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Elon Musk paid $44 billion for a media property
Look there’s very little else going on in the media world at the moment. We’re already as bored of all the speculation as you – but this from Scott Rosenberg is a well-argued piece suggesting the reasons why Musk bought Twitter. Other than to compensate for his total lack of any charisma, that is:
“Journalists fell in love with Twitter because it’s a fast, open medium for sharing news. Then their presence on the platform transformed what was once just a buzzy, ephemeral social network into a conduit for world leaders, public institutions and social debates.
In announcing that his offer to buy the company had been accepted, Musk called Twitter ‘the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated’.”
It’ll be about six months until we see any real changes – and those that we do see will probably be ill thought-out and bad for vulnerable people. But as is quickly becoming clear Musk didn’t buy Twitter for it to be a money-spinner, but for its influence.
YouTube hires amazon veteran Toni Reid to oversee YouTube Shorts, Gaming and Livestreaming
We’ve spoken about YouTube’s belated push into podcasting, but here’s another hint at where the incredibly influential platform sees the future of media. It’s already been pushing into the Shorts and Livestreaming spaces – this suggests it now wants to monetise that content in a more structured manner.
Guardian, FT and Mirror journalists excluded from Home Secretary’s Rwanda trip
Here’s an interesting one – why didn’t other journalists that were invited on Patel’s Rwanda folly protest about the exclusion? There’s an entire article to be written about the reputational price newspapers pay when they agree to be client journalists for the powerful, but that’s what stuck out to me here.
TalkTV launches with few ads – but more are coming…
You can safely ignore the hype around TalkTV, which has launched with less of a splash than News UK will have wanted. As this piece demonstrates TV news isn’t a huge money-spinner, so the real reason to launch one is for attention and influence. If nothing else, it’s bad news for GB News.
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