May 2013
3 posts
To the Next Parse.ly Intern: Learning is Not A...
Emmett Butler is a web and video game developer and an NYU senior studying computer science and music technology. In this post, he reflects on his time as an intern at Parse.ly
Today, I leave Parse.ly after 20 months of work that took me from writing web scrapers to diving deep into semantic web standards to designing mobile SDKs. Here is some advice and emotional primer for the incoming Parse.ly...
Does Kinja Count As A Community Vertical?
Last week, BuzzFeed launched a new “community vertical” that hosts user-generated and curated content. The BuzzFeed community vertical follows on the heels of a Gawker Media project, Kinja, a combo blogging platform, social media interface, and forum built around Gawker’s various properties. Whereas the BuzzFeed’s community vertical encourages users to produce content for...
Users R Us: Community Verticals and User Generated...
The biggest threat to professional journalists is neither declining ad revenues nor social media, but rather a growing realization that the public can generate content more efficiently and more profitably.
On Wednesday, BuzzFeed launched a new section called “Community,” where users will contribute all of the content. As PaidContent points out, BuzzFeed has always encouraged users to...
April 2013
8 posts
8 tags
Content Marketing: Advertising's Brave New-ish...
Click-through rates are abysmal. Readers are ignoring display ads. But there’s good news: advertising that looks and feels like editorial content is a proven way to engage audiences.
The content marketing era is upon us.
Content marketing might be easiest to define by what it isn’t. Content marketing doesn’t go after an immediate sale, or pitch a customer a product that...
Aggregation and the Individual Talent
Attempts to explain viral content circle back to behavioral psychology and game theory. What “goes viral” and what doesn’t depends on a combination of taste-making celebrities, powerful users on content distribution platforms like YouTube and Twitter, market dynamics, and luck, or so we are told. But it’s worth thinking about virality as a phenomenon that passes through...
Meta-Muckraking
The only subject that attracted more media coverage than Boston last week was the media coverage of Boston. A media industry has grown around the media industry, like a system of surveillance cameras for a reality television show. “Media watchdog” now might mean a media group tasked with watching itself!
In a world after Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, news is simultaneously produced...
Tweeting Our Grief
After a tragedy we feel compelled to build memorials, to remember what happened, and to make it all meaningful. Whether a monument at Auschwitz or Ypres, inscribed with what Siegfried Sassoon described as “intolerably nameless names,” we make our mourning something material to make it immortal. Oral tradition may decay and become corrupt but Arlington Cemetery lasts forever, or so we have...
The Slow Death of the American Novel
In his op-ed for the New York Times, “The Slow Death of the American Author,” Scott Turow launches an indiscriminate polemic against e-books. Turow starts with a recent Supreme Court ruling—one permitting foreign holders of American copyrights to resell their editions in the United States—and ends with a Cold War flag wave against “Soviet-style repression.” Not surprisingly then, Turow’s position...
April Fools' Day and the End of Irony
I have a confession: I hate April Fools’ Day.
It wasn’t always this way. When I was a pre-teen, I loved devising elaborate pranks. Saran wrap on the toilet was probably the peak of my creativity, if that gives you an idea. I also enjoyed reading silly news stories, the stuff just far side of normal. Since 1998, however, either I’ve become more gullible or the media has become more sophisticated....
1 tag
Introducing Parse.ly Deathmatch
APRIL 1, 2013: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sometimes a startup needs to examine where they are now and whether the product that they’ve developed could be applied to solve different market needs. Parse.ly is no different and over the past months we’ve given a lot of thought to applications of our semantic technology to solve new problems for publishers.
One problem we feel all publishers...
1 tag
Hotclicks: The Science Behind Parse.ly Deathmatch
APRIL 1, 2013: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Today we released Parse.ly Deathmatch, to demonstrate a new metric for online media: the Hotclick (TM).
As Parse.ly’s Chief Hadoop Officer (CHO, fmr. CTO), I felt compelled to explain the science behind this important, game-changing metric.
Hotclicks (TM) are determined by doing a comparison between two competing news stories for a given semantic...
March 2013
2 posts
BKLYNR Is A Great Vintage In Virtual Bottles
If you write about new media and haven’t heard of BKLYNR, you might want to start revising next week’s column about paywalls and ad revenue. The brainchild of Thomas Rhiel, Raphael Pope-Sussman, and Ben Cotton—former classmates of mine at Columbia—BKLYNR “will publish in-depth stories about the political, economic, and cultural life of Brooklyn. Each issue will contain three pieces—something light...
Feeling Like Big Data
What does it feel like to be big data?
