Welcome to Edition No. 36 of my weekly newsletter, providing practical analysis in the world of digital content strategy.
Contents
I. Rich People Pay for News, Young People Don’t Trust It
II. TikTok’s New Editing Tools
III. Meta is Killing Instant Articles
IV. Latest Google Update Targeted Spam
V. Meta Builds AI Speech Translation Tool
VI. TikTok Planned To Use App To Track U.S. Citizens
VII. New TikTok Live Features Focus on Safety
VIII. Creator Payouts Going Down on Social Platforms
IX. Snapchat Announces New Paid Features Amid Q3 Earnings
I. Rich People Pay for News, Young People Don’t Trust It
The news comes from a Gallup/Knight Foundation survey.
These are the report’s five summary takeaways:
“Most Americans think news organizations prioritize business needs and financial goals over public service.”
“More than seven in 10 Americans report having never paid a news organization directly for news.”
“Only 17% of Americans say they would pay to access news in the future, but if they have paid before, they are more willing to pay again.”
“Advertising is the most widely supported form of funding for news.”
“Expanded information services may open the door to revenue opportunities for news organizations — particularly for younger audiences.”
Only one percent of respondents who “were trying to access a news story online and had to pay to keep reading or watching it” said they would, simply, pay up. (Nearly half, meanwhile, said their first move would be to try to access the story free from a different outlet.)
Here’s a graphic indicating younger generations’ lack of faith in journalistic motives:
“I think there’s probably a lot of really good journalists out there, but I think for the vast majority it’s, you know, 'How can we get traffic? How can I phrase this or spin this in a certain way where I’m going to get the most clicks or views?' In turn, it leads back to … it’s a scheme for money, really.”
— FOCUS GROUP PARTICIPANT, AGED 18-35
🛠 Why does this matter? At a time when budgets are shrinking and platforms like Meta are kicking publishers to the curb (see III.), this is telling. And also a bit obvious.
Rich People Able To Pay for Things Poor People Can’t
Duh.
The real bummer, though, is the lack of faith young people have in news outlets.
In an era where people often decide to live their own truth, man, it’s increasingly difficult to convince them to trust the news, let alone pay for it.
•
II. TikTok’s New Editing Tools
Here are the new features, as quoted from subsequent tweets:
“Enhance your storytelling by adding overlays for picture-in-picture (or video-in-video) stacking 📚”
“Video and Photo Mode descriptions have been expanded to accommodate up to 2,200 characters.”
“Easily adjust clips, sounds, images, and text in a linear editing environment. Give your video a little trim ✂️ right in the app!”
🛠 Why does this matter? First, this streamlines the video editing process so you don’t have to use tools like CapCut or iMovie for your videos.
Secondly, if you do all your video editing in TikTok and export it from there, it’s going to have a TikTok watermark.
For videos that will be used only on TikTok, this is a big help. But if you want to share something to other platforms, you’re better off exporting a “clean” version from another video-editing platform, then uploading.
Instagram, for example, has indicated for more than a year that it will suppress reach of TikTok-watermarked videos.
•
III. Meta is Killing off Instant Articles
Google recently announced it would no longer prioritize AMP articles in search.
Now Instant Articles, which were basically a copycat of the idea behind AMP, are going away.
"Currently less than 3% of what people around the world see in Facebook’s Feed are posts with links to news articles. And as we said earlier this year, as a business it doesn’t make sense to over invest in areas that don't align with user preferences,” a Meta spokesperson said.
So what happens to existing Instant Articles?
“Moving forward, traffic from links on Facebook will be directed to publishers’ mobile websites.”
🛠 Why does this matter? This is another indication of the danger of relying on third-party platforms to reliably distribute content.
Meta already cut payments to news publishers in July. Now they’re no longer going to support the product they built to convince sites to upload their content directly to Facebook.
The publishers with the brightest long-term prospects are the ones who have found a way to sustain themselves off of revenue on owned products. Especially when that includes a subscription model.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Gerick News(letter) to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.