Medium nabs Embedly to add to its list of publisher tools

Medium announced today that it has acquired Embed.ly to support publishers with backend APIs for embedding content.

Embed.ly supports writers by providing analytics on content and customized recommendations and promotions. Their APIs are currently used by an all-star list of publishers including The New York Times, NPR, and The Atlantic. Companies like Reddit and Airbnb also use the service.

At this point, the company is servicing 500 million API requests per month. The team will continue to operate independently of Medium and is currently pursuing innovations in embedding native video.

The analytics features of Embed.ly let publishers see who is clicking on what, and the number of plays and minutes watched for video.

“We want publishers to understand why content is doing well,” said Kate Mason, head of communications for Medium.

Medium is doubling down on publisher tools. Earlier this year the company acquired Superfeedr, a company that produces APIs to help produce feeds quickly and push them to the right places.

As part of its services, Medium rolled out a beta monetization program allowing users to promote stories as an advertising unit. Additionally, the company has a membership program that enables content creators to lock some content behind a paywall.

At a greater level, Embed.ly has consistently strived to standardize embedded content to make life easier for both content creators and content consumers.

“The problem with embeded content is that there are no good standards,” said Sean Creeley, co-founder of Embed.ly. “We want what appears amazing on Medium to look great on WordPress VIP and other platforms. Medium gives us the ability and platform to create really great open standards around embeds.”

To date, the company has raised $1.02 million in both equity and debt financing from Y Combinator, SV Angel, Lowercase Capital, and others. According to PitchBook, the company’s most recent valuation was $3.9 million in 2011.

Facebook India makes it tough to remove offensive content

NEW DELHI: Facebook, the world's largest social network, has made it tougher for offensive content to be taken down and will do so only if it gets a legal or government notice, in keeping with a recent Supreme Court ruling.

"We have changed our process. So now, before we restrict content in India for illegality, we require that the government submit legal process to us and we scrutinise that with our legal teams," Facebook's global policy head Monika Bickert told ET by phone. "We would not restrict the content if somebody in the community, somebody outside the government, flagged that content."

India had 14,971 content restriction requests in the July-December period, second only to France, and down from 15,155 requests in the first half of 2015, according to aFacebook report released on Thursday. The take-down calls were made by legal and government agencies as well as NGOs and Facebook members. The numbers in the next report will reflect Facebook's decision to act only on legal or government requests.

India also made the second highest requests for user data at 5,561, after the US, which made 19,235 such demands. Facebook gives users the option to flag or report objectionable content including posts, photos, messages, comments, profiles, events and pages. Content is blocked or taken down if it violates Facebook's community standards. Bickert clarified that the new rules do not mean that people can no longer report offensive content.