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London, United Kingdom · 2013 · https://www.echobox.com/

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Echobox Blog

Aug 26, 2020

The Echobox blog has moved

After several years of publishing the Echobox Insights blog on Medium, we’ve moved our blog to a new home: Echobox ResourcesWhile our new home is more beautiful, organized and easier to navigate, some things haven’t changed — you’ll still find exclusive research and analyses from the Echobox team, as well as the latest news and insight from the world of social media, AI and journalism.For example, take a look at our latest articles and white papers available in our resources for publishers:Though we’ll no longer be posting here on Medium, we hope you’ll check out our new library of resources for publishers at https://resources.echobox.com (where you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter to receive our latest research right in your inbox).Don’t forget to follow us on social media for regular updates:Facebook: EchoboxHQTwitter: @EchoboxHQLinkedIn: EchoboxThanks for reading!The Echobox blog has moved was originally published in Echobox Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Jul 1, 2020

In search of higher engineering productivity: A data first remote working perspective

At Echobox, we constantly strive for maximum productivity. We regularly review our existing processes and are open to exploring new ways of working as a team. It’s part of our DNA at Echobox to be data-driven and take a scientific approach to everything we do. We take inspiration from anywhere but remain cautious of the Halo effect, which is “the tendency to focus on the high financial performance of a successful company and then spread its golden glow to all its attributes”, even the negative ones.A recent study about technological productivity that spanned six years with over 31,000 responses across a number of industries showed that the choice of technological methodologies or processes could lead to a hundred fold difference in the delivery of new business value confirming such exploration can reap huge rewards.Remote working was one of those processes we decided to review. At the beginning all Echobox employees worked out of our beautiful London HQ in Notting Hill. As everyone enjoyed working together the demand for remote working was low but we were aware of anecdotes from other leading technology companies about how they increased their engineering productivity through remote working.There is a plethora of existing research that attempts to provide insights into the impacts of where employees spend their day on productivity. These simultaneously point to the benefits and drawbacks of more remoteness between coworkers, a somewhat unhelpful picture when developing your own corporate policies. In one controlled experiment Stanford Professor Nicholas Bloom reported that getting a randomised half of call centre staff at CTrip, a 16,000 employee NASDAQ-listed Chinese travel agency, to work entirely from home over a 9 month period, resulted in a 13% performance increase (https://ebx.sh/fjiuVV, https://ebx.sh/hlNmTz). Conversely colleagues Ben Waber et al “showed that when a salesperson increased interactions with coworkers on other teams — that is, increased exploration — by 10%, his or her sales also grew by 10%” (https://ebx.sh/VZJWui). In this work, Ben Waber demonstrated that a reduction in distance between team members had the opposite effect as that observed by Nicholas Bloom. These two examples are representative of an extensive body of seemingly contradictory studies. Moreover, neither measure engineering productivity at a technology company.This ‘paradox’ of contradictory studies may be understood if at a deeper level the results are in fact due to the non trivial interplay of many underlying factors. To clarify, remote working practices can only indirectly impact productivity. Such factors, alluded to by Bloom and many others, which include “distraction vs. focus” are loosely summarised in Appendix 1.Importantly the contribution and strength of these factors to overall productivity, unique to each set of starting conditions, would reasonably explain why two companies within the same industry, or different departments within the same company, can experience different remote working outcomes. For example, in one of those companies the benefits of additional focus might significantly outweigh a proportional loss of collaboration, as was observed by Nicholas Bloom at CTrip.Whilst this complexity prevents anyone from accurately forecasting the impact of remote working on productivity, the evidence that an optimal amount can be significant is clearly established in peer reviewed literature. When considering your own corporate policies the biggest risk would therefore be to avoid all experimentation, preventing an evidence based decision from being made. Sandy Pentland observed that the best-performing and most creative teams in their study sought fresh perspectives constantly, from all other groups in, and some outside, the organization — so it’s important that such experimentation is ongoing. For example, a new technology or piece of software might significantly impact any of the factors presented above.Given the lack of representative studies on remote working, we conducted our own experiment. Although we hadn’t originally planned on sharing our results we felt it would be helpful if we shared the results of our research with the wider community, especially as most technology companies are now forced to let employees work from home due to the coronavirus pandemic.For our experiment, our software engineers were able to self-select a single remote day per week. After six months, we increased it to two remote days per week. Remote days couldn’t conflict with team meetings or events, for which we’d require everyone in our office.In their book Accelerate and in further detail in their peer reviewed paper Nicole Forsgren et al established a statistically significant relationship between the frequency of deployments, lead time, mean