Thanks, Pine. Some stand-out quotes from the article:
<quote> *85 cents of every new dollar spent in online advertising will go to Google or Facebook, said Brian Nowak, a Morgan Stanley analyst.* <end of quote>
<quote> *Facebook also announced that it would open up Instant Articles — which encourage publishers to post their content directly to Facebook — to “any publisher.” ...*
*... the rate at which links to outside websites are shared on Facebook, compared with videos and Instant Articles, has declined. ...*
*Mr. Denton, once known for harsh assessments of the media business, struck a conciliatory tone. “The Instant Articles deal seems great,” he said in an interview last week. “Users get relevant stories and relevant ads. It’s the realization of that particular Internet dream.* <end of quote>
Wikipedia is being re-packaged and re-branded in the Knowledge Graph, the Amazon Echo, in Facebook, and so forth, complete with ads and commercial tie-ins.
In much the same way, media companies' content is about to be packaged and re-branded in Facebook, with part of the ad money going to Facebook instead of the people who researched, wrote and checked the content. (At least the content producers are getting *some* of the money from Facebook, unlike Wikimedia, which gets nothing.)
Consumer behaviour is turning Google and Facebook into ultra-rich behemoths, creating a media landscape dominated by monopolists that know everything about you: what you read, what you buy, what you're thinking about, who your friends are.
Sometimes I think 1984 will come. It'll just be fifty years late.
Andreas
On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 6:29 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
This article is interesting in light of discussions about Wikimedia readership, audience, and fundraising, so I'm passing along the link for anyone else who might be interested.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/business/media-websites-battle-falteringad...
Sounds like Wikimedia has a lot of company in struggling with traffic and audience. It might be interesting for WMF to have some dialogue with content-producing organizations about this subject.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe