Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Heydarren, Welcome
Speaker 1: to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an
Speaker 1: executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the tech are you? Friends?
Speaker 1: Let me tell you a story. It's a sad story,
Speaker 1: and for folks like me, it's also a scary story.
Speaker 1: Anyone who was in online writing or online journalism found
Speaker 1: it to be a scary story. It's also a tale
Speaker 1: that gets us angry because at the heart of it
Speaker 1: were lies, or at least mistakes that a platform told
Speaker 1: to advertisers in an effort to get more money. But
Speaker 1: those lies or mistakes helped justify some really harmful decisions
Speaker 1: across multiple companies. So we're talking about the infamous pivot
Speaker 1: to video. Now, to understand pivot to video, we actually
Speaker 1: need to set the stage a little bit. So first up,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the business of online content. For most outlets,
Speaker 1: revenue comes from advertising. The online platform sets aside certain
Speaker 1: landscape upon which advertisers can place clients' ads, and these
Speaker 1: may be static or dynamic, meaning if it's static, you're
Speaker 1: going to see the same ad every single time you
Speaker 1: go to that piece of content. If it's dynamic, then
Speaker 1: it could change out right, and it'll change out depending
Speaker 1: upon an algorithm that's trying to make sure that each
Speaker 1: ad that's been sold is getting the number of eyeballs
Speaker 1: that were promised. The whole business of online advertising gets
Speaker 1: really complicated, and I've covered it elsewhere, so we're not
Speaker 1: going to dive into it too much. Just know that
Speaker 1: online ads were the big, big revenue source. You know,
Speaker 1: some platforms experimented with paywalls and subscriptions, but very few
Speaker 1: of those worked. All touch on that again later. Now. Ideally,
Speaker 1: the people who are actually behind making the content, you know,
Speaker 1: the writers and the editors, they don't need to be
Speaker 1: concerned with any of that. That's not their job. They
Speaker 1: go on writing and editing. The journalists do their investigative work,
Speaker 1: and they identify leads, and they follow up with those leads,
Speaker 1: and they check sources, and generally they do the very
Speaker 1: hard work the journalists do in order to get the
Speaker 1: truth out to the public. Folks who are like me,
Speaker 1: whom I would classify myself as a writer, not a journalist.
Speaker 1: I didn't have it nearly as tough as journalists do.
Speaker 1: Like I don't want to give anyone any feelings that
Speaker 1: somehow my job was as tough as being an investigative journalist.
Speaker 1: It certainly wasn't. But you know, we also have to
Speaker 1: do things like we have to research, and we have
Speaker 1: to check sources, and we have to make reasonably sure
Speaker 1: that the stuff that we're writing is accurate. You know,
Speaker 1: our reputations are on the line, and our jobs are
Speaker 1: often on the line. But I would say the lift
Speaker 1: is lighter to journalists, at least in my opinion, in
Speaker 1: my experience, based upon what I know now, good writers
Speaker 1: should command a decent salary, and good journalists definitely should
Speaker 1: command a good salary. They possess talents and skills that
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily universal. It's not like you could just fire
Speaker 1: somebody and hire some random person off the street and
Speaker 1: get the same result. Right, to be a good journalist
Speaker 1: or a good writer requires a lot of dedication. It
Speaker 1: requires skill and talent and practice, and without these things,
Speaker 1: the quality of the overall site would become garbage. Now,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't necessarily be worth advertising on either, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if the quality of the site goes down and that
Speaker 1: means fewer people go to it, then advertisers don't want
Speaker 1: to put ads on that site. It doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: that those ads aren't going to be seen, so why bother. However,
Speaker 1: we all know that sometimes garbage can have an appeal
Speaker 1: of its own that will continue to draw visitors. Just
Speaker 1: because something is low in quality doesn't mean it's unpoppulsler.
Speaker 1: And also just because something is high quality doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it's sought after. This is just the nature of
Speaker 1: our world. So sometimes you can create garbage and do
Speaker 1: really well if it's garbage that people are interested in. Anyway,
Speaker 1: running a content site that's staffed by like salaried writers
Speaker 1: and editors gets to be really expensive because that's a
Speaker 1: lot of salaries, and the work can be slow, particularly
Speaker 1: for those who are working on in depth pieces in
Speaker 1: which journalists are you know, having to follow up on
Speaker 1: all those pesky leads and loose ends. That kind of
Speaker 1: thing takes time, and that might mean that you could
Speaker 1: be waiting a while for the next piece to be
Speaker 1: ready for publication. You're not churning out content, you're not
Speaker 1: a content farm. Meanwhile, you still have to keep paying
Speaker 1: this yutz who's working on this really in depth piece
Speaker 1: for all their work. It ain't hardly fair right, because
Speaker 1: you know they're still haven't actually published the thing. That's
Speaker 1: my guess as to how certain online content platform owners
Speaker 1: think that you know, it ain't hardly fair that we
Speaker 1: have to pay them even though they haven't published their
Speaker 1: article yet. Of course, maybe you can cut back on
Speaker 1: the costs by going with freelance writers, you know, because
Speaker 1: you only pay freelance writers when they turn in a
Speaker 1: finished piece. You'll still need an editorial staff, likely a
Speaker 1: salaried editorial staff, but you don't need to hold on
Speaker 1: to a staff of salaried writers if you're just dependent
Speaker 1: upon freelancers. Now you might find it challenging to reach
Speaker 1: a consistent level of quality. But there are some very good,
Speaker 1: very accomplished freelancers out there who are just as good
Speaker 1: as any salaried writer, or even better in some cases.
