Media Companies Are Getting Sick of Facebook

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-19/media-companies-are-getting-sick-of-facebook

by champagnepapi • 9 years ago

299 167 9 years ago

Animats2• 9 years ago

“Media companies are like serfs working Facebook’s land.”

Content companies, really. Anybody can make content now. Look who's mentioned in the article as an example of a "news source" - the CEO of "Thrillist", "NowThis News", and "Dodo". It's owning the pipes, and being able to restrict them, that makes money.

This is a big change. The Internet was supposed to be about disintermediation. Anybody can view CNN, Fox News, Russia Today, or the South China Morning Post at any time. Yet about half of Americans get their news on Facebook. Facebook isn't even a very good news aggregator.

Remember, sharing is spamming. When you "share" a story, you're just helping a spammer spam.

arkitaip• 9 years ago

Christ, we went from Information Wants To Be Free to Sharing Is Spamming in less than two decades. How naive we were back then, thinking that tech alone would suffice to bring us freedom.

fzzzy• 9 years ago

Information still wants to be free. It's just that most of it is garbage. It's always been that way, too, we just didn't notice it as much.

z1mm32m4n• 9 years ago

Information still wants to be free. It's not free when Facebook controls it.

BoiledCabbage• 9 years ago

Information Wants To Be Free

As a legit inquiry, can someone explain this phrase to me? I've heard it mentioned tons over the years and have seen a bunch of different inconsistent interpretations people have applied. Which meaning of 'free' is being used? How is it's meaning reached from the phrase? I legit don't understand it.

zitterbewegung• 9 years ago

What do you mean? The first spam email was in 1978. Advertising and Spam keeps on evolving as all tech does.

wutbrodo3• 9 years ago

How naive we were back then, thinking that tech alone would suffice to bring us freedom.

You've completely misunderstood what the phrase actually means. The notion of access to information doesn't imply access to a selected, curated subset of it: in fact it means quite the opposite. Access to a deluge of information unbarred by gatekeepers is precisely at the heart of the concept, in contrast to the highly-curated and high-barrier world of (e.g.) three broadcast networks, and thousand-dollar encyclopedias.

Don't get me wrong: I certainly don't think that it's only the "dumb" that find handling the information deluge to be challenging. From the perspective of the individual's access to information, "Information Wants To Be Free" is still very much alive and well; it just requires a little more maturity than "tell me what to believe". Every single time I've heard someone complain about the fact that they see reliable sources say seemingly contradictory things about an issue, it's because the issue in reality is more complex than their oversimplified model would like it to be. Amazing access to information doesn't even remotely mean the same thing as "every issue is now magically simple enough that you don't have to put any effort into understanding it".

FWIW, "Sharing is Spamming" is utter nonsense. If you put the time in to curate whose sharing you read, you won't end up with garbage in your proverbial in-box.

nitwit005• 9 years ago

The newspapers were already aggregators in the first place. They bought stories off wire feeds, bought editorials, paid for the comics, and sprinkled in their own content.

The Associated Press quite upset the news industry by directly posting content online, because they were afraid people would skip them and get the stories directly.

chris_wot3• 9 years ago

Yeah, they paid for it.

matt4077• 9 years ago

The newspapers own AP. They share news via AP. AP was/is a scheme to reduce the costs of news gathering by, for example, having the LA Times contribute information on events in LA that the NYTimes can use, and vice versa.

dredmorbius5• 9 years ago

One argument is that cheaper media technologies require expanding the bounds of the publishing entity. Whether that means ISPs, major aggregators, Amazon / Apple / Google, a public broadcasting model, or something else, I'm not sure.

But it's going to be large.

avaer• 9 years ago

I think one problem is we've redefined "content", "news", and "sharing" to be shadows of their former selves.

"Content" is no longer a reification of value, "news" is no longer keeping accurately informed of events, and "sharing" is no longer helping others by giving them something. Now these all just mean "sell your data to facebook", but of course you won't see that from using facebook.

Integrity• 9 years ago

We've also redefined "friends" as shadows of their former selves.

kakarot• 9 years ago

This is for you!

