#12 - Hedging Revenue Models
Never say never. After years of exponential growth, Netflix reported this week that it had lost subscribers. And for the first time in a decade CEO Reed Hastings acknowledged that there might be limits to the company’s ‘subscriptions-only’ strategy. Netflix now plans cheaper subscriptions with advertising to give consumers more choice now they are scrutinizing their expenses. Publishers feel the same heat. Everyone realizes that in order to make money in publishing you need to hedge your bets, pursuing many revenue models rather than just one.
This and more in this week’s Wayfinder,
IN FOCUS
News publishers are cutting on content. As news organisations switch to reader revenue models, they are increasingly investing their limited resources in a smaller number of pieces to be more relevant to their audiences and persuade them to pay for news online. A new report by the Reuters Institute takes a closer look.
While everyone moves their content behind the paywall business news site Quartz has permanently dropped theirs. The publication said the decision to lower the paywall “is the result of Quartz’s growing international readership and its mission to best serve this audience by making its journalism accessible to everyone”.
NEWS AND PRODUCT
Why does one product fail and another one that is similar work? Here’s a great take on that question, comparing Vine and Tik Tok. Vine's UX placed an enormous amount of decision-making baggage upon users. TikTok, on the other hand, gives users just one easy option: open the app and watch entertaining videos.
If you are interested in a news product's backstory: Financial Times journalist Malcolm Moore will do a webinar on the one-month anniversary of the launch of the FT Edit app to discuss how the new product is performing.
AUDIO
Spotify has quietly rolled-out a new misinformation policy that says it may hide shows. It’s one of the signs that after Facebook, Twitter, YouTube now audio platforms are faced with difficult questions about what content to allow on their platforms.
The Brookings Institution has written a document that highlights current platform policies, describes how Spotify and Apple allow listeners to report shows, and suggests areas that policy-makers might focus on.
The UK media regulator Ofcom has published the results of its UK podcast survey 2022. Ofcom just did a huge data dump in a big spreadsheet with 30,000 rows, so we should all be grateful to Adam Bowie for looking at the data. Big take-away: 2022 is remarkeable like 2021.
SOCIAL MEDIA
The European Union has reached a deal on the Digital Services Act, a landmark legislation that forces Facebook, YouTube and other internet services to combat misinformation and restrict certain online ads.
New social media platform BeReal is skyrocketing in popularity with Gen Z. It's already been downloaded 5 million times this year. Now, the app is on track to be downloaded almost 4 million times in this month alone. It offers an alternative to Instagram and TikTok with an emphasis on authenticity.
After joining and immediately leaving the board of Twitter last week, Elon Musk has now put in a bid to buy the company. In his patented analytical style Ben Thompson explains why a newly private Twitter in Elon Musk’s hands might (not) be a good idea.
And apparently the best times to post on social media have changed during the pandemic - here's an update with the new 'best times' for every major platform, according to Sproutsocial.
SHORT
- Snapchat is partnering with more than 40 news publishers for a new automated product.
- Creators in select markets can now publish video podcasts on Spotify & Here’s how Spotify curates its podcast list
- YouTube allows creators to use clips from YouTube’s billions of videos.
- CNN+ just launched and already is shut down again.
- Meta will take nearly 50% of revenue from creators on its forthcoming metaverse thing.
- Instagram is changing its ranking to favor original content.
- InPublishing takes a look at the evolving newsletter landscape.
OPPORTUNITIES
The AI Journalism Initiative has launced a new fellowship to bring together journalists and technologists from media organisations worldwide to explore innovative AI solutions to improve journalism – applications close on Thursday, 28 April, at 11:59 PM GMT.
The Future Today Institute offers a special briefing on key findings from the Journalism, News and Information section of their 2022 Tech Trends Report. Register here for the webinar on May 3.
And if you are looking to supercharge your newsletter growth you might want to check this upcoming Newsletter Strategy 2.0, three-day workshop (September 21-23 in Copenhagen, Denmark.)
IDEAS
A new report published by the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) entitled “Newsrooms that care: how diversity and inclusion will define the future of journalism presents some good practice examples and recommendations for achieving greater diversity and equality in newsrooms in the light of the ongoing digital transformation.
Hardly anyone can define what the 'Metaverse' is but according to a new study by Vice Media 15% of Gen Z’s “fun budget” is already spent in the current-state 'Metaverse' (aka social gaming). Media brands should be paying attention because one thing is clear –– money’s being spent in the metaverse.
And finally - my long-read pick for this week. The story of Babel as a metaphor for what happened to America in the 2010s, and the fractured country that is left. A confronting piece by The Atlantic on what some forms of social media have done to people and institutions of the US (and the rest of the world).
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Wayfinder is back next week. Like it? Share it! All ideas and stories for the next edition are welcome.
Ezra