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 […]
Digital reading platforms: publishers’ friend or foe?
By Giulia Surace, Carmen Arroyo Last week the Swedish Publishers’ Association and the Swedish Booksellers’ Association released their annual Book Sales Statistics report for 2019, which covers 80% of the Swedish trade book consumer sales. The findings, in line with the previous years, are nonetheless astounding. Although the book market grew 1.1% in value, sales […]
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 […]
Spotify, the podcasting powerhouse
Before January comes to an end, we must still say a word about the podcasting industry and its current striking player—Spotify. Distributing third party content will not get the company very far, and since in music is very hard for Spotify to develop original content, podcasts are the best alternative that match their streaming and […]
Facebook’s “Supreme Court” will change very little
Back in September, Facebook announced the creation of what is now known as Facebook’s Supreme Court—an oversight board to review appeals to the tech company’s content policy decisions. Around forty independent experts will form the committee later this year, making decisions over the company’s content policy. For Facebook, the board is the perfect ‘scapegoat’ to […]
The verticals’ chess game—how news outlets are reworking their brands
While generalist outlets fight for survival, a new type of news brand is taking over the Internet—the verticals. Before the digital era, verticals were just called news sections. It was as simple as that. With the print product, the reader would go through the whole paper—call it New York magazine, for example—before turning its attention […]
Social media decentralization reaches 2020
Just a couple weeks ago, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that the company was setting up a team to create a decentralized standard for social media. With it, Twitter is joining the existing efforts to develop decentralized frameworks through which the platforms themselves do not hold the information or the power to act as referees. […]
Tik Tok, the video app that’s defining our zeitgeist
If you have not checked out Tik Tok, it’s about time you do. The 15-to-60-second video feel-good app has fascinated United States adolescents in a way that’s only comparable to Snapchat in 2014. The Chinese app already has 1.5 billion users, and with its fun and entertaining offer, it is changing the way social media […]