Answering that question requires a similar approach to its distant relatives, stuff of the species “what does it feel like to be a dog,” or, “what does it feel like to be my brother?” After establishing some known facts—the basics of doggy life, the body of my brother, broadly construed—we are forced to make a move to the imagination. In order to think about...
February 2013
5 posts
Unlimited Rides, Subscriptions, and "The Meter"
When Andrew Sullivan took back his political blog, “The Daily Dish,” from the Daily Beast, he started an independent company. Instead of relying on advertising, “The Dish” would cover hosting costs and payroll with subscriptions. Sullivan calls this business plan, an alternative digital publishing model if you will, “reader-supported.” Yesterday, “The Dish” released a report on its meter, a system...
2 tags
How Parse.ly & Dash Got Their Names
Because…puns.
For a good thyme, sign up today at dash.to/try.
Fear and Loathing Before the Paywall
Do we need a digital “New Journalism”—a revolution in how reporters tell stories, an infusion of “voice” and “personality” a la Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, and Hunter S. Thompson?
Frédéric Filloux and Monday Note think so. Filloux suggests that a revival of “New Journalism” could save journalism from extinction. In an epic sermon to the chorus, Filloux enumerates why newspapers need to evolve:...
Reading Virtual Books for Endless Afternoons
Warren Zevon’s continued exclusion from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a travesty. I wouldn’t throw that word around carelessly. If you’ve never sat down and really listened to a Warren Zevon record, I suggest you do so as soon as possible. You could mark off one hour better spent than watching sitcoms. Though I don’t think Zevon would knock sitcoms, he probably would have pointed to all the...
The Super Bowl and Social Media Advertising
Super Bowl XLVII had a tough team to beat. Its predecessor, XLVI, captivated 111.3 million Americans with a rating of 47.8—meaning 47.8 percent of households watching television that night tuned in. XLVII scored 48.1, a new Super Bowl record. Sure, that 48.1 figured out to a mere 108.3 million viewers. But who’s counting. [Numbers courtesy Forbes.] Analysts had predicted the decline in total...
January 2013
2 posts
Reading for Pleasure
The first half of my life I read for pleasure every day. I came home, curled up in the beanbag chair next to my bookshelf, and read for an hour or three. Although I played sports, did homework, and hung out with friends, my life as a middle schooler was less than busy. According to a monthly reading journal I kept, I averaged three books a week. Full disclosure, my parents limited the time I could...
5 tags
50 Years from a Birmingham Jail, The Justice of...
Before January 21st was the inauguration of Barack Obama, it was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. But yesterday’s celebration of our first black president and of a civil rights martyr is more than simple coincidence: 2013 is the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” When Dr. King was arrested in Birmingham for protesting Jim Crow, a group of white clergymen published a...
December 2012
3 posts
4 tags
Digital Publishing Netherworld No More
In an article for Crain’s published December 10th, Matthew Flamm highlights the 195 print titles launched in 2012. According to Flamm, “there were also 24 print titles, most notably Newsweek and Spin, that fell into the netherworld of digital-only publication.” The approximately 10% increase in print title launches this year may be a red herring, though. How many digital-only titles started up in...
8 tags
A Short and Sentimental Note About Why It's Time...
Maybe I’m feeling sentimental because I just watched an episode of Entourage called “The End,” but it breaks my heart to open “Media Gazer” and see a page of negative headlines. “2 major lessons from the demise of The Daily,” “Another Apology,” “Leveson blame for police reluctance to identify high-profile Savile probe suspect,” “Hackers Behind Tumblr Worm Say They Warned Tumblr of Vulnerability...
3 tags
What Happened at Mashable Media Summit?
Many lessons learned at the Mashable Media Summit. We learned the rules for 2013 (mobile first, social first, be visual, and ads are content too) and there were plenty of thought leaders on stage throughout the day (including Parse.ly’s own @sachinkamdar). Read some of the points on Storify that really stood out. Link: http://storify.com/parsely/what-happened-at-mashable-media-summit
November 2012
5 posts
7 tags
Why E-Book Subscriptions Are The Future
In the eighteenth-century, printing was incredibly expensive. Laying out individual pages was a labor-intensive process, and the material cost of paper itself was prohibitively high. Publishing pamphlets, books, magazines, and newspapers required significant capital. In order to raise that capital, aspiring writers (or editors) had three options:
1. Personal Wealth: The publishing world was...
4 tags
Best Practices for Digital Democracy
Digital democracy is not a utopia. It is merely a more perfect organization of citizens within the field of new media. In its first meaning, digital democracy references the actual practice of democratic politics in digital spaces, for example, discussions of Presidential debates on Twitter. In its second, digital democracy references the democratization of content production and distribution....
6 tags
Awkward Media: Reports of My Death Are Greatly...
