socialmedian: Why the mainstream media is dying

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Why the mainstream media is dying

Nov 08, 2009

Summary

Every once in a while you get to see a mainstream outlet cover a story right alongside a blog, so you can put them up against each other and see why one was so much better than the other. This week TechCrunch and the New York Times (photo) provided just such a lesson.

The issue was a company called Zynga, which makes online games, like FarmVille, that have become incredibly popular on Facebook among people who are missing parts of their brains. On Oct. 31 TechCrunch broke a big story called "Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem of Hell" about how Zynga was making money by selling scam ads -- the kind that trick kids and other frigtards into signing up for useless subscriptions to stuff they don't want.

Arrington packaged his story with a video of himself taking on Anu Shukla, CEO of one of the scam-ad distributors, at a conference. He also ran an "insider's confession" piece by a former scammer explaining how these guys operate. He followed with a story about how Zynga CEO Mark Pincus had acknowledged the problem and said Zynga would stop running those ads, ...Read the full article

Comments (1)

Mwhybark,

Nov 08, 2009

I should probably point out the TechCrunch stuff on Facebook, but I doubt I'll get around to it.