time to restore and change fail percentage to productivity. In this work, due to it’s easy availability, we have reused the frequency of deployments as our primary metric for reviewing the productivity impact of remote working. We normalise this to ‘per engineer’ to account for our team size varying between 3 and 5 members over the period of the experiment. We also contrast this against productivity of the engineering team measured as average story points completed per day per engineer. Whilst no predictive relationship has been established with story points we include it as it is a more familiar industry measure of productivity, also referred to as “velocity”.Figure 1 shows that the proportion of remote working amongst engineers doubled between January 2018 and November 2019. Engineers felt this was primarily due to finding better ways to take advantage of the remote working time, for example by improving their work from home environments.Figure 1. The monthly percentage of remote working in the Echobox engineering department from January 2018 to November 2019.Figure 2 shows the number of deployments per month per developer against the proportion of remote working during this same period. We observe no statistically significant trend suggesting productivity remained static over the levels of remote working explored in this experiment. Figure 3 compares the remote working proportions, figure 1, against the average story points completed by the engineering team, per engineer, again showing no statistically significant trend with productivity over this 23 month period.Figure 2. The number of deployments per month, per developer, against the percentage of remote working over the months shownFigure 3. The average story points completed by the engineering team, per engineer, against the percentage of remote working over the months shown in figure 1.Based on these results, we concluded that at the levels of remote working observed during this experiment at Echobox there was no statistically significant long term relationship against engineering productivity at Echobox. This outcome was still considered a net positive as team members reported being more motivated and less stressed due to a reduction in commuting time.And what about Echobox’s corporate remote working policies you might ask? Accepting that remote working didn’t have a negative impact on engineering productivity at Echobox, we decided to cautiously integrate more remote working practices into our processes for non-managerial and non-leadership roles within the engineering department, primarily due to the added flexibility in hiring and retaining amazing talent from outside of our HQ in London. And we definitely plan to continue experimenting whilst forging an environment that promotes mutual trust, experimentation, improvement, knowledge transfer and education into the different factors that influence company productivity, so that everyone can make informed choices — which goes well beyond remote working practices.If you’re interested in engineering jobs at Echobox we’re always hiring for outstanding candidates, please get in touch at https://careers.echobox.com/About the author …Marc Fletcher graduated with a PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge and has been the CTO at Echobox since 2014. Whilst not jumping out of planes he’s particularly passionate about maximising productivity in high performance cross functional technology teams.Appendix 1Underlying factors that impact productivity of remote workers:Distractions and focus. For example, personal productivity, “the effectiveness with which a worker applies his or her talents and skills to perform work, using available materials, within a specific time”, and deep work (https://ebx.sh/rLpXYp) (https://ebx.sh/7OHrM8).Creativity, collaboration and group learnings. For example, employee collisions grouped by energy, engagement and exploration. MIT Media Lab Professor Sandy Pentland, inventor of the sociometric badge, demonstrated that 35% of a team’s productivity can be accounted for simply by the number of exchanges among team members (https://ebx.sh/TqqIyC). Preferably these are face-to-face but closely followed by phone or teleconferencing providing the number of participants is small. Importantly there’s an optimum rate of collisions and “going beyond that ideal number decreases productivity”. Sandy also observed that the type of collisions matters greatly — swapping a young software startups “beer meets” and other events for longer tables in the lunchroom, “so that strangers sat together”, had a huge positive impact.Motivation, levels of isolation, stress and employee health. For example, the quality and quantity of an individual’s social relationships have been linked to mental health, morbidity and mortality (https://ebx.sh/UytSXy).Retention and costs of training replacements. For example Bloom et al reported retention rate improved by 50% for fully remote workers.Recruitment. For example, it might be possible to hire significantly more skilled or cheaper employees in certain locations or geographies, entirely offsetting other productivity tradeoffs.Amount of additional time worked due to not having a commute. For example, remote workers log more hours than employees who work in the office.Office space cost savings. For example, stats from PGI news suggest the average annual real estate savings for employers with full-time remote workers is $10,000 per employee (https://ebx.sh/RliKSH).Proximity of customers. For example, incompatible timezones making regular customer communication inefficient, common within sales or consultancy organisations.Employee beliefs and attitudes. For example, Derrick Neufeld and Yulin Fang showed in their study the most important determinant of remote worker productivity “were beliefs and attitudes about telecommuting and social interactions with manager and family members” (https://ebx.sh/ntb00d).In search of higher engineering productivity: A data first remote working perspective was originally published in Echobox Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Jun 30, 2020

