As we settle in our quarantines, we have more time in our hands to read the news—and sometimes obsessively. Thus, it’s not surprising that since the COVID-19 pandemic reached the Western hemisphere, news readership has surged dramatically. But what has also drastically changed is newspaper revenue. With businesses closing, the number of ads has plunged, […]
Entertainment in times of quarantine
As quarantines are implemented throughout the world, users are spending more time on the Internet looking for entertainment options. This makes it, without doubt, the golden age of streaming services and online gaming outlets. But it is also an exciting time for grassroots initiatives, which are flooding the Internet. As the competition for the audience’s […]
How Covid-19 is feeding into the fake news problem
Since early February, fake news content surrounding Covid-19 has flooded the Internet. Citizens all over the world, trying to figure out how to face the crisis and protect their families, are turning to WhatsApp, Facebook, and videos/audios shared by friends with information on healthcare. While social media giants and news outlets try to tackle the […]
Fleets will change Twitter’s fate
On March 4, Twitter made its most significant announcement since its inception, much more consequential than the 280-character extension. The tech company started to test Fleets in Brazil last week, a version of the Stories’ feature already present in the other social media platforms. Fleets will consist of temporary posts that will appear on the […]
Subscriptions Flood Movie Theater Chains
We’ve heard it a thousand times—movie theaters, very much like books, are done. With their humongous fixed costs and their conservative outlook, they are just not ready to survive the online streaming era. That general assertion is true—streaming platforms, available for anyone with a laptop or a TV set, are releasing world-class pictures. But, although […]
TikTok, Facebook’s worst nightmare
More than a year has passed since Facebook launched its Tik Tok-like platform Lasso, with mild success. CNBC reported that during its first three months of existence—from November 2018 to January 2019,—the short-video sharing app was downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play by 70,000 users in the United States. The numbers sound […]
Subscriptions work, especially for the NYT
Last week, The New York Times disclosed in the fourth-quarter earnings report it had broken a record of its own—its subscription numbers. The paper has added over one million digital-only subscribers in 2019, in what Mark Thompson, the Times’ CEO, described as “a record-setting year for The New York Times’s digital subscription business, the best […]
Scroll: no ads for a self-care journalism style
Last week we saw the birth of Scroll, a new and unique online platform aiming to serve both readers and publishers. The subscription-based service provides an Internet experience free of ads and pop-ups for readers, while paying member publications a portion of their subscription revenue. For the past couple of years, the advertising model has […]
