Save 50% on a 3-month Digiday+ membership. Ends Dec 12.
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
Meta enters AI licensing fray, striking deals with People Inc., USA Today Co. and more
The platform has secured seven multi-year deals with publishers including CNN, Fox News, People Inc., USA Today Co to incorporate their content into its large language model (LLM) Llama.
European publishers say the Digital Omnibus ‘cookie fix’ leaves them worse off
The European Union’s attempt at a legislative spring clean for Europe’s web of data privacy rules, has landed flat with publishers.
Digiday+ Research Subscription Index 2025: Subscription strategies from Bloomberg, The New York Times, Vox and others
Digiday’s third annual Subscription Index examines and measures publishers’ subscription strategies to identify common approaches and key tactics among Bloomberg, The New York Times, Vox and others.