THAT'S A WRAP #13

Friday again already! Here’s the wrap-up of what happened this week in the world of news and tech:?

GOOGLE ANNOUNCES TOPIC AUTHORITY SYSTEM

Google made an announcement on Tuesday in regards to Search’s system for prioritizing news with what it calls “topic authority”. Topic authority comes in three shades:?

• Local knowledge. The system will surface articles from these news sources with authority in a particular region for searches related to local events or in the wake of a natural disaster that affects a particular area.?
• Original reporting, scoops, and highly cited sources. The system will elevate news from sources that break a story or have access to original sources of information.?
• Reputation. The system will take into account news organizations’ standing as trustworthy sources, especially if they conduct original reporting or have won awards.

According to Jen Granito at Google’s Search Central Blog, “Publishers looking for success with topic authority should do exactly what their publications would normally do: provide great coverage about the areas and topics they know well.”

We are but wanton devotées of the Great Algorithm and, naturally, we care to know what it has to say. However, as always, Google would like everyone to keep their heads down and keep publishing good content. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.?

#Search #GoogleTraffic

META FOUGHT THE LAW AND THE LAW WON

Meta has agreed to sell Giphy to Shutterstock for the super promo price of $53m cash after having paid over 5x that amount in November. The tech giant was forced to sell due to an antitrust decision handed down in the UK. This is the first time Meta has been forced to sell an asset due to monopolistic practices. Will it be the last??

Meanwhile, Meta was ordered on Monday to pay €1.3b by Ireland's Data Protection Commission after an Irish privacy agency brought a suit against the owner of Facebook for transferring personal user data out of Europe and to the US. This flies in the face of the precedent set by the EU’s highest court in 2020, which established transatlantic data transfers as inadmissible under GDPR. The European Data Protection Board called Meta's data transfers "systematic, repetitive and continuous."

#antitrust #GDPR #privacy

MORE EXECUTIVES JUMP THE MESSENGER SHIP

The third senior editor has left the news startup The Messenger after a different high-profile resignation covered in the New York Times last week. However, the publication is still on track to reach 175 employees, counting among them household-name journalists. Not to mention plenty of funding.

What seems clear based on the media coverage around the upstart is that many are betting (dare we say hoping) it will fail, offended by the brash business model that has already proved not to be viable so many times. As one journalist writing for The Guardian said in reference to the Vice-Buzzfeed implosion, venture capitalists can grow “disenchanted and impatient” and “even billionaires don’t want to sustain losses indefinitely.” The bills have to be paid.

#newsmedia #startup

…and that’s a wrap!