Speaker 1: So hopefully you can attract some of those to write
Speaker 1: for you. If not, well, you can hope that the
Speaker 1: folks you do get are good enough, or that your
Speaker 1: editorial staff can maybe hush things up if the articles
Speaker 1: are perhaps a little below standard. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: you can bring down some of the costs that way
Speaker 1: by not having salaried writing staff. Meanwhile, the other thing
Speaker 1: that you're concerned with, or perhaps obsessed with, is SEO,
Speaker 1: which stands for Search engine optimization. So why would you
Speaker 1: be obsessed with SEO. Well, for years, the primary source
Speaker 1: of traffic for many websites, not all of them, but
Speaker 1: many of them would be search engines. So of course
Speaker 1: when I say search engines, I really mean Google. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are other search engines out there. Some people exclusively
Speaker 1: use other search engines, but Google is by far the
Speaker 1: dominant search engine on the web. So ranking high in
Speaker 1: Google search engines is really important because if you're below
Speaker 1: say the first several results, or worse yet, if you
Speaker 1: show up after page one, you're just not going to
Speaker 1: get very much traffic from those search engines. Folks tend
Speaker 1: to follow the top links that are listed. Most will
Speaker 1: not go beyond the first page, and quite a few
Speaker 1: won't go quote unquote below the fold, which means they'll
Speaker 1: click on something they can see upon getting their search
Speaker 1: results without having to scroll down the page at all.
Speaker 1: So part of your strategy is to identify stuff that
Speaker 1: people are searching for and then to create content that
Speaker 1: meets those needs. Or better yet, you figure out what
Speaker 1: folks are going to be searching for tomorrow and then
Speaker 1: you get the jump on everyone else. So you hire
Speaker 1: some SEO consultants to help you optimize your site. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're throwing in a bunch of meta data and such
Speaker 1: to give you the best chance to rank high on
Speaker 1: Google's search results. And you either don't think about or
Speaker 1: you push aside the concern that should Google adjust its
Speaker 1: approach to search results, you'll be back at square one,
Speaker 1: because that's a thing. Google changes its algorithm every so often.
Speaker 1: Those changes could mean that you go from having a
Speaker 1: healthy flow of visitors because you rank really high on
Speaker 1: the list, or you go down to a trickle because
Speaker 1: suddenly there's a change in the algorithm and now you're
Speaker 1: not appearing on page one anymore. And that's really scary, right.
Speaker 1: You could be spending tons of money to rank high
Speaker 1: on lists, only for Google to change things and you're
Speaker 1: worse off than you were before. Of course, your ideal
Speaker 1: situation is to convince folks to come to your site
Speaker 1: all on their own, just to go straight to your site,
Speaker 1: not to get there via search engine, and that means
Speaker 1: you have to create a site that is a destination
Speaker 1: in itself. So instead of going to Google and searching
Speaker 1: for some random topic and just so happens that you
Speaker 1: have covered that topic on your site and people come
Speaker 1: to you that way. These people are coming straight to
Speaker 1: your page just to see what you've posted and maybe
Speaker 1: see if there's something interesting that they want to look at.
Speaker 1: Maybe even scroll around and look through archives to see
Speaker 1: if there's old stuff that they want to read. That
Speaker 1: is the dream to create a site that is so
Speaker 1: inviting and so interesting that people go to it just
Speaker 1: on their own, but for an awful lot of sites
Speaker 1: out there, it remains a dream. Only a small percentage
Speaker 1: of your visitors may be coming to your site just
Speaker 1: to see what you've posted. Most are likely finding you
Speaker 1: by following a link from a search results page. Another
Speaker 1: thing that was changing at this time was online video.
Speaker 1: So YouTube had launched back in two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't the first online video platform, but obviously
Speaker 1: it's the one that has become the most famous, and
Speaker 1: it was in twenty eleven when things really started to
Speaker 1: change quite a bit with online video. So twenty eleven
Speaker 1: is the year when YouTube acquired a company that was
Speaker 1: called Next New Networks. One of the folks who co
Speaker 1: founded that company, Jed Simmons envisioned a new kind of
Speaker 1: business on YouTube that he called a multi channel network.
Speaker 1: This wasn't so much as new as it was newly defined.
Speaker 1: So a multi channel network describes a company that owns
Speaker 1: and operates multiple channels on YouTube. The company is in
Speaker 1: charge of programming and content, meaning it's not just an
Speaker 1: organization that aggregates existing channels that each operate more or
Speaker 1: less independently of one another. So this is kind of
Speaker 1: similar to how cable television works. For example, back in
Speaker 1: the day, Discovery Incorporated, which is now part of Warner Brothers.