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Conten...

"Those who use the term 'content' are often the publishers that push for increased copyright power in the name of the authors ('creators,' as they say) of the works.

The term 'content' reveals their real attitude towards these works and their authors."

I only use the word sometimes as a form of sick irony and to bring light to the issue. "Nice content, bro."

marcosdumay3• 9 years ago

Decades ago, people used to predict that "in the future" we would have intelligent machines that we could set up to go after stuff that interest us and bring only what we care about. Those machines would be an extension of our brain, empowering ourselves.

We've got those machines, but with a fundamentally broken implementation. I wonder if we will ever fix them.

chris_wot3• 9 years ago

Perhaps the broken implementation is human self interest? If it's not interesting or sensational then we aren't interested, thus we've trained the implementation to only give us skewed results?

Real Housewives, Kim Kardashian and TMZ should have alerted us to this.

rhizome2• 9 years ago

The people who made those predictions? Current Facebook investors.

petra• 9 years ago

You already have that. Just limit your internet access to Google Books.

jobu• 9 years ago

When you "share" a story, you're just helping a spammer spam.

The spammers are getting really savvy about it too. I recently read an article in my feed that was interesting and funny, so I shared it. The next day my wife asked me why I shared that garbage site, and when I looked at it on her phone the formatting was completely different. It was now a 10 page article with a mess of ads and a paragraph or two of text on each page.

They created some decent content with a catchy headline. Then they seeded it out on social media and waited until it had "gone viral" before they crammed it full of shitty ads.

jxramos• 9 years ago

Wow, I've yet to experience this, I'll have to keep an eye out for this sort of deception and recognize what is happening when it's happening. Good heads up.

itissid• 9 years ago

that's so unsettlnng that its a big enough trend that companies/people can think of profiting this way. I always thought "majority" people would read whats under a link before sharing it and a few would just blindly share, but its the opposite!

eecc2• 9 years ago

Link cropping?

Joof• 9 years ago

So you're saying we need immutable facebook links?

shostack2• 9 years ago

I'm curious--did you two view the site through different sources? I wonder if they were dynamically loading things based on where someone came from.

Silhouette6• 9 years ago

Just to be clear, you're saying someone was complaining about a site that suddenly got popular through network effects and then started showing adverts to make some money off it... on Facebook?

Getting initial traction using free stuff and then introducing ads or other revenue streams later once you're big enough is pretty much the dominant business model online today, unless you are a vendor of real products or services for which you charge real money in return.

ouid• 9 years ago

This explains a lot.

imron• 9 years ago

Are you sure it wasn't just that you use an ad-blocker and your wife doesn't?

Every time I use a web browser without an ad blocker I'm surprised at how shitty the web experience is.

manigandham2• 9 years ago

Many clickbait/content spam sites use referring sources to change the article content into galleries to maximize revenue, especially if they're also promoting these stories as ads on social media and recommended content widgets.

batter• 9 years ago

There's obviously some mistake, "Russia Today" should be along with "Thrillist", "NowThis News", and "Dodo" and not reputable news like CNN or Fox.

owebmaster3• 9 years ago

There's obviously some mistake, CNN or Fox should be along with "Thrillist", "NowThis News", and "Dodo" and not reputable news like "Russia Today".

jessaustin2• 9 years ago

You should value RT more highly in the current situation. The war pigs are trying their damnedest to start a war with Russia, and all you get from CNN is "rules of engagement" (i.e. "what we decided to do, international norms be damned") and "Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)" (i.e. "Al Qaeda become our allies as soon as they cross the border, because hey they want to see a war with Russia too"). If all Americans spent a little time considering the positions of those offered up as our "enemies", the military-industrial complex would have a more difficult time with their evil plans. CNN and other content mills like them are blindfolds we willingly wear.

gonehome• 9 years ago

I think part of the reason is that people are already on Facebook - another reason though is that most news websites are pretty unpleasant to go to directly.

