THE STORIES THAT LIT UP OUR MEDIA WORLD THIS MONTH

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Hot on the heels of the closure of NME’s print edition last March, Time Inc. UK has announced that Look magazine will also be shutting down. The final issue, published on 29th May, marked the closure of the Look brand altogether as, unlike NME, it will not be carrying on with a digital edition. Look garnered an impressive reach at its launch with 300,000 copies circulating per week in 2007. This was down to a mere 57,110 in 2017, with the migration of fashion and celebrity content to digital sources cited as a main cause. Time Inc. UK will now focus on growing its Marie Claire brand, which has seen success with its female empowerment initiative, WomanKind, among a new generation of readers.

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The future is looking bright for Twitter as it reported a 28% year-on-year increase in ad revenue this quarter, marking its second profitable quarter in a row. Revenue from non-US markets reached $287 million over the last year, bringing it very close to overtaking US ad revenue, which generated $288 million. Strong growth in the Asia-Pacific region has been fuelled by video in Japan and performance ad products in China. Notably, rising ad revenue also comes as the platform’s number of daily active users has increased 10% year-on-year. Twitter is increasingly the hub for conversation around global events and it appears advertisers are catching on.

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Despite – or perhaps because of – Facebook’s recent privacy scandals, Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Facebook will be putting its users’ data to good use, building ‘real, long-term relationships’ through a Facebook dating app. Matches will be based on common interests, mutual friends and, most importantly, groups and events both users are connected to. This is designed to mirror real-life dating which usually occurs through institutions or events. Zuckerberg has promised that privacy and safety will be front of mind as the app is launched.

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Google Play Music is being replaced by the newly-coined ‘YouTube Music’ in an attempt to take market share away from streaming platform giants Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal. The subscription service will cost $9.99 (£7.40) a month, and will enable users to remove adverts during continued listening, similar to Spotify’s offering. However YouTube stated that this is not setting out to ‘kill Spotify’ but is simply a means of staying competitive in the market. The platform has launched in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea by 22nd May before being rolled out into 14 additional countries at a  later date.