Speaker 1: Discovery owned and operated cable channels like Discovery, the Science Channel, TLC,
Speaker 1: the Food Network, Animal Planet, and you know, like around
Speaker 1: a dozen more channels. So on top of the multi
Speaker 1: channel network strategy, YouTube pushed for content creators to do
Speaker 1: their thing over on YouTube itself, to adopt YouTube as
Speaker 1: a home base, and the company set aside a cool
Speaker 1: one hundred million bucks to help new original channels get
Speaker 1: off the ground. These included original channels like Geek and Sundry,
Speaker 1: The Onion, and THENOC. The initiative would last about a
Speaker 1: year and a half or so, at which point YouTube
Speaker 1: quietly removed all references to this initiative and had reportedly
Speaker 1: cut funding for more than half of the launched channels
Speaker 1: because they just weren't performing to the level that was
Speaker 1: needed in order to recoup the cost of investment. So
Speaker 1: we see the dangers in relying upon a third party
Speaker 1: when it comes to making content, because if that third
Speaker 1: party suddenly decides to change something, suddenly you don't have
Speaker 1: a home anymore. Then in the mid twenty tens, things
Speaker 1: were really changing quite a bit. Search results were starting
Speaker 1: to matter less, which wasn't necessarily a good thing for
Speaker 1: those content platforms that depended upon traffic from Google, and instead,
Speaker 1: social networks were beginning to matter more. People were saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they go to their social networks and that's where they
Speaker 1: get their news. They'll see something posted on Facebook, for example,
Speaker 1: or Twitter, and then they'll follow up on it there
Speaker 1: rather than going to a search engine or to a
Speaker 1: content site directly. So friends would click on links and
Speaker 1: content would go viral through people sharing on places like
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter, and this meant that SEO would become
Speaker 1: less important, and now content providers had to figure out
Speaker 1: how could they create the kinds of content that would
Speaker 1: do well on social media, which is a totally different skill,
Speaker 1: Like you have to think in a different way for
Speaker 1: something to do well on a social platform versus to
Speaker 1: rank well in search. The writers and editors who just
Speaker 1: wanted to do you a good job, they just wanted
Speaker 1: to do work and to make a living off of
Speaker 1: doing work, they would get jerked around quite a bit.
Speaker 1: The types of content and the style of writing would change,
Speaker 1: sometimes drastically, in an effort to cater to what does
Speaker 1: well on social networks. This is where we started to
Speaker 1: see the real embrace of lists and listicles, because lists
Speaker 1: tend to do pretty well on social network or at
Speaker 1: least they did at the time, and it was the worst.
Speaker 1: Like if you were someone who was really dedicated to writing,
Speaker 1: getting an assignment to write a list could be really depressing.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were people who did amazing jobs at it.
Speaker 1: I know writers who did fantastic jobs at creating lists,
Speaker 1: but from my perspective, my experience, it was just far
Speaker 1: less satisfying to have to do a list as opposed
Speaker 1: to a quote unquote normal article. Some sites really excelled
Speaker 1: at getting traction on social networks, like BuzzFeed was pretty
Speaker 1: darn good at it. And others rarely saw very much success.
Speaker 1: Like you would try, like you seem to be doing
Speaker 1: what everyone else was doing, but you just weren't necessarily
Speaker 1: getting much traction. And so by twenty fifteen, content sites
Speaker 1: were starting to put most of their eggs in the
Speaker 1: social network basket. And I'm reminded of a conversation I
Speaker 1: once had with Bernie Burns, one of the founders of
Speaker 1: the media company Rooster Teeth. So Bernie told me that
Speaker 1: he felt a key component to success on the Internet
Speaker 1: if you're a content company is that you always maintain
Speaker 1: your own platform, and you can show up on other platforms, right.
Speaker 1: You can show up on YouTube, you can show up
Speaker 1: on Facebook, but you always need to maintain your own
Speaker 1: home and never fully commit to someone else's site as
Speaker 1: being your base of operations, because if that other entity
Speaker 1: does change things, you're up the creek. Kind of like
Speaker 1: how content sites had optimized for one Google search algorithm
Speaker 1: and then had to scramble and Google changed things up,
Speaker 1: Or like how those original channels on YouTube had to
Speaker 1: shut down once YouTube pulled the plug on the experiment. Now,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, maybe those channels never would have
Speaker 1: had a shot without YouTube's help in the first place,
Speaker 1: so you could argue that they really didn't lose much
Speaker 1: because they never would have had the opportunity without it anyway.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, once the third party shuts
Speaker 1: off the support, the media company more often than not
Speaker 1: had to fold. Okay, we're going to take a quick break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, i'll talk more about the dreaded
Speaker 1: pivot to video, but first a word from our sponsors. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back, and we've got a bunch of content sites
Speaker 1: out there that are hanging on social networks to a
Speaker 1: dangerous degree. The revenue models are such that the owners
Speaker 1: of these sites are always looking for ways to reduce costs.
Speaker 1: And then we finally get to the disastrous pivot to
Speaker 1: video moment. And a few things would feed into this.
Speaker 1: One is the perception that video is more nimble than
Speaker 1: having to depend on written content. You can be more
Speaker 1: fast and loose with video than you can with articles.
Speaker 1: You can write and shoot a whole bunch of episodes
Speaker 1: in a day, you can bank a bunch of content,
Speaker 1: or more likely, you can release the content at a
Speaker 1: regular pace, only to do it all again the next day.