Recognizing excellence in journalism

The past few months have reminded us of just how important quality journalism is to our lives.Unprecedented circumstances like the COVID-19 pandemic and other momentous events have unfolded rapidly around the globe. People everywhere have turned to the news for live updates and reliable guidance on navigating these uncharted waters. Journalists have had to answer an immense demand for timely, up-to-date and accurate content in an extremely fast-changing landscape. All the while, they’ve had to cope with the uncertainties facing their own industry, accelerated and exacerbated by the pandemic.More than ever, it’s vital to recognize the extraordinary work journalists are doing every day, under circumstances that can range from highly challenging to even life-threatening. Their investigations, reporting and storytelling remain crucial to society — and to our lives on an individual level.The Pulitzer Prize is arguably the most renowned honor for excellent journalism. Since 1917, the Pulitzer Prize has recognized best-in-class journalism across 15 categories (including this year’s newly added category, Audio Reporting) from U.S. newspapers, magazines and news sites. The 2020 Prize winners — including our client The Seattle Times — were announced last month, and we think there’s no better time to revisit and applaud their work:Category: Public ServiceWinner: Anchorage Daily News with contributions from ProPublica“For a riveting series that revealed a third of Alaska’s villages had no police protection, took authorities to task for decades of neglect, and spurred an influx of money and legislative changes.”Category: Breaking News ReportingWinner: Staff of The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky.“For its rapid coverage of hundreds of last-minute pardons by Kentucky’s governor, showing how the process was marked by opacity, racial disparities and violations of legal norms.”Category: Investigative ReportingWinner: Brian M. Rosenthal of The New York Times“For an exposé of New York City’s taxi industry that showed how lenders profited from predatory loans that shattered the lives of vulnerable drivers, reporting that ultimately led to state and federal investigations and sweeping reforms.”Category: Explanatory ReportingWinner: Staff of The Washington Post“For a groundbreaking series that showed with scientific clarity the dire effects of extreme temperatures on the planet.”Category: Local ReportingWinner: Staff of The Baltimore Sun“For illuminating, impactful reporting on a lucrative, undisclosed financial relationship between the city’s mayor and the public hospital system she helped to oversee.”Category: National ReportingWinner: Dominic Gates, Steve Miletich, Mike Baker and Lewis Kamb of The Seattle Times“For groundbreaking stories that exposed design flaws in the Boeing 737 MAX that led to two deadly crashes and revealed failures in government oversight.”Winner: T. Christian Miller, Megan Rose and Robert Faturechi of ProPublica“For their investigation into America’s 7th Fleet after a series of deadly naval accidents in the Pacific.”Category: International ReportingWinner: Staff of The New York Times“For a set of enthralling stories, reported at great risk, exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin’s regime.”Category: Feature WritingWinner: Ben Taub of The New Yorker“For a devastating account of a man who was kidnapped, tortured and deprived of his liberty for more than a decade at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, blending on-the-ground reporting and lyrical prose to offer a nuanced perspective on America’s wider war on terror.”Category: CommentaryWinner: Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times“For a sweeping, provocative and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, prompting public conversation about the nation’s founding and evolution.”Category: CriticismWinner: Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times“For work demonstrating extraordinary community service by a critic, applying his expertise and enterprise to critique a proposed overhaul of the L.A. County Museum of Art and its effect on the institution’s mission.”Category: Editorial WritingWinner: Jeffery Gerritt of the Palestine (Tx.) Herald-Press“For editorials that exposed how pre-trial inmates died horrific deaths in a small Texas county jail — reflecting a rising trend across the state — and courageously took on the local sheriff and judicial establishment, which tried to cover up these needless tragedies.”Category: Editorial CartooningWinner: Barry Blitt, contributor, The New Yorker“For work that skewers the personalities and policies emanating from the Trump White House with deceptively sweet watercolor style and seemingly gentle caricatures.”Category: Breaking News PhotographyWinner: Photography Staff of Reuters“For wide-ranging and illuminating photographs of Hong Kong as citizens protested infringement of their civil liberties and defended the region’s autonomy by the Chinese government.”Category: Feature PhotographyWinner: Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin of Associated Press“For striking images captured during a communications blackout in Kashmir depicting life in the contested territory as India stripped it of its semi-autonomy.”Category: Audio ReportingWinner: Staff of This American Life with Molly O’Toole of the Los Angeles Times and Emily Green, freelancer, Vice News“For ‘The Out Crowd,’ revelatory, intimate journalism that illuminates the personal impact of the Trump Administration’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy.”At Echobox, we believe that leaders in journalism deserve the best tools and technology to help them with their mission of delivering the very best in news.Many of these leaders have turned to Echobox, including both past and present Pulitzer Prize winners The Seattle Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Guardian US, the Albuquerque Journal and The Christian Science Monitor, among others.They’ve chosen Echobox for good reason: on average, our customers in North America see 41% growth in traffic from social media after adopting Echobox.Powered by artificial intelligence and designed exclusively for publishers, Echobox helps publications reach new audiences and increase traffic while saving time and money on social media management. More than 700 leading publishers around the world, including Newsweek, The Telegraph, Le Monde and El País, use Echobox to share millions of social posts and reach billions of readers each year.By simplifying your social media publishing with Echobox, you can focus on telling powerful stories and delivering the quality journalism that’s critical to our society.Learn more about EchoboxImage source: “BBC Broadcasting House Tour” by lizsmith is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0Recognizing excellence in journalism was originally published in Echobox Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Jun 18, 2020

