The share-one-link-per-day platform This is shutting down (Nieman Lab, 7/15/16)

It’s always disappointing to see something shut down, even if the premise is interesting if flawed. In theory, a network that forces you to be more selective about what you’re sharing sounds like a great idea since it means more thought has been put into it and it’s more important, at least in the eyes of the sharer. Right now, though, that’s very much swimming against the tide. On top of that, the issue I could never wrap my head around is how do you ever decide what to share until late at night? I’d have to collect a whole day’s worth of stories before I found one I felt was worthy of making the cut. And then if it failed to resonate with the audience? Again, this is an interesting concept in our curated times, but there are inherent flaws in the idea.

image via Nieman Lab
image via Nieman Lab

Snapchat talks with Hollywood about bringing shows to the platform (Digiday, 7/17/16)

As the story says, the war for original content continues. What’s most interesting to me, though, is that this is Snapchat making another move toward this sort of professionally-produced content, seeing it as the way to differentiate itself from other networks and draw users and their eyeballs. That’s a very different approach than relying on simply being different and offering users a different, more attractive experience. Basically, it doesn’t feel it can rely on the actual user-to-user experience to grow either the app itself or ad revenue and so needs to bring in a ringer to keep making itself attractive.

Podcasting Has An Ad-Skipping Problem, Too (Wall Street Journal, 7/15/16)

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Ads are going to get skipped no matter where they appear. What makes this notable in any way is that podcasts have, ever since Serial become a national phenomenon a couple years ago, been held up as the most current thing that will save media from the problems plaguing print and even online ad revenue meltdowns.

Facebook is getting deeper into app-install ads (Recode, 7/18/16)

Some interesting updates from Facebook as it tries to squeeze a few more dollars from advertisers frustrated with how few people are either installing their apps or interacting with them after they’ve been downloaded.

YouTube is Becoming Many YouTubes To Keep Its Video Crown (Wired, 7/18/16)

I’m always going to opt on the side of brand consolidation, but this is more like a publisher that offers a number of magazines/sites to cater to different audiences and offer different content to them. Of course the risk is that they’ll over-diversify and lose site of their core mission, but right now YouTube is doing what it needs to do to stay relevant to the online habits of most people.