Speaker 1: And starting from scratch and making video is tough. You
Speaker 1: could have a very small team doing it, but you know,
Speaker 1: hats off to everyone on that team. I have worked
Speaker 1: in this space a bit, and I can tell you that,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, the talent on screen, the person you're
Speaker 1: seeing in the video, typically has the easiest job, particularly
Speaker 1: if they're not the one who had to write the
Speaker 1: copy in the first place, like some people who appear
Speaker 1: on the video. They're the ones who did all the
Speaker 1: research and and that's a ton of work, but not
Speaker 1: all the time. So back when I worked at houstuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com, I would occasionally get pulled in to shoot
Speaker 1: videos that were written by other people because we were
Speaker 1: just as much affected by this pivot to video as
Speaker 1: a lot of other sites. So a great example of
Speaker 1: this is one of the most popular videos that featured yours. Truly,
Speaker 1: I've been in some videos that went pretty viral, but
Speaker 1: I think this one might be one of the top ones.
Speaker 1: And it's a video that's titled why do People in
Speaker 1: Old Movies Talk Weird? It's still up on YouTube if
Speaker 1: you want to check it out. It has more than
Speaker 1: five million views, which isn't too shabby. Now, obviously, that's
Speaker 1: nowhere close to being even remotely one of the more
Speaker 1: popular videos on the platform. Right, five million is big
Speaker 1: for me, it's not big for like the truly huge
Speaker 1: creators out there anyway. Ben Bolin, my arch nemesis, actually
Speaker 1: wrote that episode. I did not. I threw in an
Speaker 1: improvised line at the very end of the video about
Speaker 1: Rigi races, but that was about it anyway. All I
Speaker 1: really had to do was I had to show up,
Speaker 1: and I had to read my lines off of a teleprompter.
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty good at that. I'm pretty good at
Speaker 1: reading off a teleprompter, and I can do it well
Speaker 1: enough where it can come across naturally, like it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily sound like I'm reading off a teleprompter, and I
Speaker 1: can typically get through a video in just one or
Speaker 1: sometimes two takes. They called me one take Strickland back
Speaker 1: in the day, but for everyone else who was working
Speaker 1: on that team, it was a lot more work. Like again,
Speaker 1: I had the easiest job, but you got the writer Ben.
Speaker 1: In this case, Ben had to research and write the
Speaker 1: piece and then cut it down so that it could
Speaker 1: fit a particular format. It didn't need to go too long,
Speaker 1: but it needed to be informative enough to justify its existence.
Speaker 1: You've got the tech crew. They have to make sure
Speaker 1: that the sound and the video and the lights and
Speaker 1: all of that are working properly, and that I look
Speaker 1: as good as I possibly can on a camera. There's
Speaker 1: only so much you can do, but you get the idea.
Speaker 1: And then you've got the poor editor whose job is
Speaker 1: to take all this footage and then combine it with
Speaker 1: you know, other stuff like stock footage, and to get
Speaker 1: it ready for publication. So my heart really goes out
Speaker 1: to the editors. They often were be absolutely slammed with work.
Speaker 1: You know, as soon as they finished one piece they
Speaker 1: had to jump on another one. I don't know how
Speaker 1: they did it and kept their sanity. Anyway, with a
Speaker 1: relatively small team, you could churn out a whole lot
Speaker 1: of content. Now let's get back to another big component,
Speaker 1: the perception that video brings in more ad revenue. I
Speaker 1: think you could reasonably argue this perception is what led
Speaker 1: to a whole lot of great writers and editors losing
Speaker 1: their jobs. And it all starts with a lie, or
Speaker 1: at the very least, a huge mistake. So the year
Speaker 1: is twenty fifteen, and here in the United States we
Speaker 1: were heading into an election year. It seems like we're
Speaker 1: always doing that, but you know, twenty fifteen, we're getting
Speaker 1: ready for the twenty sixteen election year. That was a
Speaker 1: year that promised to be a real doozy, and it
Speaker 1: sure as heck was. And there was obviously a glut
Speaker 1: of content coming in from new use pieces, to opinion pieces,
Speaker 1: to misinformation campaigns, to all the types of stuff that
Speaker 1: folks produce whether it's an election year or not. And
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg was going around evangelizing the future was video,
Speaker 1: So he was making the rounds kind of lack a
Speaker 1: Bible thump and travel and revival. Sorry that's my rural
Speaker 1: Georgian coming out of me. Anyway. He was telling various
Speaker 1: organizations that, based on Facebook's research, online video was where
Speaker 1: it was at. Engagement with your plain old text and
Speaker 1: image content was on the decline. Reach was diminishing for
Speaker 1: these content companies, but video was a different story. So,
Speaker 1: according to Facebook's analysis, users were far more likely to
Speaker 1: watch and engage with video than other types of content
Speaker 1: while on Facebook. In fact, they were likely to pause
Speaker 1: a video so that they could watch the whole thing
Speaker 1: rather than just nope out of it. If you know,
Speaker 1: something came up like, you know, if they got a
Speaker 1: notification or something. This was music to advertisers' ears. After all,
Speaker 1: advertisers spend an awful lot of money to get their
Speaker 1: ads placed so that users can potentially see them, but
Speaker 1: the advertisers never get any assurance that the user will
Speaker 1: you know, actually see the ads or pay attention to them.
