Facebook’s Live Video Push, Publishers ‘All-In’ on Medium, Yahoo Media Updates, News and Brand Chatbots, TFP’s Infographic Pick of the Week
Welcome to Technology for Publishing’s roundup of news and tips for media industry pros! This week, we’re sharing stories about new tools and incentives aimed at boosting Facebook’s Live video service, small publishers going “all-in” on Medium, Yahoo Media’s change in direction, the growing interest in chatbots among publishers and brands, and more.
- Stepping up its competition with YouTube, Twitter, and other platforms, Facebook released several new and updated tools designed to get users to post more live video to its site, The Wall Street Journal and others reported. And according to Recode, the company is offering to pay for Facebook Live video content from not only big celebrities but media companies as well, including BuzzFeed and The New York Times. With new Groups and Events functionality, users can now stream live video to select people and small groups rather than all followers, and live video can be integrated into events, the WSJ article says. Also, among other new capabilities, users can invite others to watch a video with them as well as archive broadcasts for viewing at a later time. The idea is to increase sharing and engagement, it says, which in turn will draw more advertising dollars.
- Medium announced it will begin hosting a number of small publishers, including The Awl, The Hairpin, Pacific Standard, The Blacklist, and Femsplain. The sites were set to fully migrate over this week, with other publishers planning to follow, according to Digiday. Medium, a three-year-old startup launched by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, said it will also begin publishing original content for Time Inc.’s Money and Fortune and Atlantic Media’s National Journal, among others. These latest deals are in line with the site’s ongoing shift toward being a platform for other publishers rather than running its own digital publications, the report says. “The discussions we’ve had has been that technology is a huge headache and operating blogs and websites is really difficult,” said Medium exec Edward Lichty. “They want an easier way to build their site.”
- More updates on Yahoo Media’s meltdown: CNBC reported that despite talk of a spin-off, the company insists that the recent layoff of 15% of its staff and closing of several digital magazines are part of an overall strategy to refocus its media business around strengths like news, sports, finance, and lifestyle. The article details how Yahoo is trying to regain its footing by shifting investments to those areas, as well as its social media platform, Tumblr, and increasing the integration of its programmatic ad platform. Meanwhile, Vanity Fair offered a look at what went wrong with CEO Marissa Mayer’s ambitious plan to make Yahoo both a media and tech company—and her expensive bet on hiring A-list editorial talent to do that. The report notes that among other problems, big-name content simply couldn’t compete with “Kim Kardashian’s ass,” as one staffer put it. Also check out Recode’s post on Yahoo’s financial outlook, revealed in its sales “book” for potential buyers.
- And Digiday looked at the growing interest in chatbots among publishers and brands, with posts about a news bot The Washington Post is building and how marketers see the technology as “the beginning of a new Internet.” Despite the recent Microsoft debacle where trolls taught the company’s Tay bot to be a racist (among other things), “brands are on the cusp of a bot explosion,” it said, noting companies are rushing to get their automated messaging interfaces in front of the 1.4 billion monthly worldwide users of messaging apps like WhatsApp, Kik, WeChat, and Line. At the Post, the goal is to create a bot that has the “personality and tone” of the newspaper and the ability to “handle some basic conversation, but not in the way of tricking it into denying the Holocaust,” said product director Joey Marburger. Other questions publishers are trying to address are what services to offer—for example, the ability to research news or answer questions—and how to monetize those.
On the Technology for Publishing Blog
- TFP’s Infographic Pick of the Week offers a 10-year comparison of revenue sources for B2B and B2C publishers, highlighting how magazines have transformed into multimedia brands.
- Our latest InDesign CC Tip: If you have InDesign CC 2014 documents you want to save in InDesign CC 2015, check out this simple update to InDesign’s Save As function that saves steps—and time.
- ICYMI: Monica Murphy runs down all the new and enhanced features and bug fixes in Adobe Experience Manager Mobile Version 2016.4.
Image: The Wall Street Journal
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Posted by: Monica Sambataro
