Guardian kills its Facebook social reader, regains control over its content
gigaom.com
gigaom.com
I ended up just blocking the social apps entirely. In general, I hate facebook apps that exist on-facebook; I like the external use of the social graph by some other sites.
It's great to hear that newspapers are starting to reject it. I really hate the idea of facebook becoming its own walled garden affair. Especially because there's no way to tell wtf is ever going on it, it doesn't show me half of what I want to see...so now I barely use it and have just left it up for party invites and all the nontech people who act like you're asking them to get a tooth extracted if you expect them to actually e-mail instead of sending a fbook message :/
Also, a lot of people I know got hit in a round of account deletions and got majorly screwed over because they were conducting all their freelance business through fb messages (and then had no way to communicate with their clients, since neither of them had each other's e-mail). Because of that, it just feels more unsafe to me, like I could lose all my data at any time. Plus they keep doing weird things like deciding what posts I want to see from my friends (I'd like to see all of them by default?? if they are annoying then I will change it), constantly resetting my news feed to "top stories!" and etc. I guess I don't trust them not to mess up the messaging too and then maybe I'll miss a message from someone about something that's really important.
I agree that it works fairly well as a directory. I wish there were something like facebook that wasn't facebook, but none of the alternatives seem to have caught on quite as well yet. (also--I hope my original post didn't insult you or anyone else reading it on here, that wasn't my intention at all.)
What really impresses me is how it deals with Quora. Most Quora actions are boring (especially since I see them on the site itself), and they all go to fb, but I only see interesting ones.
I was never, ever, going to let the Guardians app access my Facebook, and stopping me from following interesting links purely because of that was idiotic.
There doesn't seem to be any sort of overarching strategy here, just flailing.
Perhaps you find annoying that they are exploring without sticking to certain "principles": "free access" and "no walled gardens". I would guess that part of their exploration consists of searching for which principles they can stick to without having to close down.
The Guardian, in particular, has an unusual ownership [1] and they probably need to explore solutions in rather unusual ways.
You make an observation that I agree with. The very few Old School Publishing people that I have brushed past in my life keep this observation alive with their hand wringing. (If it weren't for the handwringing, I might be tempted to call such activity 'exploration'...) But it seems to be what happens to organizations that get large and comfortable- they can't imagine life any other way, and when that way of life is threatened, they try to hold on.
It reminds me of the people living in a hurricane's landing zone. We know it's a killer hurricane, we know it's coming ashore, but these people will not be moved, will not be threatened to leave their homes by ... this inanimate storm that doesn't care whether your home is in its path or not.
My 'advice' to these companies: the market doesn't care whether your particular company survives. Its participants only care about their own desires- consuming quality content, being entertained, keeping their own costs down, etc.
Pretty much since the first newspaper was printed, the industry's entire business model depended on being the main source of distribution of general information to a geographically defined audience.
Now that the internet is here, the model of distribution they've spent hundreds of years refining is practically useless and their audience is no longer clearly defined, but they're still saddled with hundreds of years of processes and experience.
In reality, it's actually very impressive that an organization like the Guardian is willing to try, fail, and try again the way they are.
I, for one, hope they can figure out something that works.
I thought we were were calling "flailing" a "pivot" these days?
The newspaper industry is currently in a situation nothing like anything it's ever seen. So there's a lot of experimentation- which, yes, includes some failures along the way. If it helps, I'll start referring to it as 'pivoting'.
I would strongly disagree they don't know what their doing, in terms of commercial partnerships, cross promotional ideas and monetization of content you'll actually find that most media agencies follow their lead. Of course mistakes will be made along the way (as others have rightfully pointed out), but its a massive challenge.
Lets Summarize newspapers, they produce original content at cost (writers, editors, designers, photos (getty etc) offices and everything else, they try to achieve top rankings in SERPS (SEO, Analysts) and then go out and try to get money from advertisers (sales execs, ad networks, managers etc) whilst competing with hundreds of other companies offering views at lower rates to sell the number of eyes that look at that content at a competitive price.
Most newspapers are barely breaking even, so give them a bit of slack for at least trying new methods and ideas.
Having said this, I'm hardly ever in fb any more anyway.
http://www.propublica.org/article/introducing-a-new-non-evil...
I don't think the app was particularly popular leading me to wonder "what's the point?" (I used to work there) but I suppose for users who choose to live their lives through FB, giving them the choice of sharing and consuming through FB isn't necessarily a net negative
Frankly facebook I think has bungled the whole advertising and integration of various internet services into crowded space on the 'wall'. There is much distraction, few pictures and no action.
This needs a little more context, doesn't it? Did usage drop because the app is unpopular? Did it drop because the Guardian is unpopular? Or is Facebook losing share overall?
The OP does link to a Buzzfeed analysis which points at the culprit being a change in FB's algorithm: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/facebook-social-readers-ar...
In other words, FB giveth and FB taketh away. The popular explanation may be that users were just fed up with the intrusion in their lives and the Guardian is making a principled stand...but let's face it, users have shown more than enough willingness to accept intrusions. And the Guardian clearly isn't doing this out of respect for their users' privacy...anger over inadvertent sharing was immediate at the app's launch, and the Guardian always had the option of turning off the auto-sharing element.
That said, I'm not sure why the drop in usage requires killing the app. A referral is a referral, right? Did the app require constant maintenance? There are some users who love sharing what they read and so why not let them continue to do so and configure the app to not make such links lead to a "do you want to install this app" popup.
None, FB launched the opengraph plugin with a preferred list of partners, after the initial bedding in period other media companies were allowed to join, thus saturating the market and taking % share (UV).