Digital publishers love people that notice their work - I mean, who doesn’t? There are “creators” that will create UGC for your brand. The “engagers” that will share your posts, and of course, the “commenters” that keep your online community alive. 
 

Over the last 6 weeks Facebook has both banned and reversed course on news content in Australia. This is scary! It demonstrated that publishers are at the whims of Facebook for traffic and, in turn, revenue and audience.  

Although Facebook has since reversed its decision, the message is clear: Facebook isn't always a dependable platform for publishers to reach their audience. 

Disqus, like many of our publishers, partners with Google to monetize ad inventory. The recent announcements and blog posts from Google (and others) can often be hard to interpret.  

Advertising funds the continued operations of most of the modern web. One of the most important things you can do is ensure you are working with vendors that are partnering to provide you continued access to a competitive marketplace of suppliers. We wanted to share our early thoughts and some helpful advice.  

Welcome back to Volume 5 of our What We’re Reading blog post series! This series aims to share our favorite articles, posts, and reports, relevant to the growing world of digital publishing, with our publishers, readers, and commenters. If you haven’t done so already, you can check out our last post in the series here. As always, we love to hear your opinions about these articles and others that you are reading. So, be sure to share your thoughts with us below in the comments! 

Our What We’re Reading blog series is back with a fresh batch of insightful articles for you! In case you need a reminder, this series highlights our favorite articles, topics, and reports relevant to digital publishing to help our readers, publishers, and blog subscribers stay up to date with the latest information and news. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3 for some great additional reads. We’d love to hear your feedback about the articles and how the topics may be impacting your business.  Now... let’s get right into it, shall we?

We recently polled readers and commenters about whether or not they pay for online news and why. By examining the current sentiment around paying for news, we hope to provide publishers with insights that will help them build successful businesses supported by loyal, engaged readers. Today, we’re sharing the results of our research and summarizing the feedback readers provided.

Back in November, we asked readers if they would rather pay for content and never see ads or have all content be free and ad-supported. The poll generated 4,719 votes, with the majority of respondents (80.4%) saying they prefer that all content be free and ad-supported. While it was not surprising to see that most readers preferred that all content be free, nearly 1 in 5 respondents indicated they wouldn't mind paying for content if it meant that they never had to see ads.

Recently, we polled readers and commenters about the reasons why they downvote comments. While we often get feedback about how downvotes work on Disqus, it’s less common for us to hear about why people downvote comments. By understanding these motivations and goals, this paves the way towards improving how voting works in the future. Today, we’re sharing the results of our research and summarizing the feedback you provided.

Before we start, there is something we should state upfront: the ability to downvote comments in Disqus never went away. You can still downvote comments which will affect the order they appear in a discussion when using the Best sort. We simply hide how many downvotes a comment has received and only show the total upvotes.

Welcome to volume 2 of our, What We’re Reading, blog post series. In case you missed our last post, this is a new series where we aim to share our favorite articles, posts, and reports, relevant to digital publishing, with our publishers, readers, and blog subscribers. As always, we love to hear your opinions about these articles and others that you are reading. So, be sure to share your thoughts in a comment below.