Speaker 1: So a lot of us have developed ad blindness over
Speaker 1: the years. And then quite a few folks have ad
Speaker 1: blockers installed on their browsers so that they don't have
Speaker 1: to even develop ad blindness because the app does it
Speaker 1: for them. But if people are watching videos, well that's
Speaker 1: potentially a great place to put ads. And according to Facebook,
Speaker 1: you know, people were watching an awful lot of videos,
Speaker 1: that this was the way of the future, that soon
Speaker 1: the majority of content on Facebook would be in video format. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: content companies started to say, oh, that's where all the
Speaker 1: money's going to go. That's where all the advertising money
Speaker 1: is going to go, is to video, because advertisers are
Speaker 1: being told this is what is the important content. So
Speaker 1: if we want to get adverts tizing money, which is
Speaker 1: the source of our revenue, we need to make sure
Speaker 1: that we're in the business of creating video, which also
Speaker 1: means we can downsize our editorial department and instead of
Speaker 1: having this big editorial staff with editors and writers, we
Speaker 1: can have a small video team that generates just a
Speaker 1: ton of videos. We'll reduce costs and will generate more revenue.
Speaker 1: So that seems like an ideal situation. And then we
Speaker 1: started to see layoffs across the web in various editorial departments.
Speaker 1: I mean it was brutal. You know, company after company
Speaker 1: was laying off writers and editors. It was just a
Speaker 1: terrible thing to see. The message seemed to be that
Speaker 1: search engine traffic was a dying source of visitors and
Speaker 1: that social networks were in fact the future and you
Speaker 1: had to get on that train. And further that you
Speaker 1: really wanted to host stuff on those social networks natively
Speaker 1: in order to get the most out of it. So
Speaker 1: the perception was if you hosted a video on your
Speaker 1: own site. So let's say it's house stuff Works. Let's
Speaker 1: say we post a video to how stuff works done,
Speaker 1: and then we link to that video on housetuffworks dot
Speaker 1: com through a Facebook page. Right, we have the house
Speaker 1: Stuffworks Facebook page. Well, the perception was you would not
Speaker 1: get very much help from Facebook, you wouldn't get much
Speaker 1: promotion and so not that many people would see it,
Speaker 1: which means it wouldn't get a lot of engagement, which
Speaker 1: means it wouldn't go viral. But if instead you created
Speaker 1: that page on Facebook, so you have your house, stuffworks
Speaker 1: page on Facebook, and then you started to upload videos
Speaker 1: directly into Facebook itself, so that all the traffic is
Speaker 1: going to the Facebook version of the video, not the
Speaker 1: one that's hosted on your home site, well then the
Speaker 1: all powerful Facebook algorithm would make sure that your video's
Speaker 1: got a wider distribution so that there was a better
Speaker 1: chance then more folks would see it and that it
Speaker 1: could potentially go viral. Not a guarantee, but a better
Speaker 1: chance than if you were just posting a link. So
Speaker 1: the message was you've got to shift a video and
Speaker 1: you've got to host your stuff on the social networks
Speaker 1: them selves. You know, two things that ended up not
Speaker 1: being the best advice. And there was a real problem
Speaker 1: with all of this. It's that the information that the
Speaker 1: advertisers got was was based on a lie, or at
Speaker 1: the very least it was based on a mistake. Now
Speaker 1: I can't say for sure that the folks in Facebook
Speaker 1: were knowingly promoting an untruth to advertisers and content creators.
Speaker 1: Facebook denies that that was ever the case. They said
Speaker 1: that at the time they made a mistake and they
Speaker 1: misstated the engagement levels with video, and that it was
Speaker 1: all just based on an innocent mistake. It wasn't an
Speaker 1: intentional thing at all. But you know, you could just
Speaker 1: argue someone forgot to carry the one or something. But anyway,
Speaker 1: according to various sources, Facebook exaggerated the engagement statistics to
Speaker 1: a significant degree, Like sixty to eighty percent is what
Speaker 1: was the initially believed. Later on there were arguments that
Speaker 1: that was closer to between one hundred and fifty to
Speaker 1: nine hundred percent. I don't know what the actual the
Speaker 1: actual figure is, but let's just say that what Facebook
Speaker 1: was telling advertisers back in twenty fifteen was absolutely not true.
Speaker 1: And the truth was that video wasn't doing that great
Speaker 1: on Facebook. It's not like it was, you know, the
Speaker 1: worst thing ever, but it wasn't going like gangbusters the
Speaker 1: way Facebook had implied. And apparently when Facebook was factoring
Speaker 1: how much people were watching video, the problem was they
Speaker 1: were counting videos that were on auto play. That when
Speaker 1: people were just scrolling through their feed. If a video
Speaker 1: came up as they were scrolling, the video automatically started playing,
Speaker 1: and if it played for three seconds or longer, then
Speaker 1: it counted toward engagement. If it didn't play for three seconds,
Speaker 1: then it wasn't counted. It didn't it wasn't counted against it,
Speaker 1: It wasn't counted at all. So it was like cherry
Speaker 1: picking and cherry picking incidents that may not indicate that
Speaker 1: anyone's watching video at all. Let's say that I'm scrolling
Speaker 1: down and I scrolled down and then there's a friend
Speaker 1: of mine has posted something some in text, and I'm
Speaker 1: just reading the text. Meanwhile below that post is a
Speaker 1: little video that's on auto play, and it's going as
Speaker 1: I'm reading the text and not paying any attention at
Speaker 1: all to the video. Well, Facebook was counting that as
Speaker 1: if I were intently watching the video, which means that
Speaker 1: advertisers being told that all these people are watching tons
Speaker 1: of video on Facebook, when in fact, no, it's just
Speaker 1: that tons of video was playing on Facebook. Whether people
Speaker 1: were watching it or not was a totally different matter.
