The majority of Spaniards do not pay for news, at least not in 2019. It’s easy to find online content for free, as most newspapers in Spain do not have paywalls yet. However, that’s changing. Newspapers are starting to put up paywalls in hopes to get a new source of revenue and a paying loyal […]
Substack, the newsletter platform that monetizes emails
In the last five years, newsletters have become essential for news outlets, writers, and anyone who wants to get their content out there. Some companies, like The Wall Street Journal, have dozens of newsletters; others, like The Skimm, base their whole business on one email. As information overload grows, newsletters have gained success. Emails synthesize […]
Netflix, no longer the streaming leader in the US
Two weeks ago, Netflix revealed its 2019 second-quarter results. They didn’t look pretty and the stock plummeted as a consequence. For the first time since 2011, Netflix has lost subscribers in the United States. The company is still growing internationally, but it has added almost 2 million subscribers less than expected—2.7million vs. the 5 million […]
2019, the year when Big Tech may shrink
2019 is likely to be an uphill year for Silicon Valley. This week, lawmakers held hearings on Capitol Hill questioning whether Big Tech should continue being big. It seems that Washington DC is ready to uphold stringer antitrust laws to limit the market power of the Four (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.) Antitrust has surprisingly, […]
The most critical success of the one-year-old GDPR is awareness
More than a year ago, the EU approved the most stringent online privacy regulation yet—the GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation. The GDPR seeks to protect the data of EU citizens and restrict how businesses can access information. However, as other EU regulations, the GDPR is still slowly been adopted by member states and thus […]
How The Guardian capitalized its membership model
For most digital news outlets, advertisements are the business’ bedrock and for some others, paywalls (and thus, subscriptions) have become a significant revenue source. Yet for a few, donations through membership models, fuel the newsrooms. The Guardian belongs to this last group of outlets and has recently proved that memberships can be profitable—members donate whatever […]
Second-screen usage, the perfect sales opportunity
Today, more than 77% of the US population owns smartphones, and 70.1% of adults scroll online when they are watching television. It’s called second screen usage. The rise of two-screen usage may undermine the attention paid to quality content, as viewers divide their capacity to focus between their cellphones and the TV. But it also […]
Facebook’s ban on extremist figures is not enough to stop fake news, we need more
Last week, Facebook and Instagram finally banned some of the leading far-right extremists in the United States, many of whom have contributed forcefully to the spread of fake news online. Among them were Alex Jones, the founder of Infowars, Milo Yiannopoulos, former editor of Breitbart News, and Paul Joseph Watson, conspiracy theorist. Infowars, an American […]