What does post-pandemic social media look like? An analysis of audience trends

This article was developed in collaboration with Chartbeat.Social media has been a significant source of traffic as the global pandemic has taken shape in recent months. Therefore, we partnered with Chartbeat to take a deeper look into social traffic, namely the interactions and engagement across social media channels that can give us insights into a post-pandemic landscape. For the sake of our research, we wanted to provide further context on:Our learnings from studying publishers’ social traffic during the pandemicWhat changed, and what has normalized since, andHow publishers can use this data to inform strategies moving forwardBelow, more on the data and our findings.A detailed view of social interactionsEchobox data shows that the coronavirus pandemic has had positive results overall on publishers’ social media performance. During this unprecedented moment in time, publishers have engaged social audiences effectively with exceptional content from their journalists, and transformed that engagement into a significant traffic boost.What are the key takeaways from our social media data?Social traffic grew by 45% on averageAs highlighted in Echobox’s recent report, there were more publishers that recorded gains in traffic from social media than those who saw decreases during the pandemic. On average, across all publishers studied, social traffic (daily pageviews) increased by a healthy 45%.2. The portion of traffic from social media grew by 4%With readers frequently searching for the latest news developments or actively following live pages, for example, one might expect to see a shift in the breakdown of traffic sources, with direct traffic or search engines gaining more ground over social media referrals.However, Echobox data revealed an average increase of 4% in the portion of traffic publishers received from social media, suggesting that social media remained a key source for audiences seeking news as well as content unrelated to coronavirus.3. Engagement with posts peaked in MarchWhat did social engagement look like for publishers during the pandemic? We observed that user engagement with posts on Facebook (the social platform that still drives the lion’s share of traffic to publisher websites) saw a sharp and short-lived peak in March. In this graph, we see how the average number of comments per share and reactions per share dipped in early March before peaking around mid-month:Trend of average comments and reactions per Facebook share (source: Echobox)How exactly were audiences engaging with publisher posts during this period?Let’s focus on different types of engagement actions (clicks, reactions, impressions, likes, comments) per share, and how these actions changed week over week. We see an initial jump in both clicks and impressions per share in Week 11 (March 9–15). Only a week later, in Week 12 (March 16–22), do we observe a steep lift in more engaged actions like comments per share, as well as reactions and likes per share:Weekly change in average engagement per Facebook share: clicks, reactions, impressions, likes, comments (source: Echobox)However, by Week 14 (March 30 — April 5), engagement with posts had declined significantly compared to the previous week, across all types of engagement actions. Throughout most of April and into May, we see that engagement with social posts was on a general decline week over week.With social engagement trends returning to their pre-pandemic levels, the question now is how will this engagement evolve in the weeks to come? Will social engagement shrink further, indicating lasting audience fatigue? Or will it bounce back as audiences return to their normal routines of consuming social content?How recent social and search patterns compareChartbeat’s global network data tells a similar story when we compare the largest social referrer, Facebook, to Google Search. Let’s take a closer look at a few of the trends:As of late May, Facebook referral traffic is still hovering around the 200 million pageview mark, as shown below. This is still below a peak of around 230 million pageviews, but far above the sub-100 million referrals we saw in the first part of January.Trends in Google and Facebook traffic across Chartbeat network (source: Chartbeat)2. Despite its lower overall traffic than Google Search, Average Engaged Time across Facebook is still above average as well. Readers engaged with content referred by Facebook for 37 seconds compared to 40 seconds from Google Search.3. Engaged Time across content referred by Facebook has actually increased since Chartbeat’s initial traffic analysis, as coronavirus began drawing global attention. In February, Average Engaged Time sat around 35 seconds.The two second increase is worth noting. Why? We’ve seen that 45% of readers who load a page will leave within 15 seconds. We see surpassing the 15 second threshold critical to increase the likelihood they’ll return to your site again. Therefore, when those numbers are doubled across platforms, content creators have a greater chance of taking the steps to ensure readers will return.Outside of Facebook and Google Search, we are still seeing the signs of fatigue, as the chart below shows.Referrer trends across the Chartbeat network (source: Chartbeat)With the exception of SmartNews, up 3%, all other major referral sources saw week-over-week declines in traffic for the period ending May 20.Yahoo! saw the steepest drop — 19% — during this period.Despite its influence across politics and media, Twitter referral traffic was also down 9%. That said, lower engagement from these referral sources compared to Google search and Facebook reflects a pattern we’ve seen even before the onset of the pandemic.Week-over-week change in referrer traffic (source: Chartbeat)Post-pandemic social media: Our takeawaysHere are a few takeaways for publishers on our social traffic analysis:1. Understand and compare traffic patternsIn order to see a path forward, you need to understand how your specific traffic patterns have been affected during the pandemic. For instance, go beyond the gains in traffic by looking at the underlying geographies, referral sources, and content types driving the most traffic. This data can help you identify new areas of growth and support the strategies behind sustaining traffic growth moving forward.2. Analyze audience engagement patternsWhile you may see larger traffic spikes from certain referral sources, it’s important to separate quantity from quality. If your goal is to drive more traffic to your site, identify the types of content that resonated most with those increases. However, if your goal is to encourage more return visits and drive greater loyalty, you’ll want to identify the content that drove more quality clicks and higher Average Engaged Time.3. Connect the dots between readers and revenueDid you see reader revenue gains through subscriptions or other sources? If so, are there any changes or factors that could have led to those gains? The types of content and reader interactions that ultimately led to subscriptions can speak to future acquisition opportunities for your organization.4. Share actionable data across your organizationWe see organizations come together in the face of adversity every day to produce high quality content. It’s important that you continue to support your teams’ operational efficiency, especially when your newsroom may continue to be virtual or at a reduced workforce. One way is to leverage your data sources to inform faster decision making. We see this as particularly helpful in a social media landscape, where actionable opportunities for engagement can come and go quickly.What does post-pandemic social media look like? An analysis of audience trends was originally published in Echobox Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Apr 20, 2020

