Join us at the Digiday Publishing Summit from March 24-26 in Vail
The Feed is Digiday’s Web-culture corner. Check The Feed everyday for Web-culture news roundups, infographics, essays and more. Follow us on Twitter for updates throughout the day @digiday.
Frictionless Isn’t Fun: Facebook’s Open Graph is proving to be pretty annoying for everyone. You have probably seen your news feed full of posts about friends reading articles on Yahoo or The Guardian, which is a feature of frictionless sharing; however, the annoying part is that if you click on these shared articles, you will be prompted to add the news site’s social sharing app. As CNET’s Molly Wood points out, “In search of ‘frictionless’ sharing, Facebook is putting up a barrier to entry on items your friends want you to see — that is, they’re creating friction. Even if it’s just a onetime inconvenience, any barrier to sharing breaks sharing.” More than just causing friction, Wood also notes that if everyone does just embrace the Open Graph, then pretty soon all of our Facebook feeds will be entirely taken over by passive, automated, seamlessly shared posts. That doesn’t seem very social for a social network. CNET
Texting Crackdown in Pakistan: Pakistan’s Telecommunications Authority is cracking down on texting. The PTA has come up with a list of around 1,700 words that it considers offensive and has ordered that phone companies start filtering these words from text messages. While many words on the list are profanities and other gross things you would expect, but then there are some like “Athlete’s Foot,” “Glazed Donut” and “Penthouse” that don’t make quite as much sense. The PTA claims that this measure is meant to cut down on spamming. So much for freedom of speech and privacy. Hindustan Times
Kohl’s Pulls a Rebecca Black: Smart marketing or annoying hijacking of an annoying viral sensation? A little bit of both. Kohl’s has created a commercial using a spoof of Rebecca Black’s god-awful song “Friday” to promote its Black Friday sale. Watch for yourself. It’s equally if not more annoying than the original. The Daily Dot
Tumblr of the Day: Literary quotes depicted by TV stills, or as the Tumblr creator describes it, “Kurt Vonnegut, meet Brenda Walsh.” Slaughterhouse 90210
Video of the Day: I don’t like cats, but if it will give me free massages, I’ll take one! That’s one lucky son of a bitch, literally. The Daily What
More in Media
Referral traffic from AI platforms grows despite publishers’ attempts to block crawlers
Traffic getting sent to publishers’ sites from AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity is growing — for publishers with deals in place with those companies, but also for publishers trying to block their crawlers.
The Trump tariffs are forcing creators to overhaul their side businesses
The Donald Trump administration’s tariffs, which impose an additional 10 percent duty on Chinese imports, have led to an increase in creators’ business costs.
Brands’ interest in “Grand Theft Auto” is mounting — but questions about brand safety remain
Although it remains unclear whether Rockstar’s stance toward brands will soften for “GTA 6,” the game developer is certainly aware of “GTA’s” power as a distribution network, both for its own products and for outside advertisers.