As has been the case for months, a new Wordle challenge has gone to the top of the Topics of the Moment from American Twitter this Tuesday morning. In the platform’s description, “People try to guess today’s five-letter word in six tries or less in Wordle puzzle.”
But this time a parallel topic appeared, for the acquisition of Wordle by the New York Times. The reference tweet is from the profile NYTimes Wordplay, for self-congratulatory text noting that, “in less than six months, Wordle has gone from a gift to a viral sensation and to be an official part of the NYT’s portfolio”.
Highlights praise made by John Wardle, who created the game, “I have long admired the NYT’s approach to the quality of their games”. The newspaper speaks of “a few million”, but in the tech sector, as recorded by Kevin Fox, creator of Gmail, the estimate is that Wardle received “between $2-4 million!“.
The immediate reaction, on the platform itself, was anger at the prospect that Worldle will be charged later on. According to the NYT itself, “the game will remain free, initially”.
The American newspaper has been making acquisitions of prominent assets on search and social media platforms, such as The Athletic, a fan site that focuses on club coverage, with hundreds of industry players, and Wirecutter, a product recommendation site.
The strategy was accentuated with the end of the “Trump bump”, as the skyrocketing signatures and audience with the years of campaign and government of the former president are called. Revenue recovery under Donald Trump underpins new acquisitions.
Former NYT media columnist Ben Smith, leaving to create a website of his own, launched criticism of American journalism that today works “through the lens of social media”, algorithmically serving the lowest common denominator.
Among journalists from the NYT itself, the case of Katherine Rosman, who covers media and celebrities, in a tweet shared by Smith, one risk is that the Wordle fever will go “end soon“.
APARTHEID
Major American newspapers avoided going to the home page, but Google Trends’ top five US searches included an aggregation of Israel, Amnesty International, Palestinians and Apartheid.
The first link highlighted by the platform was from the NBC network, “Amnesty joins others to accuse Israel of imposing apartheid on Palestinians”, followed by the Boston Globe, “Amnesty joins human rights groups to accuse Israel of apartheid”.
On the other hand, also in the thread links, “Amnesty accuses Israel of apartheid and in return is labeled as anti-Semitic”, on CNN, and “Israel’s anger at Amnesty’s claims of apartheid”, on the Financial Times.
Source: Folha
