Facebook's loss might be proving to be Google's win. Just as Facebook is tweaking its news feed to weaken the emphasis on news, Google is capitalizing on it by winning a big share of traffic growth that publishers are seeing on their platforms. Sara Fischer, Media Reporter at Axios, was with us to discuss big tech's play on the shifting news industry.
According to new data from Chartbeat, the vast majority of traffic growth publishers are seeing from platforms is now coming from Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). Fischer said this is a big red flag for digital publishers to invest in Google AMP. Traffic to publishers using AMP is up 100% since 2017, according to the data.
The head of its Journalism Project Campbell Brown said twice at Recode's Code Media conference on Monday that they should've been more transparent around experiments and tests. She said going forward, Google, Snapchat, and Twitter should learn from Facebook's experience. The best thing for these companies to do is to communicate goals with publishers, added Fischer.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
