Welcome to Edition No. 66 of my weekly newsletter, providing practical analysis in the world of digital content strategy.
Friday Five
I. How Mass Journalism Layoffs Are Shaping the Industry
II. TikTok Tests 30-Minute Videos
III. MrBeast Made More Than $250,000* with One Video on X
IV. Google’s SERPs May Be About To Get Messy
V. Google Resolves Issue That Plunged Sites’ Weekend Traffic
VI. Other Important Updates
I. How Mass Journalism Layoffs Are Shaping the Industry
Last Friday: “The company that publishes Sports Illustrated said in an email to employees that it was laying off many of them, leaving in doubt what lies ahead for the publication.”
-NY Times
“The Los Angeles Times announced Tuesday that it was laying off at least 115 people — or more than 20% of the newsroom — in one of the largest workforce reductions in the history of the 142-year-old institution.
The move comes amid projections for another year of heavy losses for the newspaper.”
-LA Times
“Univision announced last week that it would lay off 200 employees. The Hispanic television network assured, after weeks of rumors, that it was forced to let go of many of its workers in different departments, including sports, production, digital and communications.”
-Voz
“‘To meet our 2024 business goals, like many companies, we needed to reprioritize resources, resulting in the difficult decision to reduce less than 3% of staff,’ a Forbes spokesperson said in a statement to TheWrap.”
-TheWrap
“Journalists at The New York Daily News and Forbes walked off the job Thursday amid contentious contract talks with management and a difficult few weeks in the news industry.”
-AP
Disclosure: I worked for the NY Daily News for two years.
🛠 Why does this matter?
First the obvious: People losing their jobs is a bummer. I was laid off once (from now-defunct DNAinfo).
These businesses are laying off staff for business reasons. That’s not to say that there aren’t other ways they could reduce costs, but it’s the path they have chosen.
While the majority of the aforementioned publications originated in print, that doesn’t mean that a struggle to adapt to the online information revolution of this century is the sole culprit. Even blogs like Business Insider (8 percent of staff) are laying people off.
The bigger reason this is happening? People are getting their news from what were once considered non-traditional sources – namely, social media – but are increasingly becoming the norm, especially for younger generations.
Forget the fact that these sources are often inaccurate, deliberately or otherwise.
The world needs well-funded, independent journalism to hold all of us – not just powerful public leaders and large organizations – accountable.
The outlets that are succeeding are largely doing so by supplementing subscriptions with other products, like events and by leveraging those same third-party platforms that have been the ruin of their peers.
At this point, advertising revenue, while often necessary, is more of a bonus than a lifeblood.
Nothing I have shared here is novel. But the concentration of layoffs to end this month does shine the spotlight once again on this important topic as we embark on an extremely important year. One full of wars, economic uncertainty, and yes, The Election.
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II. TikTok Tests 30-Minute Videos
TikTok is testing 30-minute long video uploads in its beta app.
This move follows Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which successfully extended video length to 30 minutes in 2022.
TikTok has progressively increased its maximum video duration since 2018, with previous limits set at 15 seconds, 60 seconds, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes.
A recent Qustodio report shows that children 18 and younger are spending more and more time in the app:
“The full stats on this show that children aged 4 to 18 spent, on average, 112 minutes per day in the app in 2023, up from 107 minutes in 2022.”
Can someone tell me why a 4-year-old is on TikTok? Or even a 12-year-old for that matter?
🛠 Why does this matter?
Watch out, YouTube: This strategy aligns TikTok more directly with the Alphabet-owned video platform, appealing to users who prefer longer-format content
The introduction of longer videos may lead to more advertising opportunities, particularly mid-roll ads, known for higher completion and engagement rates.
Extending video length could significantly impact TikTok's competition with YouTube in attracting and retaining content creators.
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III. MrBeast Made More Than $250,000* with One Video on X
*Even he admits the results are a bit fishy:
-X
In related news, X is testing a video tab on mobile:
🛠 Why does this matter?
Elon Musk is trying to tout X as a creator-friendly platform.
MrBeast’s one-off success seems to support that notion. But not so fast…
…even Jimmy Donaldson (his real name) knows this amount of revenue on a single video was an outlier.
I doubt we’ll see YouTube stars flocking to X. They’re more likely to head to TikTok first (see II.).
But that doesn’t mean X won’t continue trying to make “fetch” happen.
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IV. Google’s SERPs May Be About To Get Messy
Speaking of layoffs…
Google is ending its contract with Appen, an Australian data services company, leading to a significant reduction in third-party search quality raters.
This move raises questions about Google's future reliance on human raters versus AI in evaluating search quality.
Google has about 16,000 search quality raters, and those contracted through Appen represent a substantial portion.
🛠 Why does this matter?
The reduction in human quality raters could lead to changes in how Google's search algorithm ranks websites.
It may become easier for entities to manipulate search engine results pages (SERPs) due to less human oversight.
This decision hints at a potential pivot toward AI-driven search quality assessment, potentially affecting overall search quality in the future.
That being said, quality and usefulness (aka E-E-A-T standards) should continue to be the norm for content creators. With plenty of exceptions along the way, Google always seems to course-correct and surface the highest-quality content in the long run.
Though the more the news industry is affected by profitability challenges (see I.), the less quality content there will be to rank for more timely topics.
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V. Google Resolves Issue That Plunged Sites’ Weekend Traffic
“We’re aware of a very narrow issue that caused temporary fluctuations in search results for a small number of websites. The issue has since been resolved, and the sites should no longer be seeing its effects.”
Google acknowledged a bug causing a small number of websites, particularly those with exotic vanity top-level domains (TLDs), to disappear from search results over weekends.
The issue, which began in November 2023, has since been resolved.
Affected TLDs included .club, .consulting, .life, among others.
🛠 Why does this matter?
The bug highlights the vulnerability of Google's search algorithm to unexpected errors, impacting site visibility.
It underscores the importance of search algorithm stability for businesses, especially those using non-standard TLDs.
The issue's resolution is crucial for maintaining trust in Google's search reliability, particularly for smaller or niche websites.
As you can tell by the TLDs listed above, most major sites were not affected.
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VI. Other Important Updates
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