AI and journalism: 3 reports you shouldn’t miss

If you’re working from home at the moment, like many people around the world, this might be the right time to finally catch up on some reading and reflection.In this article, we highlight 3 of our favorite research reports we’ve read in recent months about journalism and artificial intelligence (AI), and share the most salient takeaways for publishers. We hope these insights will provide you with new perspectives and concrete examples of AI’s diverse applications for publishing organizations.1. “New powers, new responsibilities: A global survey of journalism and artificial intelligence” from LSE PolisWhy read it?This 111-page report depicts publisher attitudes towards and adoption of AI and associated technologies, with participation from 116 journalists at 71 news organizations in 32 countries.Through survey questions and interviews with a wide range of journalists, LSE Polis provides a fascinating view of how publishers understand and interpret the notion of AI, how they’re using it in different ways, and the opportunities and risks AI presents. We recommend this report to any publisher who is curious about how their peers are approaching AI and their strategies for newsroom application.Our favorite insights from this report:Two-thirds of publishers use AI for news productionMore than half of publishers use AI to distribute content68% of journalists adopted AI to make their work more efficient45% adopted AI to deliver more relevant content to audiencesSource: “New powers, new responsibilities: A global survey of journalism and artificial intelligence” from LSE PolisKey takeaways from this report:“It is important to have an organisational definition of AI to help shape strategy and to promote understanding and communication about AI in the newsroom.”“Newsroom roles were seen to be changing more through the augmentation of current roles rather than the replacement of jobs. There would be new tasks for people in existing roles and new workflows, but few AI-specific new roles.”“AI will re-shape journalism in an incremental way but with longer-term structural effects that reflect how news media is changing for other reasons: technological, social, and commercial. In a more networked world AI will become more important in all fields.”Read this report from the JournalismAI project at LSE Polis.2. “Journalism, Media and Technology Trends and Predictions 2020” published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of JournalismWhy read it?A survey of 233 professionals from both traditional and digital media organizations, this report provides a unique window into what publishers expect to see and do this year.From revenue streams and the rise of audio to tech platforms and government regulation, this report outlines key trends for the publishing industry’s most vital issues.Especially thought-provoking are the five forward-looking essays, written by the study’s authors, which conclude the report. These essays provide a fresh take on major challenges for many publishers today including: declining reader trust in news media, attacks and abuse from politicians and activists, and inter-generational tensions within the newsroom.Our favorite insights from this report:50% of publishers say reader revenue will be the most important revenue stream going forward35% say a combination of reader revenue and advertising will be the most important revenue stream53% of publishers say AI will be “very important” this year in the newsroom for automated recommendations39% say AI will be “very important” for boosting efficiency in the newsroom via automated tagging, transcription, translation, etc.Source: “Journalism, Media and Technology Trends and Predictions 2020” from the Reuters Institute for the Study of JournalismKey takeaways from this report:“Publishers will be pushing aggressively ahead with registration and log-in strategies following data privacy regulation and tightening restrictions on cookies by anti-ad-tracking browsers like Safari and Firefox. First-party data will be at a premium going forward but this is likely to further benefit platforms like Google and Facebook, which have hundreds of millions of authenticated and logged-in users. By contrast individual news publishers may struggle to persuade consumers to keep logging in. Expect more publisher alliances, like NetID in Germany and Nonio in Portugal, to counter this trend.”“Facebook’s news tab is part of a wider trend, with platforms looking to create trusted and curated environments for news rather than mixing it with user-generated content. YouTube have started to inject trusted brands into the feed when big stories break and Google’s carefully selected news index does a similar job for AI-driven products like Discover. We’re also seeing more humans involved in the process, with platforms hiring editors to manage the nuances.”Read this report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.3. “News Automation: The rewards, risks and realities of ‘machine journalism’” from WAN-IFRAWhy read it?We found this report to be especially interesting because of its narrow focus on a specific application of AI in the newsroom: the automated production of news texts based on structured data.It explores the idea that, contrary to the futuristic notions many may still have upon hearing the term “AI”, news automation is not a radical departure from traditional news production, but rather a natural progression of technological evolution in the newsroom.The report features examples of how news automation is being practiced at varying levels in five major newsrooms in Europe, the US and China. WAN-IFRA also highlights important considerations when introducing news automation to the newsroom, such as data quality, the choice of in-house development vs. plug-and-play tools, and maintaining transparency for both journalists and audiences.Our favorite insights from this report:Study participants mistook 21% of computer-written articles as written by humans…and they mistook 10% of human-written articles as written by computersKey takeaways from this report:“Automated systems can provide sophisticated alerts for journalists and editors when something interesting has happened or is about to happen. Algorithms are much better equipped to find hidden relationships and outliers than people.”“Will your distribution systems and platforms handle the vast amount of texts produced when automating? The ability to produce very large amounts of texts in a short time is one of automation’s great strengths.”“What we see is that automatically generated articles compete well in credibility with human-written content. The by-line information does not seem to have any significant impact on the perceived credibility (van der Kaa & Krahmer, 2014), at least not in the European context. In some cases (Graefe et al., 2016; Wölker & Powell, 2018), the automated content even got somewhat higher credibility ratings than the articles written by humans, especially in sports news (Wölker & Powell, 2018) — but, in general, the credibility of automated news can be considered to be on par with human-written news.”Read this report from WAN-IFRA.Did you know that more than 700 leading publishers worldwide are using Echobox’s artificial intelligence to share more than 10 million posts on social media?Download our Factsheet to learn how Echobox is helping publishers use AI to boost their social media performance:Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from PexelsAI and journalism: 3 reports you shouldn’t miss was originally published in Echobox Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Mar 23, 2020