Speaker 1: But the problem was you had all these advertisers who
Speaker 1: were shifting their ad revenue budgets to support video content.
Speaker 1: And then that meant that you had all these media
Speaker 1: companies and content creators completely uprooting their business model, totally
Speaker 1: decimating their editorial departments in order to go where the
Speaker 1: money was, right, Like, it doesn't make sense to keep
Speaker 1: writing great content if you're not going to get any
Speaker 1: ads placed against it, because you're not going to make
Speaker 1: any money, and ultimately you'll go out of business, Like
Speaker 1: there's no there's no grant or anything that's going to
Speaker 1: keep you going just because you happen to be writing
Speaker 1: great content. So you have to move to where the
Speaker 1: money is. The money was in video. So everyone was
Speaker 1: suffering for this, right You had people who were losing
Speaker 1: their jobs because they were writers or editors. You had
Speaker 1: the media companies that were suffering because it turned out
Speaker 1: that these videos weren't going crazy viral the way Facebook
Speaker 1: was suggesting. The advertisers were losing because people weren't actually
Speaker 1: watching the ads the way that they thought was going
Speaker 1: to happen. Facebook was losing because when people found out
Speaker 1: about this, it did not look good for the company.
Speaker 1: Like nobody nobody came out great for this. So even
Speaker 1: the video teams, which were had steady employment right, Like,
Speaker 1: they didn't have to worry about hitting unemployment the way
Speaker 1: the writers and editors were. They were hurt too because
Speaker 1: they were frequently working in a constant crunch that just
Speaker 1: demanded that they immediately moved to the next video as
Speaker 1: soon as they finished the previous one. And I've been
Speaker 1: in a similar situation, I can tell you it is
Speaker 1: exhausting and it is demoralizing. In fact, some folks that
Speaker 1: I really respect actually left the field around this time
Speaker 1: because of these issues. They were like, that's it. I'm
Speaker 1: going to go find a job in a totally different
Speaker 1: field because this is killing me. Now. The world would
Speaker 1: find out that Facebook had at the very least done
Speaker 1: goofed up a couple of years after they were really
Speaker 1: pushing for this, like in late twenty sixteen, really, but
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen. In most of twenty sixteen, things were
Speaker 1: shifting massively toward video. Once the smoke cleared and the
Speaker 1: ad world discovered that they had been sold a business
Speaker 1: model based on an incorrect analysis, the lawsuits poured in
Speaker 1: and they cited internal Facebook documents that had been leaked.
Speaker 1: These internal documents implied folks within the company had figured
Speaker 1: out that there was this mistake, that it did appear
Speaker 1: to be a miss it wasn't like an intentional lie,
Speaker 1: but that the mistake had been discovered, and then the
Speaker 1: decision had been made to cover that up, to hide
Speaker 1: it from the public, to not admit to this mistake,
Speaker 1: which is arguably as bad as just an outright lie
Speaker 1: in the first place. And Facebook executives claim that no
Speaker 1: one on their side deliberately misled any of the ad companies,
Speaker 1: which I find challenging to believe, but maybe it's true. However,
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, Facebook agreed to a settlement with these
Speaker 1: advertising companies without actually admitting fault. By that time, even
Speaker 1: more shenanigans were causing problems. I'll explain what I mean
Speaker 1: by that, but first we're going to take another quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsors. Okay, we're back, and yes,
Speaker 1: it gets worse. So the online content world is an upheaval.
Speaker 1: Not every online platform completely throws in with the pivot
Speaker 1: to video strategy, but a lot of them did, and
Speaker 1: the phrase pivot to video began to kind of become
Speaker 1: gallows humor. It was a euphemism for stuff like layoffs
Speaker 1: and a decline in content quality over time, it was
Speaker 1: pretty grim stuff Like if you said pivot to video,
Speaker 1: you're kind of saying, yeah, the quality of that site
Speaker 1: has really gone downhill over the last few years. That
Speaker 1: management has made some very short sighted decisions based on
Speaker 1: bad information. That's kind of what it became over time.
Speaker 1: But what made this even worse was once again Facebook.
Speaker 1: So here you have this platform which claims for a
Speaker 1: couple of years that the future is all video, and
Speaker 1: that within a few years practically every post on Facebook
Speaker 1: will be video in some way, which prompts, obviously everyone
Speaker 1: to rush toward adopting the video format. Then came the
Speaker 1: concept of meaningful Social interactions or MSI, which sounds like
Speaker 1: a Law and Order spin off, doesn't it. But meaningful
Speaker 1: social interactions referred to an attempt to emphasize interactions between
Speaker 1: a user and that user's friends and family, which on
Speaker 1: the surface level you can kind of understand, right because
Speaker 1: early Facebook people, a lot of people are like, man,
Speaker 1: I really miss what Facebook used to be, where you
Speaker 1: would log in and you would see, essentially in reverse
Speaker 1: chronological order, the posts that your friends had made on
Speaker 1: the platform, so at the top of the most recent
Speaker 1: posts and you would scroll down, and you would keep
Speaker 1: scrolling till you started to see stuff that you had
Speaker 1: seen before, and you're like, okay, I'm all caught up.
Speaker 1: And it was just your friends, and it was everything
Speaker 1: they posted right, like, you weren't missing out on stuff.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like Facebook was deciding which of your friend's
Speaker 1: posts you would see and which ones you wouldn't see.