I have a NYT subscription and their stuff is pretty nice, but something like CNN takes a long time to load, has a pretty bad video player and is just not that great in general.

celim307• 9 years ago

as much I say I fight it, I fall in that boat, albiet with HN, reddit, Ars, and I guess even Google news. Its all curated in some way, and of course even CNN/Reuters is a curated news aggregation by deciding which stories get run.

supercanuck• 9 years ago

Its funny that the exact opposite argument is being made in the Time Warner / Snap comment section:

And here's the thing that concerns me: Netflix, on a tech level, is pretty much a solved problem. There's stuff left to be done for sure, rust never sleeps, but they're pretty much good to go tech-wise. The content side of their business is an existential struggle, and getting original content right is IMHO a do-or-die proposition for them. They did a pretty damned good job because they have to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14590193

tuna-piano2• 9 years ago

I disagree. Cable companies controlled the pipes for a long time, but that didn't stop the content producers (CNN, ESPN, etc) from having substantial pricing power then.

Facebook controls the eyeballs the same way the cable companies did. Of course, there's been some consolidation of the distribution and content production side of things (Comcast+NBC, Disney+BAMTech, networks+Hulu, Netflix+Netflix, etc).

The question is to what extent there is a magic sauce in the organizations to produce quality content and if their brands are strong enough for consumers to demand.Think about ESPN, NYTimes, CNN and Buzzfeed. They all seem to have strong brands. Some people prefer MSNBC over CNN, Fox over CNN, etc. In addition to strong brands, they all seem to have at least a good level of organizational secret-sauce that produces good content.

-Can Facebook create its own content arm and become a competitor? Potentially, especially with some acquisitions.

-Can Facebook treat the existing content producers like commodities that it pits against each-other for limited compensation? Seems unlikely right now (and I don't see how Facebook would have more bargaining power than Comcast did).

-Does it make sense for Facebook to get into the content creation game? I'm imagining now how things would look with a Facebook acquisition of Buzzfeed or Vice.

-If the existing content companies are unwilling to work with Facebook at prices that Facebook wants to pay, at what point does Facebook get into the content game themselves?

-If Facebook gets into the content creation game itself, does that put the other media companies into a bad place?

-How can the content companies continue to live in this fractured world? People always have and always will want good content. The print content model came to the web in a very fractured way. If you had 10 physical newspapers delivered, now you have 10 websites you need to pay for. It makes no sense, and I think it will almost certainly change within the coming decades to be more of a Spotify model. When, and who wins and loses, will be a very interesting story (and also very socially important). If the media companies don't get their shit together, Facebook or Apple or some kids in a garage will end up owning what could have been theirs.

tuna-piano2• 9 years ago

Actually, I'm thinking now that Facebook might be much more powerful than cable companies.

Facebook not only connects content producers, it also decides which ones to show. This is like being a cable company and an amped up tv guide which ranks the channels and decides which ones to shower the user. Powerful position.

real-hacker• 9 years ago

Platform and content providers tend to have a more healthy relationship when the platform is not a monopoly. So there is only one way to solve this - break Facebook. Otherwise, we will need to wait for many years before Facebook loses its steam, Facebook itself may become boring one day, but FB can keep its vigor by buying the 'next big thing' (Instagram, Whatsapp).

nazka• 9 years ago

Facebook isn't even a very good news aggregator.

It's in fact a huge echo chamber creator :

http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/

Ntrails• 9 years ago

Last time I looked I could still copy paste a web address and post it as a status (deleting the preview) - which seems like a fairly clean way to disseminate a cool post - at the very least copy paste should work perfectly.

Of course, it's been a couple years so i don't really know anymore...

rodolphoarruda• 9 years ago

Anybody can view CNN, Fox News, Russia Today, or the South China Morning Post at any time.

And what about the big/relevant papers that request subscription? That's a barrier a good portion of users in general and a huge one for Latin America -- where I currently live.

Some mobile carriers won't account data transfer to FB, Twitter and likes, making it attractive to users with very limited data plans -- e.g. 300MB/month. So people wanting to consume news or content will rely solely on what's available within FB, because in theory it would be less expensive.

