Where, Where, Where and Where: this week on Fresh Powder
Where the readers are
They’re online, that’s where they are. The increasing movement of readers away from print publications to online ones is leaving an advertising vacuum and it’s taking big papers down with it. It’s not surprising that print papers have fallen out of fashion: news is super easy to consume online, it’s less burdensome (like, who wants to carry around a giant paper?) and it’s not limited to region: readers can consume news from anywhere in the world. Obviously, advertisers know that where go the readers, so must go the advertising dollars. So what’s a paper to do? The writing’s on the digital wall.
Where the news is
NPR covered October’s major DDoS attack using Facebook Notes. No, the news coverage didn’t drive traffic from Facebook to NPR, it didn’t even necessarily convert non-NPR-consuming Facebook users to NPR-curious ones. But that wasn’t the point. NPR says the goal was to get the news to the people, and while Facebook has never produced fantastic numbers for NPR stories, the news org says they’re reaching people they might not get otherwise. And with the election so close, NPR isn’t going to risk glitchy coverage, so Facebook Notes is looking like a pretty good backup option, too. Bravo, NPR, for making it about news coverage and not about site traffic.
Where the buzz is
Buzzfeed is taking audience-tailored news to a new level: the company recently programmed its internal messaging platform, Slack, to notify editors the moment a story goes viral. The editors can see where in the world the story is trending and who is interacting with it, and then tailor the content to that specific audience. It’s cool, and it goes way beyond just translating stories into other languages. Using this of-the-minute attention to analytics, Buzzfeed is putting local face on its content and people dig it. Pretty neat.
Where the Hype is
Well that didn’t take long. Vine was murdered just last week, but already a new start-up called Hype aims to take it’s place. Hype offers users many of the same tools Vine did, with the aim of providing a platform for building short, shareable videos. But Hype has more bells and whistles, and the co-founders are hoping that these extra features will give Hype the edge it needs to tread water against giants Facebook and Snapchat. It looks like a cool platform, so let’s hope it can get off the ground–– we all know social media platforms eat their young.
This is also happening right now: Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg are friends, and it’s pretty adorable. The pair will debut their new cooking show, Martha and Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party, tonight on VH1. It will be a well timed relief from (what we hope) is the last night of this punishing campaign season, but keep your fingers crossed that we don’t months and months of a disputed win ahead of us, a la Florida ‘00. Or, if this election has got you’ totally addicted to drama now, we’ll give you a head start on your next fix: some fresh Brangelina divorce sensationalism. You’re welcome.