It is absolutely extraordinary that smart viewers are frustrated with NBC's coverage and flaunting their use of proxy services to watch the BBC. It is not piracy – the proxy services are legal, and the BBC has broadcast rights too – but the fact that tech CEOs, journalists and others are sharing tips about how to avoid a major network is a sign that the network is missing a crucial turning point in responding to what audiences want from Olympics coverage.
Twitter is going to have to learn the lesson that newspapers had to learn when they started accepting advertising: that when trust is your asset, you must run your service and your business according to principles of trust. Newspapers built church/state walls to demonstrate that they could not be bought by sponsors' influence. Twitter needs that wall. Every tech company fancying itself a platform does. Or it can't be trusted and won't be used and will lose value. Those are the economics of trust.
"It's a little counterintuitive. We're a local company that's not really interested in local advertising," says Steele, explaining that the sites' primary sponsors are national brands with big ad budgets like Ben & Jerry's or Absolut Vodka.
Steele says big brands use Curbed to tap into local communities of shoppers, foodies or home buyers in different regions. He cites a recent example in which Curbed threw a party in Portland on behalf of Patron Tequila. "We can activate audiences in each of these cities we're in, and activate a real community."
Steele says there simply isn't enough money in local advertising – with one exception. "The one place you can sell local is real estate … It’s the only category of hyper-local that's really flush with money."
Even at the company that managed to make money off of Internet advertising, those online ads are continually losing value. In the scheme of the Internet, Google's loss shows an unfortunate reality of online advertising. Unlike the print world, Internet ads lose value over time.
"Great long-form journalism comes from the author's irrepressible need to answer a question. Fictional long-form journalism comes from the writer's irrepressible need to be hailed as an oracle," writes Ta-Nehisi Coates in response to the recently-revealed fabrications of Jonah Lehrer. "In the former fabulism isn't just wrong because it cheats the reader, it's wrong because it cheats the writer. Manufactured evidence tends not to satiate an aching curiosity. But it does wonders for those most interested in oraculism."
