> The answer is simple, but it isn’t easy. We need to stop pretending that content is free. Publications need to ask readers to pay for their content directly, and readers need to be willing to give up money, as opposed to their privacy and attention. This means that publications will have to abandon the rapid-growth business models driven by display ads, which have driven them to rely on Facebook for millions of pageviews a month.
The fundamental problem with this is that siloing content the way the author suggests (publications with strong identities and paywalls to get readers to give money in exchange for content) breaks hyperlinks. It breaks sharing. Paywalls work when there's a marginal benefit to knowing something that someone else doesn't -- say, it helps you pick stocks better than the next guys. Otherwise, all else being equal, the article I can share with my friends, link to in my blog post, that I can engage with and respond to and have other people able to read the same article I am -- that's far more valuable than the article that I can read but can't share. We didn't get here because we're all stupid, or because people are unwilling to pay for anything ever. We got here because we were trying to come up with a model that allows people who make content to be compensated for it without betraying the fundamental thing that made the Web the Web -- the hyperlink. If your proposed alternative business model doesn't even TRY to engage with the question of linking and sharing, it's not going to work.
Apps are doing much more to kill the open web than is any browser-based service.
I never understand these articles. No they're not. You're not required to use these two (out of billions of) websites.
Vote with your time and attention. For better or worse, the majority of people vote for these sites.
Remember how we were talking last week about how people seem to desire crowds and crowd-thinking, even if it literally kills them?
Well that makes sites like Facebook and Twitter predictable and the power they wield.
Also slightly related:
Facebook is actively blocking a rival community that "pays" users by passing ad revenue to users (users get incentives to post content and invite friends)
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/facebook-banning-tsu-rival-soci...
"It only really makes sense if you view writing as a fungible commodity"
I have no sympathy for writers here. You view us readers as fungible commodity. I use Reddit, HN, Facebook and twitter to weed out the worst bullshit. There are lots of articles around just to keep me comfy long enough to show me adds. One of the worst these days is New Yorker, beautifully written articles about stuff people don't really care about. (Or atleast I don't care about.) Currently it survives on elitism. Web platforms are problematic. But lot better than ordering magazines at random, or paying for New Yorker monthly for that yearly gem.
“Go where the readers are”
It's more important to write what the readers want to read. I click stupid shit. I read mediocre pieces. I'm willing to pay for good stuff.
I think there should be ordering/crowd funding service solely for written media. So that authors don't just babble nice sentences inside their comfort zone, but actually tackles things people are interested in.
The real problem is that author doesn't know if s/he gets paid before the article is written, but also the reader doesn't know if the article is worth anything before reading it.
I think the author of this piece has many good points, he just needs to dig deeper. This bleak context free future the author is painting is probably not true. People like context. Any social meeting is often first superficial introductions, then shallow gossip and only later dvelves into deep stuff. Internet is probably going to mirror that, but with more inertia.
The article seems to be confused over content viewed by way of advertisement and content delivered by users actively seeking content.
When I want to read up on some news, I go to the publisher's site directly or to a preferred aggregator, which is not going to be facebook/twitter/etc.
Advertised content is typically very poor, and really not worth defending.
On mobile, this page has a sticky banner at the bottom of the screen with a Facebook "like" button and a message asking me to "stay connected."
Just like cable and CB radio, we need the government to reserve a section of the internet for non-commercial open access.
I think this is hyperbole. I rarely use either and the open web seems fine.
No, no. Not Facebook and Twitter. This is coming from everywhere. Because you can't sell the open internet as a branded experience. (And you can't force people to look at ads on it either)
Beautifully written article on articles.
Probably not a dumb hypothesis, but this author turns this into a lament about the changes in publishing. Next.
Gotta love the Facebook and Twitter buttons at the bottom of the article :)
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I wish that every ISP was required to collect a "Distributed Content Fee" that every domain would get a portion of according to the number of visits they get. I think that would really help level the playing field. A lot of good content goes unrewarded (or uncreated) b/c their is no good way to monetize it.
Facebook is for closed networks. Twitter has literally no effect on the real world and is only cared about by the people on twitter.
Neither are really a problem.
Killing the open web? Not hardly...
> I had a blog once. It wasn’t big, but I loved knowing who I was writing for. I loved knowing that the same couple hundred people would come back again and again...
Had a "blog once"? And your a writer? Why did you stop writing for it?
This is the same article that could have been written by musicians 12 years ago or the MPAA 8yo...yes yes existential threats to the fundamental nature blah blah fucking blah...
Don't get me twisted tho...I don't even like Facebook and Twitter anymore due to their obscene popularity, but whining about them "killing the open web"?
Please just stop the hyperbole.