In a strange twist of fate, The Wall Street Journal has launched two digital products, The Accelerators and Startup Journal, which will focus on entrepreneurs and startups [via The Next Web]. According to press releases quoted by The Next Web, The Accelerators is an “online forum” “for people who are starting a business, or just thinking about starting a business” “anchored by contributions from a...
2 tags
Whatever It Takes
How the Parse.ly team didn’t let implementation obstacles get in the way of delivering elegant, beautiful, and timely data digests to our customers via e-mail.
I frequently say that Parse.ly is lucky to have very smart and savvy individuals as customers. We work with editors, writers, and analysts at top media companies.
Let’s reflect on journalists for a moment. Their primary job is...
10 tags
Parse.ly Data: Sandy elevates government...
by Jason Bell
Halloween Is Cancelled:
At 8:30 p.m. Monday night, Hurricane Sandy was starting to get scary. Windows were rattling, rain was flying sideways, and my friends from Florida were fondly reminiscing about driving from Miami to Boca in a Category 2. I casually glanced at my TweetDeck Twitter feed. Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, or some hapless aide-de-camp tweeted:
If...
October 2012
13 posts
6 tags
Your Time Is Expensive
I had breakfast with a management consultant Friday morning. He had an enormous crab omelet and passed on some wisdom from management consultants past.
“Your time is expensive,” he said. I savored a spoonful of oatmeal, thinking of an appropriate response.
I currently live in a building that feels like a Soviet-era apartment complex. My room is a cinderblock with a hole cut in the side for a...
4 tags
Surfing productivity
Productivity for me comes and goes in waves. Looking back I can never identify where the wave exactly began but I can always tell when I was surfing it a few days later. At that point I wonder how could I have possibly done so little during the days before that.
However, I’ve learned that as much as I’d wish, these waves don’t last forever, and at some point my productivity levels will return to...
5 tags
Does Long-Form Stand a Chance?
I love news analysis that frames itself in the terms of a question. Those kindly authors make it all the easier to, if not poach content, enter into the conversation. Michael Learmonth, writing for AdAge yesterday, asked his readers, “Did The Daily Beast Eat Newsweek?” Learmonth provides an adequate answer to his own question—no spoilers here, click away—but I am interested in one piece of his...
5 tags
Bigger Data, Smarter Scaling
Parse.ly’s CTO, Andrew Montalenti was one of three presenters at the Times Open at the New York Times HQ on Wednesday, October 17. The theme of the event was “Bigger Data, Smarter Scaling” and who better to talk about scaling big data than the guys ingesting data from some of the web’s most highly-trafficked websites.
To give you a sense for what we’re dealing with...
1 tag
A Brief History of The Press
Does it inform, or propagandize? Does it challenge our opinions, or re-inforce pre-existing ones? Is it fair, or biased? Does it uphold our first amendment rights, or make a mockery of them?
For decades, the Press has had a fair share of critics and guardian angels. Journalists have been characterized alternatively as boogeymen, saviors, elitist gatekeepers, or selfless muckrakers.
Yet, what...
4 tags
Newspapers are the New Startups
Traditional publishing is changing. We’ve seen for a while that print publications are figuring out the proper transition to digital and we see another case today with Newsweek abandoning print to go fully digital in 2013. At Parse.ly, we’ve had the privilege of experiencing this transition period first hand and have even helped publishers work toward a successful digital future. One...
Inducement and Goals for Publishers
In the latter part of the 19th century, psychologists conducted an experiment to understand a phenomenon that was later referred to as “inducement”.
The experiment asked volunteers to sit at a desk with a machine where you could comfortably rest your arm and press a small button or trigger with one of your fingers. The machine recorded the number of times that the button was pressed...
9 tags
Circa 2012, All the News That's Fit to Surface
A week or so ago I argued that mobile news applications aren’t evolving fast enough to compete with e-readers. Yesterday, GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram reported on a news app called Circa that might revolutionize mobile news reading. Ben Huh, best known for running Cheezburger Network, co-founded Circa to create and propagate news fitted to the material constraints of mobile reading platforms. Circa...
2 tags
Parse.ly CEO Sachin Kamdar to Speak at Mashable...
We’re proud to announce that Parse.ly’s CEO, Sachin Kamdar (@sachinkamdar), will be speaking at the Mashable Media Summit (#mediasummit), on November 2, 2012 at The Times Center in New York City. The Media Summit will feature conversation around how technology is and will continue to influence digital media and the effect that media is changing the world. Executives from Hearst...
7 tags
Different Day, Same Tweets: Living the Dream on...
As the Presidential election approaches, the deployment of political messaging on social media platforms will draw more commentary from who else but those very parties responsible for political messaging. The solipsism of journalism is really a variety of well-deserved narcissism. The gulf between private life and journalism is rapidly shrinking, especially as social media empowers non-journalists...
