Twitter’s expanded tweets are a double-edged sword

One of the mainstream media’s favorite criticisms about Google News has been that the excerpts the company includes — which News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch and others have described as theft of their content — are often enough for most readers who just want a summary of what is happening in the world, and therefore rob media websites of traffic. If someone can watch a video or read a summary inside Twitter expansion or a media pane, will they click through to the original or not? And will companies like the New York Times be satisfied to get those readers even if they don’t click through?

One of Dave Winer’s points about the new feature is that it creates an uneven playing field, since Twitter will only be providing the enhanced-content option to a select group of providers — but his other point, I think, is that even those companies who choose to take advantage of the option are striking a kind of Faustian bargain, just as they have with Facebook’s “social sharing” apps. Such a deal may increase the distribution of your content, but who ultimately gets the benefit? If you are a content creator, are you working for yourself, or are you working for Twitter?

#tech #twitter #media #newspapers

1 year ago

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