Speaker 1: But eventually Facebook adopted algorithms that very much determined what
Speaker 1: you would see. And it wasn't always from your friends
Speaker 1: and family. It was often from lots of times advertisers
Speaker 1: or stuff that Facebook algorithm assumed you would be interested
Speaker 1: in in an effort to keep you engaged, to keep
Speaker 1: you on the platform for as long as was possible.
Speaker 1: So part of the issue was that Facebook determined, after
Speaker 1: a couple of years of experimenting with this, that you know,
Speaker 1: people aren't super crazy about just seeing random stuff created
Speaker 1: by you know, like professional content media companies or whatever.
Speaker 1: They really want to see what their friends and family
Speaker 1: are up to. This feels like it was the most
Speaker 1: obvious information that was out there, and yet Facebook's like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is what we've discovered. So the idea of Facebook
Speaker 1: had was that people would stay on Facebook longer if
Speaker 1: they saw that the content on their feeds related to
Speaker 1: the people who are actually in their lives. Go figure again,
Speaker 1: seems like a pretty obvious thing to me. So you're
Speaker 1: more likely to see a post from your uncle ted
Speaker 1: pop up than just from some random video from some
Speaker 1: random media company because Facebook now wanted to emphasize these
Speaker 1: meaningful social interactions. But the shift to MSI meant that
Speaker 1: Facebook was purposefully moving away from promoting videos from these
Speaker 1: media companies, you know, the same media companies that Facebook
Speaker 1: had convinced to shift to video just a couple of
Speaker 1: years earlier, and to post those videos directly into Facebook itself. Essentially,
Speaker 1: Facebook had convinced an entire industry to change how it
Speaker 1: did business, and now Facebook was saying, yeah, we're not
Speaker 1: going to promote your stuff anymore, Like we're going to
Speaker 1: make sure algorithm isn't like emphasizing your content because it
Speaker 1: turns out that's not what people want. It's what we
Speaker 1: said people wanted, it's what we convinced advertisers that people wanted,
Speaker 1: but it turns out no, it's not actually what people wanted.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, we're sorry, but uh yeah, we're not
Speaker 1: gonna We're not gonna help you all out anymore. So
Speaker 1: now you have these media companies with their stripped down staff,
Speaker 1: this small skeleton crew that's killing themselves to publish multiple
Speaker 1: videos a day to a Facebook page, and then Facebook
Speaker 1: itself is limiting the reach of the videos that this
Speaker 1: team is creating. The value proposition these companies were built
Speaker 1: on just withered away. Content could still see widespread distribution
Speaker 1: like that could still happen, but only if it was
Speaker 1: driving a lot of engagement early on. And the stuff
Speaker 1: that typically drove tons of engagement was the more extreme
Speaker 1: stuff like not your typical news videos or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: videos that got people angry. Those did really well because
Speaker 1: people would engage with them. And you know, videos that
Speaker 1: would pit one group against another, those did pretty well too. Essentially,
Speaker 1: the videos that played to the worst of our tendencies
Speaker 1: were the one ones that were most likely to go
Speaker 1: viral and drive engagement. Now this meant that the content
Speaker 1: companies got the message of if you want your videos
Speaker 1: to do well, you got to rile people up. There
Speaker 1: was even less of a place for valuable journalism or
Speaker 1: creative videos. You might come up with something charming and
Speaker 1: entertaining and informative, but it was far less likely to
Speaker 1: get as many views as something that was controversial, mean spirited,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe even a lie. So you didn't
Speaker 1: have to bother making sure that anything you claimed was
Speaker 1: true or accurate. That was way less important than just
Speaker 1: grabbing attention. So these ugly videos started to get a
Speaker 1: lot of engagement, and that just meant that more folks
Speaker 1: would see them and then interact with them, and that
Speaker 1: meant that even more folks would see them and interact
Speaker 1: with them, and so on. So it became this vicious
Speaker 1: cycle that rewarded some of the worst content at the
Speaker 1: expense of everything else. Now, I often argue that we
Speaker 1: can't just jump to the conclusion that Facebook is actively
Speaker 1: harming mental health. That is often a claim, and I say,
Speaker 1: we can't jump to that conclusion. But I do think
Speaker 1: you can make a decent argument that Facebook's policies and
Speaker 1: algorithms facilitate the spread of content that is detrimental to
Speaker 1: mental health. So maybe I'm being too kind. I think
Speaker 1: the problem is a pretty complicated one. Anyway, The whole
Speaker 1: shift to MSI was like a rug pull on these
Speaker 1: media companies, and it again reinforced the advice that Bernie
Speaker 1: Burns had years earlier that depending upon a third party
Speaker 1: for stability is an inherently dangerous proposition because whenever that
Speaker 1: third party makes a change in how it operates, it
Speaker 1: can drastically affect your ability to do business. Such was
Speaker 1: the way of Facebook. The nasty consequences of all this
Speaker 1: is that even more folks got laid off because Facebook
Speaker 1: changed tactics again, and now media companies were seeing that
Speaker 1: their reach had been greatly diminished, so they didn't generate
Speaker 1: as much revenue, which meant they needed to lay people
Speaker 1: off as a result. So if you've wondered why online
Speaker 1: content from certain media companies just doesn't feel the same
Speaker 1: as it used to, this is one of the reasons.