I see this as a great opp for both FB and the carriers to build partnership with content providers.

nradov• 9 years ago

The content producers un-disintermediated themselves by building mobile web sites with slow performance and bad UX. If you just want to read a news article on a mobile device then Facebook Instant Articles are much faster and smoother than switching over to browser which loads tons of JavaScript and ads.

cocktailpeanuts• 9 years ago

I think a bigger problem is that readers are getting sick of media companies. It's not Facebook's fault.

Most of what happens on Social Media nowadays is driven by media companies' efforts to generate revenue no matter what. Since humans respond to provocative content, that's what becomes prevalent on the Web.

Even if Facebook were to go away today, these media companies will make the same mistake and try to take advantage of their users the same way because that's how they can survive in this age.

I have zero sympathy for media companies getting sick of facebook.

marcosdumay3• 9 years ago

I don't have sympathy for either side here. The point is that it is interesting to see those interdependent beings fight into a possible mutual death.

seppin2• 9 years ago

I just came for the doggies

cbhl2• 9 years ago

At some level, readers have stopped paying media companies, and so media companies do whatever it takes to make ad money come in.

I feel like people used to have newspapers and magazines (like Nat Geo) delivered to their door all the time. And they'd have a cable subscription to subsidize CNN.

Maybe someone should create a news network that is distributed by Spotify.

criddell2• 9 years ago

I feel like people used to [...]

People used to have far fewer choices. When I was a kid, we received a daily newspaper and National Geographic and I would read them both. I would also read every word on every panel of the cereal box. I was bored most of the time, especially over the summer. Now I have the reverse problem - too many things to do and not enough time to spend.

Maybe someone should create a news network that is distributed by Spotify.

News outlets put stories on Snapchat. I think that's pretty close to what you are suggesting.

AznHisoka2• 9 years ago

Facebook isn't a dictatorship. They're not forcing media companies to stay on FB.

If you're sick of FB, then don't produce videos for them. Don't use Instant Articles.

Going even further, delete your FB company page, stop posting FB updates, and stop buying FB ads.

Last I checked, media companies aren't paying FB in order to post content there (yes I know there are ads but media companies aren't complaining about ads).

dsacco• 9 years ago

What did you last check? Because actually yes, media companies absolutely pay social media companies large amounts of money for advertising partnerships, which generally take the form of "posting content" and "amplifying" it.

seppin2• 9 years ago

i've heard the same arguments about Google, good luck with that.

whytaka• 9 years ago

Wasn't there a huge problem with Facebook Video stealing content from others with impunity?

stevenh• 9 years ago

Freebooting.

abritinthebay• 9 years ago

Was more users doing that via FB Video, but yes.

two2two• 9 years ago

As someone who hears the gripes from content creators about how facebook restricts their reach depending on the source of that content and based on that to whom it's shown; it appears that facebook doesn't mind sacrificing efficiency of the web to increase their position of power.

Content creators have to work twice as hard, publish twice as much and take up twice as much storage space because of facebook's walled garden.

Taken to the extreme this is an ugly future of wasted time and resources to bend to facebook's constant tweaks which are not in favor of the content creators, but the advertisers.

I wonder if, at some point, social sanctions will be pressed on one another to consider the use of facebook toxic to oneself and others, no different than smoking?

thephyber• 9 years ago

no different than smoking

I'll note that it took centuries for smoking to go out of style (it still isn't in many developed countries) and it took decades for most people to "consider it toxic" even after there was scientific evidence to corroborate it.

It's arguable that Facebook will be in an even better position to fend off accusations of its toxicity since Facebook has one of the world's largest human sociological experimentation platforms ever known to man. They are able to run experiments and gather evidence that economists have not otherwise been able to run.

losteverything• 9 years ago

It's funny you mentioned smoking. I thought the same thing

It is early in the FB life. Perhaps more social violence and death will have to happen. Will the surgeon general (or net equivalent) find FB has their own holes in cigarette filters (1) so to speak?

How many more teen suicides from social media have to happen before everyone likens FB to cancer sticks (cigarettes)?

