Author Topic: Facebook Instant Articles : Another blow to the editorial industry (Read 4005 times)

Hobostocker · « **on:** May 15, 2015, 04:05 »

well ... i see nothing good coming out of this ...

Facebook's instant articles arrive to speed up the News Feed
And publishers are bracing themselves for the impact
http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/13/8595263/facebooks-instant-articles-arrive-to-speed-up-the-news-feed

just another devalueing of journalism and photography too ... photos will be geotagged or coming with audio and blah blah blah ... publishers will split the advertising revenue with FB, leaving basically nothing for the content providers, just as they pay a pittance already for print and web content.

in the meantime Live Streaming apps linked to Twitter like Meerkat and Periscope are booming and considered 2015's next big thing .. no idea how they will be monetized, probably in the same fashion as youtube or Ustream i guess but they will open yet another can of worms regarding privacy, spam, scams, and there's already a huge debate about letting kids using this sh-it, business as usual as we've heard the same cr-ap since the 90s but anyway ...

i've the feeling we're living in a world heading to a full blown police state where many people will live a second life online in their own personal reality show, thanks god i was born in times where we still met at the local pub face to face and the only way to interact remotely was a wheel telephone or a coin-operated phone box in the street.

the other issue i see at the horizon is that while demand for good photography is booming, the money is just not there for the content producers and there's little money also for the middlemen and distributors.

we're now able to spread content to billions of readers in real time, but 99% of them are not willing to pay even a cent for it ... actually they will also complain about the low quality of the free content and eventually ruin your reputation too.

once again, Orwell had a crystal clear vision of what was coming decades later.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #1 on:** May 15, 2015, 09:52 »

I will continue to read the New York times via their mobile app (I subscribe). Why would I go to Facebook for news? That's for family pictures and other people's links to click bait stores on Huff Post and Buzzfeed.

Facebook has ambitions and publishers are scared. I don't think any of that means this new initiative will succeed.

ShadySue · « **Reply #2 on:** May 15, 2015, 09:59 »

If I want to look specifically for news, I go to the Beeb, but very often big international news just comes in on the Trending column in Facebook and I see it there first. Far too much celeb stuff, of course, but I can mentally filter that out.

Pixart · « **Reply #3 on:** May 15, 2015, 19:24 »

I subscribe to several news publications, and last week I noticed that I didn't have any feeds from friends. On Wednesday I was in my hotel and for 2 hours read facebook and not one single post from a friend or colleague! I needed to catch up on the news but would have been nice to know what was happening at home too. I think I will open up a separate account for news.

Hobostocker · « **Reply #4 on:** May 16, 2015, 02:23 »

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on May 15, 2015, 09:52

Facebook has ambitions and publishers are scared.

and rightly so.

with the internet and instant distribution of contents worldwide the role of a newspaper is no longer the same as before, now they're all dime a dozen unless they've a big scoop or an exclusive but this is a very rare event, for instance the Snowden files a couple years ago.

as the online world provides worldwide publishing with a few clicks it's become the major threat to publishers and content producers, you can set all the boundaries you want but it's just to easy to cut & paste or steal and republish elsewhere with no effort and giving nothing back and good luck sueing people around the world for copyright infringement ... it can't get any more Wild West than this, it will take decades before the goverments will find an agreement to manage this mess in the West, let alone in the rest of the world.

Hobostocker · « **Reply #5 on:** May 16, 2015, 02:34 »

Quote from: Pixart on May 15, 2015, 19:24

I think I will open up a separate account for news.

there are just too many news and articles popping up every hour, it's a whole ocean of news i'll never have the time to read, very few of them are actually newsworthy, it's getting harder and harder to filter all the cr-ap out and avoiding wasting time, i usually give 5-10 seconds per article now but i read dozens and dozens every day, actually "scanning" rather than reading from top to bottom apart a few cases.

my opinion, the quality of the contents is absolutely going down compared to 20 yrs ago.
in the past the Title and sub-title were meant to be a summary of the article, now they're there just to grab your attention or acting as click-bait .. this is a terrible development and a waste of time for the readers.

moreover, often they're not a sequence of facts but a garbage of text where it's even hard to understand who's the subject and what's they're talking about ! i can understand that journalism is dieing and they're paid a pittance but c'mon ... Reuters.com being one of the very last bastions of sanity in my opinion.

Painter · « **Reply #6 on:** May 16, 2015, 03:43 »

I use Twitter for news, it is great for that. If you follow different local and international media, good journalists and other writers etc and whatever you are interested in, you will get links to the best articles there.

Difydave · « **Reply #7 on:** May 16, 2015, 05:09 »

I hardly ever go on FB
Never use Twitter. Can't stand it.
Get my news off the BBC text service. Short, succinct and relevant.
If there's something I want to know more about, then the BBC website.
Mind you I did live for a third of my life in a house with no telephone.
Mobile phones are a fiendish invention. I was lying on my back under the car the other day. The phone went in my pocket. Business, so I had to answer it. With a mobile phone you are always on the end of that invisible string.
Yeah I know, I'm a Luddite!