Looking for News Like the Hawaii Volcano Eruption?
June 28, 2018
With the problem of fake news online, the news itself has often made headlines of late. We’ve noticed a couple different news-related moves from big players: TechCrunch reports on Google’s recent project in, “Google Experiments in Local News with an App Called Bulletin.” We learn that Apple, meanwhile, plans to integrate its recent acquisition, magazine aggregator Texture, into Apple News and an upcoming subscription service in, “Apple Said to Plan a ‘Netflix for News’ in Latest Push” at the Daily Herald.
Google’s Bulletin is a place for members of a community to post local news and event notices. TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez suspects it’s also another attempt by Google to squeeze into the Social Media space. She observes:
“The move to delve into local news would have Google competing with other services where people already share news about what’s happening locally. Specifically, people tend to tweet or live stream when news is breaking …. Meanwhile, if they’re trying to promote a local event … it’s likely that they’ll post that to the business’s Facebook Page, where it can then be discovered through the Page’s fans and surfaced in Facebook’s Local app. And if Google aims to more directly compete with local news resources like small-town print or online publishers or Patch, it could have a tougher road. Hyperlocal news has been difficult to monetize, and those who have made it work aren’t likely interested in shifting their limited time and energy elsewhere.”
Over at the Daily Herald, reporters Mark Gurman and Gerry Smith Bloomberg note that Apple cut 20 Texture workers shortly after acquiring the company, but we’re cautioned against reading too much into that. The article notes:
“An upgraded Apple News app with the subscription offering is expected to launch within the next year, and a slice of the subscription revenue will go to magazine publishers that are part of the program, [sources] said. … A new, simplified subscription service covering multiple publications could spur Apple News usage and generate new revenue in a similar manner to the $9.99 per month Apple Music offering.”
Will enough folks pay per month for news, like they do for (other) online entertainment? Perhaps now, when it is prudent to be skeptical, people are willing to pay up to 10 bucks a month for a trusted name. We shall see.
What’s clear is that when one looks for “news” about the Hawaii volcano, few of the online news services are useful. In order to keep up to date, old fashioned search, review, and read processes are the norm. Want current videos about the eruption on YouTube? Good luck with that too. Comprehensiveness may be impossible with free or low cost services, but chronological tags and spam content filtering could be helpful.
For slow moving lava, what’s the rush?
Cynthia Murrell, June 28, 2018
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