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 […]
Advertisers are coming to your favorite messaging app, WhatsApp
Most of our dear social media services belong to one single company, Facebook. Facebook owns its “blue” platform, Facebook, the picture app it bought for $1 billion in 2012, Instagram, and its more recent $19 billion acquisition: WhatsApp, bought in 2014. However, these social media services differ in one fundamental thing—while Instagram and Facebook present […]
What Facebook’s latest attempt to court the media means
Just after Apple revealed its grand plan to ‘save’ the media with its News+ offering, Facebook returns to the fold. This week, The Wall Street Journal reported the tech company is in conversations with publishers to relaunch yet another Facebook News Tab. The Menlo Park-based company will pay publishers as much as $3 million to […]
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 […]
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 […]
Will WhatsApp save Facebook?
Facebook’s reign as the dominant social media seems to be coming to an end. The platform has experienced a slow but steady usage decline in the last two years. Younger audiences turn to Instagram and Snapchat, where messages disappear in seconds without them worrying about the consequences of their posts. Older audiences have become wary […]
Say goodbye to Facebook’s public agora
Last Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg revealed he would change his social networks’ focus. Instead of prioritizing public posts, Facebook would focus on private communications. No more sharing for a 700+ community and no more joining random Facebook groups. Privacy will become the number one priority for the company, which will undoubtedly impact news outlets. The shift […]