Why Startups Die
Parse.ly co-founder and CTO, Andrew Montalenti, was featured with a guest post on The Next Web today. The post is called “Why Startups Die”.
Startups die due to a variety of causes. Over the course of the last three years, I’ve watched many of my friends pour their hearts and souls into companies that, for one reason or another, just fizzled out of existence.
In it, he discusses...
7 tags
Accepting Applications For Better Mobile News
Around sunrise Monday morning, Forbes reported on a new Pew survey that would get many mobile developers up on the wrong side of the bed. Pew surveyed tablet and smartphone users about their news reading behavior. According to the survey—a very large and statistically significant study, evidently—60% of tablet users and 61% of smartphone users access news via their mobile browsers. Last year,...
2 tags
Parse.ly CTO Andrew Montalenti to Speak at Times...
If you’re a big data junkie, you should definitely come out to the Times Open event on October 17 at the New York Times building in New York City. Parse.ly’s CTO, Andrew Montalenti (@amontalenti), will be there to drop some knowledge on Bigger Data and Smarter Scaling so you may as well come out to this FREE event. We’ll be taking a look at what’s being done with the...
September 2012
4 posts
10 tags
Should We Subsidize Journalism?
I titled today’s blog post with full knowledge of the risk of posing a QTWTAIN (Question To Which The Answer Is No, a genre of headline collected by John Rentoul, indicative of journalistic sensationalism and irrationalism, like “Is the Loch Ness monster on Google Earth?). Alright, I confess: my headline is a QTWTAIN. Journalism should not be subsidized. Unlike most of the QTWTAIN genre, though,...
7 tags
Apocalypse Sooner Than Later: Schadenfreude,...
If newspapers and magazines are to be believed, newspapers and magazines are alternatively on the edge of collapse and rife with corruption.
Last night, I landed on Mediagazer for an update on news about news. It wasn’t pretty. “Newsweek’s ‘Muslim Rage’ cover coincides with critique of Tina Brown,” “Exclusive: News of the World ‘ordered burglary’,” “The Times Needs a Policy on Quotation Approval,...
8 tags
570,000,000 Channels (And Nothin' On):...
On my multi-week hiatus from Parse.ly, I drove from St. Louis through Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Quebec. I listened to satellite radio from New Haven to Montreal and back down to New York City. The winding roads that cut through the Appalachians and the White Mountains get poor FM reception. Instead of searching for the station with...
3 tags
Why "underemployment" was the best thing that...
My name is Vipin and I was recently underemployed! For the past 4 months, I have been the most senior (age only) of interns here at Parse.ly. Before that, I was a graduate of a good university and wandered aimlessly in the so-called “Real World”. I didn’t know what subject to major in, so I did what any other person would do in my shoes…picked economics. Econ is a great, broad subject that...
August 2012
15 posts
7 tags
What I Learned This Summer
Having spent much of the past three years writing about restaurants, it is only natural that my friends, when told about my job at Parse.ly, respond, “does that have something to do with food?”
True, I clicked on Parse.ly’s job posting because of the name—I, too, wondered what Parse.ly might have to do with food.
But having spent much of the past three years working for...
8 tags
Building an Audience: Desperate for Love (Part 8)
Read Part 7, Army of One. There’s a party on the Parse.ly homepage.
The key to content promotion is to hide all traces of marketing and advertising. The digital consumer’s nose is quite sensitive to the scent of desperation. Failing to disguise a promotion as such limits the potential reach of a content distribution channel. Desperation signals that your product isn’t...
6 tags
Building an Audience: Army of One (Part 7)
Read Part 6, A Little Less Conversation. Learn more about what we do at Parse.ly.
When building an audience, never use smoke signals. Assume that you’re a publisher, and like most publishers, you think your content is pretty cool. You want other people to get a piece of your cool content—but you need to let them know that your content even exists. So you light a fire on some social media...
7 tags
Stop Asking Whether Everything's a Media Company
The most irrelevant question to ask about a technology company is whether it’s a media company.
Is Twitter a media company?
Is Facebook a media company?
And now, is Google a media company?
The great anxiety motivating these questions is the concern that technology companies are not supplementing, but rather substituting for media companies; that Twitter, Facebook, and Google are not...
6 tags
Backing Away from the Magazine Cliffhanger
Last week, I wrote that struggling magazine sales had hit the point of no return. Newsstand sales numbers are down 10 percent—closer to 20 percent in fashion, celebrity news, and women’s publications. Worse, digital subscriptions aren’t making up the difference. In short, “sales reports from the first half of 2012 indicate that the magazine industry is in deep water with no life...