Speaker 1: Now another reason involves experimentations with AI, because companies like
Speaker 1: c net and even my former employer, HowStuffWorks dot Com
Speaker 1: have occasionally relied on AI to generate content, and that
Speaker 1: can be really disheartening, particularly if you consider how it
Speaker 1: declined in journalism and writing means that we have less
Speaker 1: reliable and insightful information at our fingertips. This means we
Speaker 1: become less equipped to understand the world around us and
Speaker 1: what's going on and how perhaps we should comport ourselves
Speaker 1: in such a world. There's a real tragedy going on
Speaker 1: here beyond just people losing their jobs, Like the whole
Speaker 1: world is getting less informed, and it's likely to get
Speaker 1: worse before it gets better, if it gets better. Now,
Speaker 1: While I would argue that pivot to video was a
Speaker 1: true disaster, I think it's also safe to say that
Speaker 1: it really just sped up a trend that was already
Speaker 1: in motion. So I don't want to suggest that pivot
Speaker 1: to video doomed online content all by itself. Because content
Speaker 1: platforms were already seeing declines in traffic before the pivot
Speaker 1: to video issue, SEO was really starting to lose it shine.
Speaker 1: Social platforms were taking up more of the general public's time,
Speaker 1: meaning that you really did need to consider how to
Speaker 1: create content that could do well on sites like Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter and et cetera. So revenues were already going down,
Speaker 1: and some sites were, like I said, experimenting with paywalls
Speaker 1: and asking readers to subscribe and pay a recurring fee
Speaker 1: in return to access the content on the site. But
Speaker 1: very few sites can actually do that and see much success.
Speaker 1: A few can, but not most there weren't a lot
Speaker 1: of opportunities out there to improve outlooks on revenue. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: companies still need to make money. Companies exist in order
Speaker 1: to make money. Publicly traded companies need to do even
Speaker 1: more than that. They can't just make money, they need
Speaker 1: to grow and make more money than they did, say
Speaker 1: the year before. So I think things were already looking
Speaker 1: pretty grim for online content even before the pivot to video.
Speaker 1: It's just pivot to video press that accelerator all the
Speaker 1: way down, like it was pedal to the metal on
Speaker 1: pivot to video. Anyway, to this day, people still use
Speaker 1: pivot to video as kind of shorthand in a cynical
Speaker 1: way to say that a company is making a drastic
Speaker 1: and ultimately harmful decision, typically in an effort to get
Speaker 1: some short term relief from market pressures, but with long
Speaker 1: term negative consequences. Sometimes you just use it to describe
Speaker 1: a really bad decision, like, oh, it's a pivot to video,
Speaker 1: and you've still got companies that are emphasizing video. You know.
Speaker 1: Meta's Instagram is a great example. The company embraced short
Speaker 1: form video reels in other words, on Instagram, and they
Speaker 1: did this primarily as a way to try and compete
Speaker 1: with TikTok. Now reels make up a prey significant portion
Speaker 1: of Instagram content, something that you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people object to like. Even the Kardashians are not crazy
Speaker 1: about this. Meanwhile, over at X formerly known as Twitter,
Speaker 1: the Muskie one has said that the X Twitter is
Speaker 1: now a video first platform. Of course, Elon Musk is
Speaker 1: also trying to wrestle with a very real problem because
Speaker 1: Twitter has seen most of its high value advertisers jump ship,
Speaker 1: mostly due to Elon Musk and his refusal to curb
Speaker 1: any of the awful stuff going on over at X,
Speaker 1: including his own participation in elevating tweets that have hate
Speaker 1: speech and misinformation in them. The whole pivot to video
Speaker 1: story still makes me angry and sad. A lot of
Speaker 1: folks lost their jobs as a result of all that nonsense.
Speaker 1: We all suffer due to a decline in good, reliable content. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I ended up pivoting to audio. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been podcasting since two thousand and eight, but I
Speaker 1: was still writing articles up until around twenty eighteen or so,
Speaker 1: and then I shifted over to focus exclusively on researching, writing,
Speaker 1: and recording shows like this one. But anyway, that kind
Speaker 1: of wraps up our story so far. With pivot to video,
Speaker 1: it's the story that's ongoing. I mean, the real focus
Speaker 1: of it, I think would be between twenty fifteen and
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, but we're still seeing, like I said, this
Speaker 1: intentional push toward video content, even podcasts. Right, A lot
Speaker 1: of podcasts now exist as YouTube videos as well. I
Speaker 1: haven't done that personally because I guess I could publish
Speaker 1: episodes to YouTube just so folks could find tech stuff
Speaker 1: on YouTube, but I would probably just pair it with
Speaker 1: a static image because otherwise all you're going to see
Speaker 1: is a video of me by myself, sitting at my
Speaker 1: desk talking about tech, and I don't know that that
Speaker 1: is interesting enough to merit publication. If I had a
Speaker 1: co host or something, it would be a different story.
Speaker 1: But with it just being me, I'm not entirely convinced
Speaker 1: that it's for the best. I guess you can argue
Speaker 1: with me if you like, and if enough people say, hey,
Speaker 1: please get these up on YouTube, I'll see what I
Speaker 1: can do. But anyway, that's the pivot to video story
Speaker 1: so far. I hope you found this interesting and I
Speaker 1: will talk to you again, really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.