If you go to Amazon.com and type “Traffic,” you will find three top listings. There is a book, Traffic, by Tom Vanderbilt, about how we drive the way we do. Read it. Then there is a listing for a movie starring Michael Douglas and Benicio Del Toro. If you have not watched it, then watch it. And then there is a … Continue reading Ben Smith’s Traffic
Buzzfeed is reporting that one single contributor who wrote 700 articles for Forbes and 300 for Entrepreneur magazine, has been charging brands to mention their names in his articles. It is yet another posts-payola scheme.
BuzzFeed News also obtained an email pitch from an AudienceBloom employee to a potential client in which he offered the ability for them to review an article with a brand mention before it was published. The pitch said a mention with a link back in a “premium tier” publication like Mashable would cost between $1,200 and $2,000.
In December 2017, Outline reported that “publications such as Mashable, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, Huffington Post and Forbes, wherein freelance writers were taking payments in exchange for favorable coverage.”
It happens with such regularity — especially at Forbes and Entrepreneur — that I usually ignore everything these publications offer. And when someone sends me a link about themselves (or one of their articles), I make it a point to not take them seriously in the future.
I have some thoughts on Vox Media — most of them in the native video efforts. Vox like many of its peers took a big bet on Facebook Video efforts and essentially ended up finding out that when it comes to Facebook, it is the house and the house always wins. Continue reading “Some thoughts on Vox Media layoffs”
Zuckerberg conflates the personal and the professional seamlessly. It’s a new twist on the old saying: If the CEO is not (overtly) selling the product, he is the product. Continue reading Making of King Zuckerberg
When catching up with my reading online after a weekend without devices, I found these seven things interesting enough to sharing. #TechIsFashion “We didn’t think before about the idea that buying an iPad to take pictures on was actually more important to somebody than buying a handbag.” Suzie Menkes, Vogue’s international fashion editor in an interview. Fashion … Continue reading 7 notable things…
Scott DeLong is the founder of ViralNova recently moved the company from Ohio to Manhattan. I was totally taken in by the New York magazine profile of the company that has been labelled “horrific, illiterate and monstrous” by the Awl and “a BuzzFeed in a box” by the Atlantic. # Continue reading Meet ViralNova, a totally rad media company
Of nearly three dozen stories, I saved to my Pocket account, these five, I think are worth your time. Why? Because they will force you to move out of your comfort zone and ask different questions. That is the real value when it comes to writing. The era of our discontent: Ari Ratner looks at our … Continue reading 5 things to read this weekend
Dao Nguyen is the new publisher of Buzzfeed. She was their growth czar. One of the reasons I like Buzzfeed is that they are smart about breaking the rules and inventing new rules, when they need to. More importantly, at the same time they look into media’s past and find parallel roles that are juxtaposed … Continue reading On Media & Growth Hacking
Earlier this month, folks from Google invited me along with Kara Swisher and Audrey Cooper for a conversation about the future of news. Towards the end of the conversation, we were asked what Google could do in order to help the news and media industry. Obviously, we joked about buying the New York Times, but when asked, I pointed out that Google is good at one thing — software — and instead of trying to do crazy things, why not build tools that help the news ecosystem? Why not create tools that help data novices make sense of information? Or how about a smarter, simpler, and more nimble analytics tool just for reporters? (Or simply buy Chartbeat!) I forgot to mention one tool that they could build in their sleep, and in the process help not only save many reporter hours but make the news better, smarter, and more contextual.
Continue reading “How Google can really help news & media”BuzzFeed, the company started by Jonah Peretti has received $50 million in funding from Chris Dixon at Andreessen Horowitz, making it one of the largest VC investments in a media company. The news has everyone talking about the deal and everyone has an opinion, including me, which I shared with Bloomberg West’s Emily Chang and … Continue reading BuzzFeed & The Attention Game
