(2024-03-08) Chayka The Internets Distribution Problem

Kyle Chayka: The internet’s distribution problem. Everyone online is talking about distribution.

Distribution is the question of how your content — writing, audio, video — gets to people. And that’s been all fucked up lately.

The problem is that distribution of content via social media was an outright failure.

The most enduring efforts have been on YouTube, a platform that uniquely splits ad revenue with its creators.

Even a journalist trying to get her stories out there on Twitter is now confronted with the fact that it is utterly pointless. Linking out is algorithmically discouraged

The “number go up” attitude on social media leads nowhere, because money does not automatically follow the number, neither directly nor sustainably.

The survivors in the industry are those entities — publications and individuals — who inspire loyalty and can command a premium for the specific qualities of what they produce. Social media rewarded the identity-less and generic.

the next digital ecosystems will reward the specialized, the voice-driven, and the dependable.

Institutions inspire loyalty (and addictive word games boost it). But newer entities are succeeding, too, including Marques Brownlee’s YouTube-driven MKBHD; Bari Weiss’s The Free Press (its politics notwithstanding); Semafor, with its profitable events business; and indie journalist-collective sites like Defector, 404media, and Aftermath.

The question is, what comes next for distribution?

You don’t want to just reach people; you want them to come to you

You can reinvest in the homepage as a destination

Another option is using email accounts, YouTube follows, or Patreon subscriptions like print magazines use physical mailboxes and deliver a curated, finite experience

The benefits of cultivating and controlling your own distribution are mutual comprehension between a publication and its consumers; feelings of loyalty and trust

you can’t be authentic — the guiding light of this newsletter — if you don’t know or care who’s reading you.

Another problem is scaling up past the model of the single writer or small collective of journalists