(1) https://www.google.com/amp/www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/fe...

arnaudsm• 9 years ago

Moreover, the lack of sanctions against freebooting shows the complete disinterest of Facebook in protecting the content creators. Audience is their only priority.

spyhi2• 9 years ago

Taken to the extreme this is an ugly future of wasted time and resources to bend to facebook's constant tweaks which are not in favor of the content creators, but ~~the advertisers~~ facebook.

Small correction: Content creators are the advertisers. If you want the audience you've built to see the content you've made, you pretty much have to buy ads in the form of "boosts" and other ad units. At this point, everything is looping around to benefit Facebook. I see more sponsored posts for content than for products these days, honestly.

ihsw2• 9 years ago

Facebook should look to independent content producers working off of Patreon -- their by-line is exactly what media companies are looking for:

Best way for artists and creators to get sustainable income and connect with fans

Either buy Patreon outright or offer a competing platform. At this point the PHBs at Facebook have to decide whether they prefer their business connections to media conglomerates or sidestep them completely by establishing their own content producing platform.

tempodox• 9 years ago

I keep wondering what made the news outlets surrender to FB so quickly in the first place. Did they really think it was to their advantage?

Jimmie_Rustle• 9 years ago

LOL, I am surprised CNN was able to get ANY money out of FB.

vthallam• 9 years ago

Ben Lerer, CEO of online video machine Group Nine Media (Thrillist, NowThis News, the Dodo), says that while he’s not satisfied by his deals with Facebook, he’s optimistic they’ll improve. Either way, he says, “whining and complaining that Facebook isn’t making you money is probably not going to be the most successful approach to building a partnership with Facebook where they make you lots of money.”

Says the CEO of companies which were completely built on the viral factor and will not be able to serve without social media. no surprises there.

Also, every media company now crazily rely on Google/FB for users, as i see it, there's no escape, sadly.

ageitgey• 9 years ago

A good companion article to read is "Your Media Business Will Not Be Saved" [1], written about a year ago by the guy who founded The Verge before he launched The Outline.

The basic argument is that these media companies are chasing readership scale (via Facebook exposure, etc) as a way to solve the problem that no one actually values what they produce very much. And that they keep chasing the next "tech thing" as a solution to get more readership scale instead of just producing good content for an audience that actually cares about them.

It's a very cathartic read if you are jaded about the current online media world.

[1] https://medium.com/@joshuatopolsky/your-media-business-will-...

shostack2• 9 years ago

What is fascinating is to see FB successfully employ the same general strategy to publishers as they did advertisers.

With advertisers, they got everyone excited about the ability to reach their audience through a new channel. It had some similarities to email in that FB encouraged you to get Likes on your page, and then everything you posted would in theory reach your audience. Then they gradually tightened the screws in the name of declining user experience with too much garbage in the feed, which became algorithmic instead of sorted by recency.

This in turn let them flip the switch and move to basically zero reach unless you pay. And not just pay a flat rate based on however thousands of users you have (like email providers), but a dynamic pricing auction that maximizes revenue for FB. So advertisers invested all this time and major dollars on building their FB base, without actually owning the contact info or the ability to reach those people without paying FB. Frog successfully boiled.

Now with publishers they got them all excited about the reach they get for their content, and then slowly choke them via Instant Articles. Since publishers are so reliant on the revenue from FB, they have ZERO leverage in these negotiations, much like when Google says "sure, you don't have to have your content indexed." FB can now decide how benevolent it is feeling towards publishers, and there's nothing they can do about it.

exolymph• 9 years ago

The irony is that The Outline is just like all the others, except that it has prettier ads.

tiffanyh• 9 years ago

But what's the alternative to Facebook for media companies?

There's Google and that's about it.

So even though this article might have a lot of merit to what it states, there really isn't any good alternatives to using Facebook (besides maybe Google).

DesiLurker4• 9 years ago

I wish people will start using alternate social network like ello more to share, at least they have much more privacy protections built-in.

AznHisoka2• 9 years ago

even Google is not an alternative if your audience is the bored and looking to be entertained type.

adventured• 9 years ago

But what's the alternative to Facebook for media companies?

