Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Against Facebook. Provocative from the off: "Facebook is not only on course to go bust, but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it." It's a marketing business, run by geeks. It's not the next Google, it's the next AOL
Cassidy casts his eye over impending Facebook IPO: "It’s the fulfillment of the dreams of the nineties—and a reminder of their potentially fatal attraction." Has a website that expands at astronomic pace just got to be worth money?
36.9 million active customers. 100,000 merchants served in first quarter of 2012. Revenue of $559 million. And a profit at last. Is this the turning point for Andrew Mason's beleagured daily deals website? Watch this space
On Netflix and their risky bet on original programming. "Extreme expenditures on content — a planned $3.7 billion over the next five years — represent either a massive protective moat or a hole deep enough to drown in"
"Facebook has created the largest social analytics engine on the planet. They essentially know what we’re thinking before we do." It puts them in a terrifically strong position for now. But will their star keep rising?
Story of much-circulated photo of boy facing line of Russian riot police. "I saw a small boy on what looked like a tricycle moving through a scrum of people raining abuse on the police. Then he just stopped"
They did at first. They thought apps would be a digital enabler of paid content and single-copy sales. Wrong. Apps are fiendishly difficult to make. Horribly expensive. Readers don't like walled gardens. And Apple is the boss
How to be a top financial blogger. Up at 4am. Start work at home in the dark. Go to the office, stare at screens, write non-stop until night. "He is like the host of a daylong radio show, except no one speaks out loud". Scary
The high-stakes patent battle over how Google sorts ads. "Everyone will settle. If anyone loses this case then the entire industry is going down in the same lawsuit and the exact same lawyer will be stuck on both sides of the fence"
If you want to raise awareness in good cause, can you risk telling lies and partial truths? How far should you go in simplifying and exaggerating the arguments? Reflections on Mike Daisey, Kony 2012, and Gay Girl In Damascus
Compelling profile of the Daily Mail, Britain's most powerful newspaper. Closest US equivalent, Fox News. Run, with a furious energy, by Paul Dacre, whose editorial meetings are known as the Vagina Monologues. For reasons made clear
"Producing and tweaking stories on the spot, customized to suit the interests and intellectual habits of just one particular reader, is exactly what automated journalism allows—and why it's worth worrying about"
Image by byronv2 on Flickr