How coronavirus has changed the face of news in less than 30 days

For many people around the world, the increase in coronavirus news stories in recent weeks has been inescapable. But how has the news spread in some of the most-affected regions and what can we learn from how coverage about coronavirus/COVID-19 has unfolded?To find out, we at Echobox studied more than 2.3 million stories shared to social media by 700 leading publishers in more than 50 countries between 1 January and 17 March 2020. We then looked at how many of those mentioned the words “corona” or “covid” in the share message. In this blogpost, we outline what we found.Download a PDF of this blogpost hereGlobal shares related to coronavirus have increased exponentially…but only since community transmission took hold in Europe.The below chart shows how shares about coronavirus have increased exponentially since mid-February — an astounding 16x increase in less than a month.The meteoric rise began in earnest on 24 February, when six more countries announced their first case and financial markets plunged.January — the calm before the stormLooking back to January however, it is clear that despite the rapid spread of cases in China, there were a relatively low number of shares by news publications overall globally, compared to what was to follow.Examining coronavirus content as a total percentage of all social media news shares (see below), we can see that it did not exceed 5% of all shares until 24 February. Prior to this, the highest proportion achieved was 4.5% on 30 January, when the World Health Organization declared coronavirus an international public health emergency. After that point, news shares on the subject stagnated for several weeks, as much of the world beyond China continued to go about its business.Individual countries each shared coronavirus news based on domestic spreadNext, we looked at how coronavirus news was shared in seven Western countries that have been particularly impacted by the virus.To see a larger version of this chart please download the PDF.Italy saw shares on the topic increase from less than 3% of all stories to almost 20% of all shares in just 48 hours between 22 and 23 February. This coincided with the country becoming the first in Europe to introduce strict measures that placed almost 50,000 people in lockdown. Coronavirus shares have remained at a similar high level in Italy ever since.As the above graph clearly shows, at this point in mid-February, the events taking place in Italy were yet to precipitate any significant increase in shares about coronavirus in the other countries we looked at.The next peak came in Spain — two days later on 25 February. Coronavirus shares in Spain shot up from less than 4% to 14% in 48 hours, as the country detected ten new cases of coronavirus. Once again, this rapid increase was not replicated in any other country, continuing the theme of domestic dominance of a country’s news.The next spike occurred in Germany, on 28 February, when domestic cases there increased by 104% in 24 hours to 53.At this point, coronavirus news shares in all the countries we analysed were now above 5%. Italy, which continued to be the principal source of new coronavirus cases, still remained the country with the highest percentage of shares on COVID-19.A March like no otherLittle changed in coronavirus share levels for more than a week until 7 March, when we saw the first peak in the United States. News shares in the US jumped from less than 10% to more than 15% within 48 hours, as New York declared a state of emergency and confirmed cases rose from 332 to 444.The following day, on 8 March, Italy recorded its second peak as the lockdown was extended to 16 million people in the north of the country.Two days later, on 10 March, Spain recorded a massive increase in coronavirus shares, eclipsing the record levels set by Italy and recording 22% of all shares on that day. The day saw Spanish confirmed cases rise from 1,231 to 1,674 and the government shut schools and banned public events in several areas including Madrid.More was to come. The 12 March was an unprecedented day for news, with Spanish coronavirus shares accounting for an incredible 37% of all shares that day. This was a day that saw members of the Spanish government and royal family being tested for coronavirus, schools closed nationwide and the IBEX dropping by a record 14%.On this same day, 12 March, we see US stories record their second peak, at 28% — as President Trump took the unprecedented move of suspending travel from Europe to the US. Meanwhile, coronavirus shares in Germany broke the 20% level for the first time, as the country digested the impact of the US travel ban and began to debate the closure of schools.Interestingly, while shares in France and UK grew gradually during this most recent period, and despite increasing government announcements and measures in those countries, levels did not exceed 20% or mirror the huge spikes seen in Spain, Germany and the US. It will be interesting to see whether that changes in the coming weeks if cases continue to rise in those countries.ConclusionIt’s clear that as a topic, coronavirus has taken over the news sharing agenda in many countries around the world in dramatic fashion. This dominance has occurred incredibly quickly — in a way that most are unlikely to have seen before. In uncertain and unprecedented times like these, and when demand for the latest news has never been greater, publishers become vital sources of information and analysis — on a local, national and international level. It is therefore more important than ever before that the crucial role that journalism performs in times of crisis is fully recognised and understood.How automation can play a role to help publishers manage their workflows in times of uncertaintyIn the current climate, many companies and sectors face challenges. Social media publishing platforms such as Echobox are available to help publishers with some key day-to-day activities that may be impacted over the coming months and ensure that content distribution is not interrupted. These activities include the scheduling of social posts at optimal times during the working day, as well as on weekends and overnight. In addition, it is also possible to automatically select and post content to social media. For further information, please get in touch or download the white paper below:How coronavirus has changed the face of news in less than 30 days was originally published in Echobox Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Mar 19, 2020

