Friday 30th July: LinkedIn courts premium publishers with new program

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LinkedIn has quietly launched a pilot program called LinkedIn Premium News, which according to Digiday, gives LinkedIn Premium members access to content published by sites that use Piano's paywall technology.

The theory goes that LinkedIn Premium members have a number of credits they can use to unlock paywalled content. In exchange for this access, LinkedIn 'expects to send the participating publishers a stream of highly qualified leads for their own subscription products'.

On paper, this looks like a well-aligned proposition. But publishers have been burned numerous times by platforms, so will this be something they embrace, or keep at arm's length? And don't get me started on how abysmal LinkedIn's own algorithms are...

Comment sections are frequently a hot topic for publishers. On the one hand, they offer unique opportunities to build communities and engagement. On the other, they're a nightmare to moderate and keep healthy. This is an excellent piece from Nieman Lab with some ideas about how to improve comment sections and what their future might look like.

Given the number of podcast businesses Spotify has acquired in the past 18 months, substantial growth in their ad revenue was to be expected. 'The days of our ad business accounting for less than 10% of our total revenue are behind us,' CEO Daniel Ek said. If Spotify is helping drive discovery and ad revenue, that's a win for podcasters everywhere.

We've discussed the lack of young people paying for news a number of times before on the podcast (can't pay for news if you don't have money!) but glossing over that for a second, this makes some interesting and practical points. It's no longer our job to 'tell people the news'. Young people want to know about LGBTQ+ rights, climate change, activism and the arts...oh, and they want entertaining as well.

This week's episode:

In this week’s episode we hear from Sophie Cross, the founder and editor of Freelancer magazine. She talked about her penchant for writing business plans, the freelance community that inspired the Freelancer magazine launch, and how she kept the spark going after the initial rush of the first issue.

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