Wednesday 28th July: Facebook's Metaverse is becoming a real thing

July 28, 2021

Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Peter.

Did you read Casey Newton's interview with Mark Zuckerberg the other day? It's full on Ready Player One, all 'embodied internet' and 'stronger sense of presence' and my first thought was... what's the boy wonder been smoking?

And then, just three days after Zuck's Metaverse musings, we're told that Facebook is reorganizing to build out a new Metaverse product group. The new outfit will bring together senior people from Facebook's product, AR and VR teams to, "remove the limitations of physics and move between them with the same ease as moving from one room in your home to the next."

I don't know whether to be impressed or terrified. But one thing's for sure, any revenue expectations publishers have of monetizing the Metaverse, they're bound to be sorely disappointed.

We reported a while back that the Keith Kelly was retiring from his New York Post Media Ink. In his farewell he offers some lovely behind the scenes insight into almost a quarter century of writing the column. It's well worth a read even if it's only to make you wish you'd met half the media legends he has. Thank you Keith.

Readly has released its latest readership trends data and travel and recreation publications are topping the charts, post-pandemic. Travel articles in newspapers and specialist travel magazines are especially popular, presumably as readers look for information on holiday destinations they can actually visit.

This story is paywalled on Insider, but you can expect to hear more soon about two new hires at the New York Times. Jay Caspian Kang and Peter Coy, veterans of Vice and Businessweek, have been brought in to work on the paper's 'secret' newsletter project - another sign that the Substack resistance is real.

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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