6 news trends Audience Development teams should know in 2020

Keeping up with the latest trends in how people consume news and content is an ongoing challenge for Audience Development teams. Growing your audience and engaging them starts with understanding who they are, what they care about, and how they’re getting information.Easy to say… harder to do. Luckily, a recent report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) provides some striking insights into how people access and consume news around the globe.Based on responses from more than 75,000 people across 38 countries, the latest version of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report is “the most comprehensive ongoing comparative study of news consumption in the world,” according to Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the RISJ.In case you missed the report’s release or haven’t had time to read through it all, we’ve picked out the top 6 insights that Audience Development teams should know about how global audiences are consuming news content in 2020. You can access the full version of the report here.More than half of people prefer to get news through social media, search engines or news aggregatorsRather than first checking a publisher’s website or opening a publisher’s dedicated app to see the headlines, 55% of people say they prefer to get their news first on other platforms like search or social.This shift away from publisher sites and apps as a first point of contact illustrates the changing relationship between publishers and their audiences, and the importance of capturing audience attention “off-platform” where content is curated by algorithms. This is where artificial intelligence can provide a huge advantage to publishers, as an AI-powered social media publishing platform like Echobox can drive more reach for your posts by continuously learning what works best with social platforms’ algorithms, predicting social virality, and optimizing posting times. In other words, Echobox can help you to choose which content will resonate with which audience and at what time.It should be noted that audiences in different regions are using social for news to varying degrees. Chartbeat’s latest insights report shows the extent to which publisher traffic from social platforms can vary depending on the region:Global social traffic data from Chartbeat’s Q419 international audience engagement insights report2. Young people spend their phone time mostly on social media appsUnsurprisingly, mobile phones are the most common device (69%) that people under 35 use to access news. But what exactly are they doing on their phones?The study tracked activity on the mobile phones of 20 people under the age of 35 and found that “communication, social media, and web-browsing apps dominated the time spent,” with the most time spent per day on the following apps (listed in order of time spent):Instagram [social media]Facebook [social media]Snapchat and WhatsApp [communication]Chrome and Safari [web browsing]Twitter [social media]The report notes that amongst the group studied, no news apps were present in their top 25 most-used apps, and that any news apps installed on the phones saw only “a comparatively small amount of daily usage.”The takeaway for Audience Development teams? If you’re looking to reach and engage younger audiences with your news content, social media platforms should play a big role in your distribution strategy.3. Time spent with Instagram and WhatsApp is growing, but Facebook remains kingAudiences are spending an increasing amount of time with Instagram and WhatsApp. For under 35s worldwide, 25% report spending more time on Instagram compared to the previous year, and 22% say they spend more time on WhatsApp.But in terms of social network usage for news, Facebook still remains the most popular platform across all age groups and markets for news discovery, consumption, sharing and discussion, as shown in this graph from the report:Global social network usage for news, by platform and by age group (Reuters Institute Digital News Report)Audience Development teams must track how usage shifts between different platforms over time with their particular target audience (tip: see which social networks send the most traffic to publisher sites with Echobox’s free Social Media Index). And as news consumption continues to rise on social platforms like Instagram, it’s critical for Audience Development teams to understand the particularities of each platform and what users expect to see on each — the tone and approach you use on Facebook may not achieve the same results on Instagram.Case in point: The Economist decided to refine its Instagram strategy to grow followers on this platform. As part of its approach, cross-functional teams (across data, graphics, photography, video, and radio teams) created content tailored to Instagram audiences, such as its Weekend Reads piece on Instagram Stories featuring a selection of the past week’s articles and a mix of images, graphics, audio and slideshows. The Economist publishes Weekend Reads every Sunday with a view to encourage repeat visits and build a loyal following on Instagram.The Telegraph has also developed tailored strategies for each social platform with Echobox. For example, The Telegraph posts daily Snapchat Stories to capture a younger audience, and then repurposes certain pieces on Instagram that might appeal to a slightly older audience with a few tweaks (like changing the call-to-action, or posting with a longer video). The Telegraph has also introduced two new Instagram-specific content features, Weekend Reads and Myth Buster, posted weekly as Instagram Stories.Experimenting with content topics, styles and formats on your different social media platforms is key to finding what resonates with your audience on each platform.4. 52% of people watch news video “off-platform” though the majority still prefer text newsMore than half of audiences watch news-related video content on social media and YouTube (compared to directly on a publisher’s site or app), and of those other platforms, Facebook still leads the pack: 32% of people consume news videos on Facebook, followed by 26% on YouTube and 17% on “other” platforms including Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.With Echobox, publishers can make the most of this trend by posting videos across multiple social platforms at once, whilst still allowing Echobox to automatically optimize the posting time for each platform.Despite these solid figures for news video consumption, 68% of people surveyed in all markets say they still prefer to consume their news in text format for the “control and flexibility” it offers over video… something to consider at a time when many news organizations are exploring new formats to engage audiences.5. 55% of audiences globally are still concerned about misinformationWhen it comes to discerning real information from false content in online news, more than half of people globally still voice concerns. Worries about misinformation are most widespread in Brazil (85%), Portugal (75%), South Africa and the UK (both 70%), the latter of which saw the largest increase in concern over the previous year.Concern about misinformation, by country (Reuters Institute Digital News Report)While this trend isn’t particularly encouraging, it represents an opportunity for audience development building on the last trend on our list…6. A quarter of people are consciously seeking “more reputable” news sourcesAs a result of this concern, 26% of audiences globally say they’ve begun to consult and rely on “more reputable” news sources (that figure is 40% in the US, and 36% in Brazil). And according to qualitative research carried out during the study, many under 35s say they’re “now paying more attention to the name of the brand when using social media.”Proportion of audiences in major markets who’ve begun to use more reputable news sources (Reuters Institute Digital News Report)Not only is this a reassuring trend for society in general, it’s a particularly promising development for news publications that have invested in building a reputation of trustworthiness and authenticity.As people become more conscientious about where they source their news, new opportunities will arise for attracting these audiences who seek credible and respectable news outlets.Audience Development teams can bring certain strategies to the newsroom that will help create more transparency, involvement and trust with audiences. Here are some articles we think provide excellent ideas:More than Eyeballs: How Journalism Can Benefit from Audience EngagementStart Earning TrustWant to build trust with readers? Try adding a box that explains the story processWhat challenges or opportunities in audience development do you see stemming from these trends? What other trends in news consumption have caught your attention? Tell us in the comments.Want to learn more about Echobox? Download the Echobox Factsheet:Unless specified otherwise, all figures and charts featured in this article were sourced from the 2019 edition of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report6 news trends Audience Development teams should know in 2020 was originally published in Echobox Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Mar 11, 2020

Which social media management platform drives the most traffic for publishers?

