The worlds of mega sport and social media took a full on collision in the US this week in a series of moves that will be watched closely by rights holders on this side of the Atlantic with a keen eye.
It has not been a good week for twitter with stories across the media yesterday about how job losses had been informed to staff by pre-recorded messages and it wasn’t just the workers that were feeling cut off on Tuesday.
Deadspin and SB Nation, two of the biggest online sports news sites there are, effectively super sized versions of the42 and SportsJoe.ie both had their twitter accounts suspended following ‘takedown requests’ filed by the NFL, Ultimate Fighting League and a variety of College Football bodies.
Illegal
These claimed that a number of gifs and vines, short social media posts showing video content, were infringing copyright and therefore illegal.
The impact in this instance was that the complaints were made not to the original hosts of the content who would have fought them legally and in some ways made the battle hardly worth the fight, but to a third party site in twitter that had little value in pushing back against them and so took the easier option of suspension.
Neither of the websites in question was willing to reveal just how much of a hit to traffic they took through the decision but it is likely to have been substantial and certainly enough to prompt one of the writers on Deadpan to question “why are we stupid enough to put the fate of our traffic in the hands of a third party social network platform that for all we know is run by Gargoyles.”
Interdependent
Whatever about the colourful description of those making the call at twitter, the point made that so many media have become so interdependent on each other for access to fragmented audiences is certainly worth making.
Sport for Business operates a mix of freemium and metered paywall content. It is a niche offering covering an area which is of genuine interest to a specific audience but which will never attract the numbers of a mainstream site covering sports news and reports. we know our place.
We do make smart use of analytics though to know where we can best promote our content so that you, our target audience of readers will find us or be reminded of us.
Our numbers
So far this month 42% of our total traffic gas come from direct sources of people visiting the site as many do on a daily basis and those who click through from our popular daily news digest email delivered to nearly 3,000 opinion formers in sport, business and government.
Search runs a close second in providing 40% of our traffic with referrals from other sites, primarily social media including Twitter, Linked in and Facebook delivering the balance of 18%.
That social media boost is a good thing and does generate valuable feedback, including when Aer Lingus social manager Paul Buckley referenced content yesterday and Matt Cooper retweeted a message to his more than 129,000 followers.
Quality of readers
We are reliant though on the quality of readers rather than quantity. We do not sell advertising space. The value in our business is in membership and the creation of a community of people who value what we do to help them work better in the world of sport and business.
If social media was to shut down tomorrow, in it’s entirety, we would still survive on the core audience we have built.
There are others though who might not be so self confident and this week’s actions in the US will be causing a few sleepless nights around the digital world.
Hear from leadership organisations including Three, Heineken, Epsilon and RTÉ Sport about how they see The Digital Future of Sport at our special half day conference in Dublin on Wednesday, October 21st. Reserve your place today.
