NY Times teams with Google parent to tame comments

NEW YORK, United States — The New York Times said Tuesday it was teaming with Google parent Alphabet in an effort to help filter its online reader comments to maintain a “civil and thoughtful” atmosphere.

The newspaper said it would work with Jigsaw, a technology incubator at Alphabet, to improve and expand its comments section.

The move comes amid frustration at many media organizations which have been seeking to boost reader engagement without allowing abusive and offensive comments.

“Maintaining a civil and thoughtful comments section is no easy undertaking, as evidenced by the number of publishers who have shut down their comment capabilities in recent years,” said Kinsey Wilson, the editor for innovation and strategy at the Times.

“But the Times has been and will continue to be dedicated to providing our readers with a safe online community to discuss the most important issues.”

Currently, the prestigious daily employees a team of 14 moderators who manually review some 11,000 comments each day. Only about 10 percent of Times articles are open to comments because of the time required for review.

Jigsaw uses algorithms to help this process, based on the moderated comments in the newspaper’s archives. The open-source system will also be made available to other online publishers, according to the statement.

“We believe open sourcing nearly a decade of Times comment archives will benefit the entire journalism industry and potentially make it easier for other publishers to manage comments on their sites,” Wilson said.

The Times “hopes that the project will expand viewpoints, provide a safe platform for diverse communities to have diverse discussions and allow readers’ voices to be an integral part of nearly every piece of reporting,” according to a Times statement.

In 2014, The Washington Post and The New York Times agreed to work together on a project funded by the Knight Foundation to create open-source software that can be adapted for news websites to get a better handle on online discussions.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Global Markets: Alphabet set to open at record high; mobile ads drive revenue

New revenue streams such as mobile and video advertising should continue to propel earnings of Google parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), whose shares were set to open at a record high on Friday following better-than-expected results, analysts said.

The company's search traffic on mobiles surpassed desktop traffic worldwide for the first time in the latest quarter.

Alphabet's shares were up nearly 10 percent at $746.95 in premarket trading, far above the $713.33 record high set by Google - the company's former name - in regular trading in July.

A 10 percent rise equates to about $46 billion in market value. This would give Alphabet a market cap of about $519 billion, cementing its position as the second-most valuable stock after Apple Inc (AAPL.O), worth about $660 billion.

Shares of Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), which also posted better-than-expected quarterly results on Thursday, also jumped in premarket trading, pushing up U.S. stock index futures.

At least 14 brokerages raised price targets on Alphabet's stock on Friday. J.P. Morgan and Jefferies were the most bullish, both raising their targets to $900.

"We think it's not long before mobile clicks surpass desktop, which we expect will provide a nice tailwind to cost-per-clicks, magnified by a tighter gap between mobile and desktop ad pricing," J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth said.

Alphabet said the number of paid clicks, which require advertisers to pay only if a user clicks on the ad, rose 23 percent, compared with 18 percent in the previous quarter.

With rivals such as Facebook Inc (FB.O) nipping at its heels, Alphabet had been trying to pump up advertising revenue from its mobile and video businesses, which have been much less profitable than its desktop business.

In a sign the company was becoming more sensitive to shareholders, Alphabet also announced on Thursday a $5.1 billion share buyback, its first ever.

Alphabet's new transparent reporting structure, to come into effect in the current quarter, also shows the company is becoming more shareholder-friendly, analysts said.

"The market has wanted four things from GOOGL – consistent revenue growth, margin stabilization, greater disclosure and cash back. What the market wants, the market gets," said RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney.  — Reuters