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 […]
Streaming wars part II: the unbundling
When streaming platforms emerged in the late-2000s, they announced they had come to unbundle the bundled linear TV programming. Viewers got ordinary TV channels to watch sports programs, news shows as well as movies. They were unable to choose a show on-demand and had to wait for it to come up on the screen. Streaming […]
El Washington Post is born
With the launch of The Washington Post’s new podcast in Spanish, the Spanish language in American news outlets is, again, a front-page matter. At first, Spanish seems to be the perfect fit for Anglo-Saxon news organizations in the US—after all, it is the second most spoken language in the country and the fourth in the […]
Local news outlets need help from citizens or the state
It’s no secret that local news outlets in the United States have been struggling financially for years. Internet and the abundance of subscription options made revenues for local papers scarcer. Still, there have been multiple initiatives to save them in recent years, from donations, fellowships, and grants, to public subsidies and novel revenue models. Conclusions? […]
Disney+ and the value of knowing your customer
On Nov. 12, a new streaming platform entered the market, aiming to dethrone the incumbent—Disney+ is ready to take on Netflix. Since 2015, Disney’s CEO Bob Iger had been planning the launch of the company’s over-the-top service. For a time, the $236 billion empire had been licensing its content to Netflix, but in the streaming […]
Music streaming wars consist of gifts and discounts, not content
While TV streaming wars fill headlines, audio battles remain in the background and are as cutthroat as ever. Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music are ahead of the pack, with YouTube Music and Pandora following their lead. They offer similar services, with slightly different prices. In such an undifferentiated market, it seems that only the […]
Quartz, what to change when the market’s changing
Quartz was launched in 2012 as a free business news publication. At the time, the news outlet was innovative, with its mobile-first strategy and its specificity targeting high-earning and highly educated readers. Advertising was its bread and butter. Seven years later, the publication can no longer live off commercials and is strengthening the relationship with […]
Google News changes its algorithm, and with it, the media industry
In early September, Google announced it had changed its news algorithm to highlight original reporting on the web. When Richard Gringas, vice president for Google News, published the change on a blog post, a wave of reactions surged for and against the measure. In online news, it’s hard to break a story and easy to […]
