Hanging out with the Crimson crew, a crowd so big tonight that it takes two photographs to get them in:

I talked about leads all day, it seems. Lead stories, leads to stories, why this cold weather was leading us farther and farther away from spring.

Things to read … because we have to wait out this cold somehow.

Is Google making the web stupid?

Google (the source of so much traffic) is under huge pressure from Wall Street to deliver increased profits, and until self-driving cars kick in, the largest share of those earnings is going to come from the ads they sell. To maximize their profit, Google has spent the last nine years aggressively working to increase the share of ads on each page in their search results, as well as working hard to keep as many clicks as they can within the Google ecosystem.

If you want traffic, Google’s arc makes clear to publishers, you’re going to have to pay for it.

Which is their right, of course, but that means that the ad tactics on every other site have to get ever more aggressive, because search traffic is harder to earn with good content. And even more germane to my headline, it means that content publishers are moving toward social and viral traffic, because they can no longer count on search to work for them. It’s this addiction to social that makes the web dumber. If you want tonnage, lower your standards.

So. Are you writing for traffic, or for people?

As ESPN Comes To The iPad, It Drops The SportsCenter Brand From Its Mobile Apps:

Behind the scenes, the app update is part of a larger shift within ESPN as a product and editorial organization that is designed to unify all the different ways readers and viewers consume its content. The goal is to have a consistent experience regardless of which platform or device a person is using.

The ESPN product team is working on a desktop web version of the ESPN site — now in beta — that will look and feel a lot more like its mobile apps. That means taking the same sort of three-column user experience that is now available on the iPad and bringing it to the web.

If that sounds familiar, I’ve been saying it since last year. Nice to know I’m on the right track.

(We assume anything in line with an ESPN plan is on the right track until ESPN discontinues that approach.)

Theory: Snapchat launched an app platform:

Discover may look like content distribution, but instead of “publisher” think “developer,” and instead of “channel” think “app.” And then go through the list of capabilities they can bring.

For some years now, if you thought about it, it has made sense to start thinking of the social media item du jour as a tool rather than a medium unto itself. I don’t know everything about Snapchat, but this sounds like the logical extension of that idea.

This makes a lot of sense, I suppose. Wish I’d thought of it. Discovery Is Latest Cable Net to Stop Touting Live Ratings:

“As time-shifted viewership continues to increase, Live + Same-Day data no longer captures an accurate picture and value of our audience, and the lift from Live + 3 for many of our top programs is significant and growing,” said David Leavy, chief communications officer at Discovery.

The company said its top networks saw a 23% increase on average when accounting for viewership in the three days after a program airs versus the traditional live plus same-day metric among adults 25 to 54.

On the record, preemptive finger pointing, is that a good sign? US Officials Admit Concern Over Syrian Refugee Effort.