FIR #516: Your New Shadow Website

About this episode

The episode discusses The Economist's experiment with an AI-friendly shadow website and its implications for communicators.

The Economist has gone public with an experiment: it has created a shadow website featuring an AI-friendly version of its front-of-paywall content. The idea is to improve the odds of this content surfacing in AI answers and responses to AI queries. It’s based on a new standard, llms.txt, which has been described as the robot.txt of AI. What does this mean for communicators? Neville and Shel break it down in this short midweek episode. Links from this episode: The Economist tests AI-ready web pages The Economist prepares for a two‑track internet: one for humans and one for AI agents The Economist is testing content read by AI agents How The Economist is using AI to extend its global reach The next version of the web will be built for machines, not humans The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, June 22. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s…

People in this episode

Hosts: Neville, Shel

Topics covered

• AI-friendly content
• shadow website
• communication strategies
• The Economist
• llms.txt
• web standards
• future of the internet

Keywords

• shadow website
• AI
• The Economist
• llms.txt
• communication
• web content
• internet standards

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The Economist, FIR Podcast Network, Facebook, AI

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