Yes, Facebook is a media company

Dear Mark,

We get it.

We understand why you don’t want to call Facebook a media company.

Your investors don’t want to invest in a media company, they want to invest in a technology company. Your best-and-brightest engineers? They don’t want to work at a media company.

And we’re not even going to mention Trending Topicgate here, because that would be rude.

But here’s the deal. When you gather people’s attention*, and sell that attention to advertisers, guess what? You’re a media company.

And you’re really good at it. Really, really good. Billions of dollars a quarter good.

Frankly, it makes us more than a little jealous that you’re so good at being a media company while insisting you’re not a media company.

We wish we were this good at not being a media company.

We know you’re not going to give on this one — Google never did, either. And now the two of you are dividing up the media business you insist you’re not in.

But as you’re collecting billions of dollars of advertising a quarter, we wish you could, you know, wink or nudge or ... something? Just once?

It would make us feel a little better.

Sincerely yours,

The media companies

* With content you get for free.** Which is amazing!

** Practically speaking. Though we’re happy to keep taking some of the few dollars you do spend on content.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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