Good morning! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Chris.
YouTube launches a dedicated podcasts homepage for US users — techcrunch.com
A brand new destination for podcasts is now live for US users of YouTube. The homepage was soft launched last month – which is bizarre to me. YouTube is the de facto destination for video podcasts, both live and on-demand, and the company should be making much, much more of that fact.
Techcrunch reports: “YouTube declined to answer further questions about the company’s plans for podcasts in general or the destination itself — hinting that a broader announcement was still to come. (It’s possible this will be one of the announcements planned for a YouTube creator event scheduled for next month, if we had to guess.)”
The whole situation reminds me of how Skype blew its lead over Zoom when the pandemic hit. YouTube remains one of the primary destinations for podcasts, and yet it is losing a march to Spotify which just launched its own video podcasts platform with much more fanfare.
Crikey: small independent news website challenges Lachlan Murdoch to sue it for defamation — www.theguardian.com
There was a while last year where, in the wake of the Australian “deal” around platforms paying for news, some people told me with a straight face that the Murdochs cared about publications other than their own. As this lawsuit demonstrates that was, and remains, very doubtful.
Damning claims about Twitter’s bots and security lapses are “a false narrative,” says CEO — www.theverge.com
After Twitter’s former security chief filed a whistleblower report claiming the company has serious security issues and more bot activity than it claims, CEO Parag Agrawal called the claims a “false narrative.” The whole thing is like a feud at a wedding.
How Apple pushed its ad-vantage — www.axios.com
I have a story coming out this AM on The Drum around this. Effectively Apple is ramping up an ad business just as its iPhone privacy policy is limiting rivals – but there’s no guarantees when it comes to introducing ads to previously ad-free services like Apple Maps.
Podcast throwback:
Toolkits Co-Founder Jack Marshall on what’s next for subscriptions — voices.media
A while back we spoke to Jack Marshall, Co-Founder of Toolkits, a business information and consulting company focused on subscription publishing. We talked about his past life as a media reporter at Digiday and the WSJ, what opportunity he and co-founder Shareen Pathak spotted in the market, and whether he thinks the subscriptions wave has crested.
Book book book! The Publisher Podcast Summit is just 6 weeks away! — publisherpodcastsummit.com
We’re really excited to have Megaphone by Spotify and Bababam as sponsors for our first Publisher Podcast Summit. If you’ve got a podcast (or are thinking about launching a podcast), we’d love to see you there. See the website for the draft agenda, speakers, sponsors and more.
