Thursday News: Scribd adds 9,000 audiobooks, is Facebook manipulating its algorithms, moderating Monica Lewinsky, and Tennessee legislators love the Bible
Publishing Newsaudiobooks / comment moderation / Establishment Clause / Facebook / First-Amendment / news feeds / online speech / Penguin Random House / religion / Scribd / Ted12 Comments
SCRIBD ADDS PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE AUDIO TITLES TO ITS LIBRARY – In the current battle between digital book subscription services, the reader definitely seems to be gaining. Now Scribd is adding 9,000 audiobooks from Penguin Random House Audio. From the press release:
SAN FRANCISCO, April 16, 2015 — Scribd, the leading subscription reading service, today announced thatit is expanding its audiobook offering to include more than 9,000 audiobooks from Penguin Random House Audio, increasing Scribd’s audiobook selection to more than 45,000 titles. New titles include fiction and non-fiction by internationally renowned authors such as Alice Munro, Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Anne Rice, Sue Grafton, Deepak Chopra, Danielle Steele and more. Scribd is the only unlimited subscription service to include unlimited access to more than one million e-books, audiobooks, and comics, all for $8.99 per month.
The deal brings Penguin Random House Audio’s titles to Scribd, including bestsellers such as The Girl on the Train, Fifty Shades of Grey, Gone Girl, Wild, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and A Game of Thrones; award-winning recordings such as Bill Clinton’s My Life narrated by the former president, John Grisham’s Runaway Jury narrated by Michael Beck, Kathryn Stockett’s The Help narrated by Jenna Lamia, Octavia Spencer, Bahni Turpin, and Cassandra Campbell; and renowned narrators including Christopher Plummer,Diane Keaton, Barbara Walters, Kate Winslet, and more.
“Penguin Random House Audio is one of the world’s most admired publishers, and we are excited to work with them to expand the potential audience for audiobooks by putting thousands of their amazing titles at readers’ fingertips,” said Trip Adler, co-founder and CEO of Scribd. “Since we launched audiobooks last fall, reading time on Scribd has doubled. This is great news for Scribd and for our publishing partners.” –Scribd
The ‘Faceboocalypse’: Publishers See Drop In Facebook Shares – In the wake of reports that Facebook had solidified agreements with several news publishers to directly host their content, a number of news publishers detected a significant drop in Facebook shares for external content in February and March, which drew attention to the fact that Facebook can basically manipulate their algorithms in whatever way they want. Now, in the meantime, Facebook claims that a “bug” was responsible for this shift, if you believe that. Perhaps this bug is first cousin to the bug that tracked non-Facebook users.
April 1 update: Facebook have told Mashable that a bug was behind the fall-off in reach last month. A Facebook representative also contacted NewsWhip with the following statement:
“We experienced an issue with Page Insights logging in February that failed to count some viral reach accurately. Importantly, actual delivery of posts was not affected by this issue; this was a reporting issue only. We identified and resolved this issue in early March and Page Insights are now correctly reporting organic reach. We apologize for any unintended impact this may have had to our partners.” –NewsWhip
WANT TO HELP PREVENT ONLINE BULLYING? COMMENT ON FACEBOOK – Continuing the theme of speech and moderation that GRRM’s post on Hatespeech raised, here is a very interesting piece from Ted’s social media editor, Nadia Goodman, who was in charge of moderating comments to Monica Lewinsky’s Ted talk on online bullying. Goodman describes the immediate reaction the talk got of aggressively personal attacks on Lewinsky, which three moderators tracked through, deleting those they believed “attacked, disrespected or shamed her,” and responding to positive comments in order to push them upthread, intent on providing a safe space for her message. As Goodman describes, after several hours, the entire character of the commenting changed in response to the priorities the moderators set. Goodman’s piece raises a lot of complicated issues around how to balance safety with robust debate, as well as how to differentiate ad hominem attacks from harsh commentary on the issues. I’m not sold on the aggressive nature of her approach, but it’s clear that moderation can shape the nature of discussion and response.
While it took much longer and was much more work for Monica, this is actually how we deal with all negative comment threads. When we clearly show what is and is not acceptable, the tone does change. People who want to share thoughtful comments start to feel that theirs are welcome, and people who want to spew hatred start to realize theirs are not. It may not change people’s reactions, but it does change the sample of voices that chooses to speak up.
