According to a recent report, four of Malaysia’s most established content sites have joined forces to build a new social content site. The site will be run with the help of AI.
The decision to develop the site was driven by pressure for higher traffic numbers (i.e., a greater number of users).
The shift in Malaysian online media consumption and advertiser priorities towards websites that focus on fast viral content has resulted in an unexpected partnership — online portals have expressed excitement over the announcement of the site’s launch.
Officially, the site has been branded as a new social content aggregator news site.
In just three days after a soft launch on 28th March 2019, the site has already garnered 40,000 pageviews, as a dual-language social news site for Malaysians to get their daily fill of:
- Lifestyle news
- Current trends
- Tech news & insights
- Socio-political insights
- Legal info & education
A few short years ago, the online portals that created the site were individual trailblazers, riding the then-new wave of online media. The portals amassed users and followers for their new and innovative approaches to content in their respective areas of focus. However, over the last 12 months, the companies noticed a trend of traffic moving towards fast, sensationalist articles.
Advertisers have followed suit, looking for ever more highly trafficked sites, to post their ads to the widest audiences.
Thus, this new platform was idealised as a solution to the problems above, leveraging on the companies’ existing strengths with a focus on a fast turnaround and guaranteed virality. In three days since launch, the site has already garnered 40,000 views.
The companies’ existing writers have been employed from each parent site to deliver the necessary content. Moreover, they have received training on how to maximise speed and efficiency in their writing — focusing on search engine optimisation (SEO) and optimising reach at any cost.
However, it expected that in the near future the site will not even need writers (at least not in the capacity that it currently does).
With one of the parent companies’ proprietary AI-based writing technology, CV Control, which finds content online, and instantly writes an article with minimal human intervention, the need for human writers is minimised.
The co-founder of the firm that is providing the proprietary AI-based writing technology detailed the process of the development and maintenance of the site, noting that since it is a “numbers game”, greater traffic equates to quality.
In addition, the co-founder noted that clients appear to be fine with the trade-off, seeing as the focus is maximising numbers. Thus, the CV Control technology is being trialled to determine whether it can be used to deliver results faster than human journalists.
One of the heads of the partnering firms emphasised the importance of adapting to change. It was noted that in order for businesses to survive (content producers, in particular) they will need to focus their resources on optimising their processes and evolving with the time. That is, keeping pace with the dynamic rate of change of the technological landscape and how it relates to content production and the extension of a company’s reach.
Ultimately, the focus is on survival and evolution. It was noted that if businesses fail to evolve and incorporate, if not model their businesses around, technology and innovation they risk extinction.