Paying for news — Benedict Evans

What changed was the feed, something uniquely enabled by digital. Whereas a newspaper had to be defined up-front, such that it could be printed and distributed at scale, a feed is tailored to the individual in real-time — and so are the advertisements. Suddenly it was print that was worth pennies, while the Internet generally and mobile especially ... See more

Facebook, again, is the extreme example here: the service got started with user-generated content and has continually retrenched over the last few years to have more user-generated content and less professionally produced content; every time they have done so, publishers have cried foul over all of the traffic they were losing. Google, meanwhile, d... See more

I was reminded of the smiling curve while reading this excellent piece by David Carr in the New York Times about Facebook and publishers:For traditional publishers, the home page may soon become akin to the print edition — nice to have, but not the primary attraction. In the last few months, more than half the visitors to The New York Times have co... See more