I think of that moment of sea change like a sort of herd immunity. The positive voices, when there are enough of them, keep abusive ones from spreading, just as a mostly vaccinated population protects those few people who are not. Together, we have the power to protect the most vulnerable among us. –Ted.com
Tennessee House votes Bible as official state book – And then there’s the Tennessee House of Representatives, which, despite an opinion from the state attorney general that the move violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution (pdf), have voted to make the Bible the official state book. There was an alternative proposal on the table, which was to make Andrew Jackson’s personal Bible the official state book, which supporters thought would bypass the Constitutional issues, because the focus would be on honoring the book’s owner rather than the book itself, but legislators decided that just wasn’t good enough, and instead voted 55-38 for the original bill.
Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris opposed the bill in committee, and he hopes the bill doesn’t pass when it’s considered by the Senate.
“I sure hope it won’t pass. I think it’ll be a dark day for Tennessee if it does,” Norris said.
“All I know is that I hear Satan snickering. He loves this kind of mischief. You just dumb the good book down far enough to make it whatever it takes to make it a state symbol, and you’re on your way to where he wants you.” –The Tennessean
Haha, well… there goes the rest of my free time. At least I can keep practicing art while listening to audiobooks. Yay for more content!
If PRH would add their ebooks to Scribd, I’d be one extremely happy camper.
@Manga Maniac: Me too!
I live in NC but my local TV news comes out of TN. I am very disappointed that they decided to make the Bible TN’s official book. To me they do not seem to care what its against the Constitution, they just want votes next year. “
Looks like I won’t be cancelling my three months of free Scribd after all.
I just have to say, I sincerely appreciate that Dear Author brought Scribed into my life. I was trying to figure out a way to get my Harlequin fix without spending a ton. The membership is totally worth it for not shelling out $40 or more. I am excited about getting the audiobooks though, it will be great for running and trips.
I love my Scribd. I definitely get my money’s worth out of it. I am resigned, though, to listening to the books at home with my WiFi. I find downloading the audio is very problematic on both my Apple and Android products. It loses my place, it won’t open, it takes literally hours to download.
Does anyone else have these audio issues? The books are worth the money to me and those do fine. But it id maddening not being able to listen to the audio away from my WiFi.
I’m still in my 3 months of free trial phase with Scribd (thanks to SBTB!) and am totally loving it so far. I won’t be cancelling when the freebie is up. I’ve glommed a lot of Kristen Ashley and Lorelei James’ backlists.
I listen to audiobooks on the Scribd app on my iPhone, but it is wonky to be sure. I download only the title that I am going to listen to, and I haven’t really noticed it taking too long to download. Then again, I usually start the download before bed, so who knows. Each time I finish listening, I find it works best if I close the entire app before re-opening fresh for the next listen. Most of the time that seems to save my place. Hopefully they work the bugs out and keep adding more titles! Jeaniene Frost’s Cat and Bones series is there in audio, and it’s one of my favorites. Tavia Gilbert does such a fantastic job of bringing all the characters to life.
I love Scribd, too! The audiobooks are, unfortunately, glitchy. I started bookmarking before I stopped playing each time. I’ll try closing the app and see if that helps. Even with the glitches it’s totally worth the monthly payment for me!
@Renda:
Renda, I have similar issues with audiobooks, and I solved my problem the same way Anne did – by bookmarking at the stop point every time I turn it off. It plays fine, and with no problems. However, after I turn it off, and restart it, it will typically not restart at the place I stopped playing, rather, it will move forward to the next chapter beginning. I simply restart by going to bookmarks and starting at the most recent mark.
I hope that they will continue working on the apps. My kindle app is also pretty glitchy – sometimes it simply will not reopen my book no matter how many times I try. I will have to log out and log back in, but doing this causes the downloaded content to disappear, which is problematic if I am not in a location with wifi. Scribd is worth the monthly payment, but I really hope they work out these annoying app issues.
Thanks for the tips, fellow Scribd lovers.
I too have audiobook issues with the Scribd apps. I seem to have less problems with the Android app for whatever reason. Hopefully the update I got yesterday for the iOS app will fix some issues (it mentioned audiobooks specifically).