Platforms: Is journalism ready for what’s coming?
A shift is happening; from products to platforms. This has a large impact on the roles of media and journalism in society.
In this week’s edition of The Economist there is a review of a new book, ‘Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing our Digital Future’ by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson.
(Note: All links in this article are also found at the bottom of the article.)
Three shifts — the platforms are coming
The authors argues that three major shifts have happened in how we use technology: 1) From man to machine (artificial intelligence), 2) from core to crowd (think ‘bitcoin’ and Wikipedia vs. Encyclopedia Britannica — and the shift I will be talking about here; from product to platform.
The review in The Economist mentions Uber (who has no cars), Airbnb (who has no hotel rooms) and Facebook (which produces no content).
Platforms are a way for companies to create marketplaces that allow both sides of the transaction to flourish — while the firm, as gatekeeper, enjoys a tidy revenue stream. This is hard to pull off. The platform must ensure that standards are high, and also attract different sets of participants (like drivers or app developers on one side and customers on the other). But platforms are very valuable when they work, since they scale beautifully in a digital setting. The meatiest part of the book is the treatment of platform economics, replete with demand-curve charts.
In the media industry we are already experiencing this, with Facebook (and Google, for that matter) delivering a solid load of traffic to media websites all around the globe.
Apple’s traffic rocket
Apple has their own platform for content, Apple News. Even though the news platform itself is only available in the US, UK and Australia, we Danes have seen what kind of muscle Apple has when it comes to generating traffic to media content.
When version 10 of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS (used in iPhone and iPad) came out, it introduced a new home screen in the “flow”, consisting of various lists and elements the user can customize and add/remove. Per default there is a list of news articles (with links to, among others, Danish media for Danish users) — and that list has quite the traffic potential. In December 2016 Journalisten (magazine and website for people working with journalism, communications and photography) ran a store on the “mystery”: Apple boosts Berlingske’s traffic but not Politiken’s (Berlingske and Politiken are two of the largest daily newspapers in Denmark):
The traffic on a news article can be boosted to astronomical heights if Apple links to it. But Apple won’t tell why the never link to stories from JP/Politikens Hus [which Politiken is a part of]. Apple news is “the great ghost right now for many online publishers,” says editor in chef
According to the article an article can get “up to 10, 50 or even 100 times as much traffic”. Those are not small numbers.
Who is prioritizing?
Even though the media and publishers don’t control the platform itself they do get traffic out of it. But this is about more than just clicks; it’s about how people discover news, what content is presented to them — and how and why they choose to read the articles they do. It’s what you in the UX and product evelopment world would call “the user journey”.
(Here it’s worth mentioning that publishers financed via ads in fact have a platform; they create contact between advertiser and user — or, they at least make the user aware that the advertisers exist.
For now, I won’t dive further into this kind of platform but instead focus on the user’s journey to the content, not the ads. If you however find this interesting, I have written an article (in Danish) about it: Fremtidens forretningsmodeller: Abonnenter vs. annoncører)
It’s about, among other things, supply and demand, and the media are losing control of the supply. People’s news consumption, opinions and choices as citizens in a society have a lot to do with the kind of content they are exposed to (this is one of the things, Cass Sunsteins writes about in his new book, ‘#republic’).
Therefore this is about the role of media and journalism in our society — and therefore we need to focus on these issues.
The publishers have no control over, where they are in Apples news overview/list. If you read the Journalisten.dk article you’ll see that they don’t even know why some websites are in the list why others aren’t. This is a pretty good picture of what it’s like to be a (sub)contractor to a platform: You don’t control the contexts your product/content is being used and placed in.
Your personal news overview
Don’t worry too much, though, because none of this happens over night (there is still plenty of traffic on the front pages of online media), but a shift is happening. Imagine a future where you get your news delivered after an algorithm (which knows you well) has analyzed and prioritized them. You may get them on your phone, tablet, watch — or whatever device is created in the future.
This will mean that each of us will have our own news agenda (which I’m not even sure we want..?) and the prioritization taking place at publishers (involving journalists and editors) will mean less and less.
And the traffic is not given. Maybe the same algorithm (or another kind of artificial intelligence) can automatically draw out the most important points and information from the content and make a nice summary for you. That way you can quickly swipe through the most important parts of the most important news — or have them read to you in the car on your way to work.
What kind of role can the media and publishers play in that world? And how can we be sure that we as citizens are also exposed to the important news and stories — and not just the ones matching our interests and former use patterns?
In the media industry we have been used to be at the center of things, have a great deal of power and influence and make a lot of big decisions based on this. If we are not careful, we’ll end up like drivers for Uber. That, of course, is fine if that’s what we want — but we’ll have to be clear that our role will be different from that we’ve been used to.
I’m not saying that we should fight these platforms the way the Danish media industry fought Newsbooster (a Danish news aggregation service which was sued and forced to close) — it’s actually quite ironic that the publishers now are more than happy to be a part of Apple’s news service when you think of the amount of money, time and energy that was put into fighting services like Newsbooster. (If you are curious on the Newsbooster case you can read this (Danish) article on DR.dk.)
Instead, I’m saying that we need to think really careful about what, how and where we want to be — and about our responsibility.
We can either accept to lose control and influence or we can try to create products which may become platforms for our users.
Sources / Read More:
> The Economist: What will business technology look like tomorrow? (July 13th, 2017)
> Read more about Apple News at Apple
> Journalisten: Apple booster Berlingskes trafik men ikke Politikens (December 16th, 2016)
> DR Nyheder: Newsbooster-sagen er afsluttet (February 25th, 2003)
> Photo: Pexels / Zukiman Mohamad