Here's what's going to happen, it's very predictable: inflection.

At peak fear, when nearly everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs about Facebook crushing earth (with inbound anti-trust attention), an inflection will be getting birthed that will be busy undermining the reason for that laughable mass dread.

The inflection - which has never not occurred, especially in technology - will be the birth of a thousand new distribution points, which will increasingly rip attention away from Facebook. These new distribution points will be narrow, hyper focused, they'll serve their audience radically better than Facebook within any given category.

I'll emphasize it one more time for anyone too emotional on this topic to think straight: there isn't a single example in recent tech history, in which an inflection didn't break down a formerly dominant position. Not one example in the last 60 years. We're nearing peak Facebook, the screaming is beginning as one would expect; government attention is next up, talk of regulation or breaking it up will become extremely common ('what to do about Facebook' is coming to the cover of magazines); meanwhile, right this moment, those thousand new points of distribution are being born, while few are paying attention. As Facebook reaches peak time-on-site saturation, it'll begin to bleed dominance, very very slowly at first, then it'll cascade.

dredmorbius5• 9 years ago

Amazon. Apple. Microssoft. HBO. Netflix.

Possibly public media: APM, PRI, PBS, NPR, APB.

jimjimjim• 9 years ago

Garbage has been monetized. Garbage has been weaponized.

jonbarker• 9 years ago

Incidentally fb video seems to load very slowly when tested with identical videos loaded on the same connection in youtube.

mschuster91• 9 years ago

I'm getting sick of the huge volume of garbage in the whole Internet. Idiots on Facebook (which I cannot unfriend for reasons) keep flooding my timeline with right-wing "alternative news" XXXXX (but thankfully, Facebook got rid of Farmville spam!), Youtube has been overtaken by Let's Play XXXXX, clickbait and the videos of "omg i was shopping here are my clothes" Instagram fame XXXXX.

And many newspapers these days, even formerly respected Spiegel and Sueddeutsche Zeitung, seem to think it's worth their time to publish clickbait stuff... argh. Is there any idiocy-free space left on the net?

coralreef• 9 years ago

You can use the unfollow button, its quite effective.

kirykl• 9 years ago

Unfortunately Facebook's content can only be free, because its a reflection of its audience. And its audience values worthless content.

That leaves publishers with nothing but their worthless content when they've outsourced all distribution to Facebook

(Worthless meaning low intrinsic value, high attention getting value)

evolve2k• 9 years ago

"If journalism isn’t surviving in this environment, that’s bad for society, but it’s also bad for Facebook"

Similar to the statements of a zoo keeper, maybe the word to consider is 'thriving', not just 'surviving'.

cratermoon• 9 years ago

"viewership is its own reward"

Bahaha. Seriously, that's like the corporate version of "we'll pay you in exposure". I can't eat exposure, and media companies won't take "viewership" as a substitute for revenue.

perseusprime11• 9 years ago

Media companies don't have much choice.

mark_l_watson2• 9 years ago

Curated content direct from the content producers is the way to go. I think it a poor practice to use Facebook for anything but quickly catching up on what family and friends are doing.

I am a happy consumer of other social media because I try to follow relatively just a few people who have interesting things to say and provide interesting links. It is the people, and relatively few of them, that provide some value from Google+ and Twitter.

ungzd• 9 years ago

There's not much difference between random copywriters on Facebook and "reputable" newsletters, latter only having more valuable brand name and more aggressive paywalls and anti-adblockers. Quality of content is the same, never ending special olympics in filling void with most intricate, convoluted words.

jbb67• 9 years ago

"Facebook announced it would allow publishers to put more ads in Instant Articles"

Yeah, that should make it more popular.

throwawaymanbot• 9 years ago

Facebook = AOL With AI. We should call Facebook AIOL in honor of this.

Delete Facebook, instantly have less problems. Especially with annoying advertisers. Simple!

usmeteora• 9 years ago

I thought this was going to say "people on facebook are getting sick of media companies" but I keep forgetting people are the product and not the customer.

Wait no I didn't forget. That's why I left.

Media Companies Are Getting Sick of Facebook

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