According to G2, there are currently more than 200 social media management platforms on the market. Most of these tools claim to boost performance in some way or another, and a subset of these even claim to be using artificial intelligence.With hundreds of options, how can you tell which one is the right one for you as a publisher?As we are not aware of any existing data-backed studies comparing the leading social media publishing tools’ impact on publishers’ social traffic, we decided to analyze our extensive pool of publisher data (more than 700 publishers, including 25% of the world’s newspapers of record) to find out which social media management platform generates the most traffic for publishers.For our study, we used absolute daily pageviews from Facebook as our metric for traffic, as it’s a metric commonly used by publishers to assess performance. We measured publishers’ traffic data for up to 6 months prior to their use of Echobox (while they were using another social media publishing platform), then compared that timeframe with an equivalent period of Echobox usage. We used the median average across publishers to account for outliers and normalized pageviews to 100 to ensure an accurate and fair comparison between publishers with varying sizes.This is what our study uncovered:Facebook Traffic by Social Media Publishing Platform (daily pageviews, normalized to 100)Compared to Buffer, Echobox drives 71% more daily Facebook pageviews.Compared to Sprinklr, Echobox drives 66% more daily Facebook pageviews.Compared to SocialFlow, Echobox drives 43% more daily Facebook pageviews.Compared to Hootsuite, Echobox drives 34% more daily Facebook pageviews.And compared to managing social media manually (using no social media publishing solution), Echobox drives 56% more daily Facebook pageviews.Why does Echobox outperform other social media platforms?There are good reasons for the outcome of our study. Echobox was the first social media solution built from the ground up using artificial intelligence. In fact, back in 2013 when Echobox was founded, the notion that scheduling on social media could be “optimized through technology” (or even automated) was a foreign one. No other social media solution back then worked on this problem. Today however, that distinctive approach we took has now become the norm, which makes us proud.We’re known in the market for being arguably the most “scientific” social media solution. Everything we do and claim is based on scientific evidence. Our core team consists of highly technical academics who have been educated at world-leading institutions. Taking a scientific approach to everything we do is in our DNA.Over the last six years, Echobox’s artificial intelligence has captured and learned from more than 245 million data points from the world’s leading publishers. These vast data sets allow our artificial intelligence to reverse-engineer Facebook’s algorithm changes, which is yet another reason why publishers on our platform are less affected than others.Moreover, all Echobox algorithms are tailored to every single client, using Audience Graphs, another unique innovation of ours. Audience Graphs are granular mathematical representations of a publisher’s social media audience, which adapt Echobox’s artificial intelligence to your editorial guidelines.Echobox also offers the only organic A/B Testing solution for Facebook, enabling publishers to carry out scientifically rigorous hypothesis testing.These are some of the reasons why Echobox outperforms other social media solutions for publishers.“Since using Echobox we’ve seen a major upswing in our traffic and saved valuable time.”-Anne Pican, Digital Editor, Le FigaroDownload the analysis now and learn how Echobox can boost your social traffic:Which social media management platform drives the most traffic for publishers? was originally published in Echobox Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Feb 3, 2020

Echobox supports the finest in journalism

Announcing a special offer for Pulitzer Prize winnersFor news publishers, there’s one award that stands apart from the rest as the most distinguished recognition of journalistic excellence: the Pulitzer Prize.Awarded annually for more than 100 years running, the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism is regarded as the highest distinction a US journalist and/or publication can receive. There are 14 categories ranging from Investigative Reporting to Editorial Cartooning (with a 15th category, Audio Reporting, introduced this year). If you think of the most respected institutions of American journalism, there’s a good chance they’ve won a Pulitzer (or two, or… 127, in the case of The New York Times).At Echobox, we know how important quality journalism is for our world, and our future. We also believe that leaders in journalism deserve the best tools and technology to help them with their mission of delivering the very best in news. That’s why we’re launching a new initiative that gives Pulitzer Prize winners the opportunity to use the world’s most advanced social media solution free of charge, for a full year.With Echobox, publishers get an innovative social media publishing solution that’s powered by artificial intelligence. Built from the ground up for news organizations, Echobox uses its novel artificial intelligence technology to increase traffic and save valuable time. More than 700 leading publishers around the world, including Newsweek, The Guardian, The Telegraph and El País, use Echobox to power their social media.By simplifying your social media publishing with Echobox, you can focus on telling powerful stories and delivering the quality journalism that’s critical to our society.Are you a 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization? Get in touch to claim your offer. This offer is subject to the terms and conditions of Echobox.And stay tuned until April, when the next Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists will be announced.Echobox supports the finest in journalism was originally published in Echobox Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sep 16, 2019

The UK’s Brexit news consumption trends revealed — by region, age, gender and time

The UK’s Brexit news consumption trends revealed — by region, age, gender and timeEchobox today publishes what we believe to be the largest-ever analysis of Brexit news consumption ever completed in the UK.Over the last four months, we’ve analysed the viewing trends for almost 13,000 news articles about Brexit published by 35 of the UK’s leading news publishers including The Times, The Sun and The Guardian.http://showcase.echobox.com/brexit/The analysis is unique as, unlike most polls and surveys, it does not extrapolate from small samples.With a combined 95.6m pageviews, Brexit makes up 1.63% of all consumed news, twice as much as articles on football and tennis combined. Here are a few highlights of what we found:Brexit news interest is relatively stable — with some notable spikes, especially during the last few weeks.There is a huge variation of interest in Brexit news around the UK, with parts of Scotland especially disengaged.Londoners are far more interested in Brexit than the rest of the UK.The younger you are, the less you are interested in Brexit news, and the over 65s can’t get enough.Men are significantly more interested in Brexit news than Women.Check out the full interactive Brexit Showcase to see the insight in more detail including charts, graphs and downloads here.About EchoboxEchobox is the social media scheduling and automation platform of choice for 600 of the world’s leading publishers — including The Guardian, The Times and Le Monde. Our advanced artificial intelligence solution shares millions of posts and generates billions of pageviews for publishers every year — growing audiences, increasing revenue and saving time. Find out more at www.echobox.comwww.echobox.comPlease follow us for the latest updates and for more frequent news and insight from us, follow @EchoboxHQ on Twitter.The UK’s Brexit news consumption trends revealed — by region, age, gender and time was originally published in Echobox Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.