Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
In May, a Vanity Fair article about Bill Simmons’s departure from ESPN said that Grantland had 6 million unique visitors in March but that “ESPN’s internal numbers … had the site reaching 10 million uniques in April.” Late last year, The Wall Street Journal noted that Buzzfeed had 74.6 million monthly uniques, but that its…
On the first Friday in May, a line of advertising and media people stretched down New York’s West 22nd Street, waiting to hear from Shane Smith, the 45-year-old bearded and bearish co-founder of Vice. One of the media world’s most flamboyant ceos had an announcement to make. The occasion was the Digital Content NewFronts, a…
It’s hack week at Vox Media, and Melissa Bell is in her element. The meetup, which is taking place in downtown Philadelphia, has drawn more than 90 employees, all hoping to come up with the next innovation for the company, whether it’s a virtual reality application or interactive video. Bell, the company’s newly named vp…
If we know one thing about the media business right now, it’s that hardly anyone wants to be just a publisher any more. Everyone would much rather be a platform—or, failing that, hook up with a giant platform like Facebook FB that can achieve the kind of social distribution required in today’s media environment. For…
Circa, a news app, will cease publishing circa now, according to a post from its co-founder Matt Galligan on Medium titled “Farewell to Circa News.” This announcement follows days of drama surrounding the news app’s fate, which abruptly stopped updating on Monday, leaving at least one reader very confused. But now we have our answer:…
Farewell to Circa News It’s with great disappointment that we let you know that Circa News has been put on indefinite hiatus. Producing high-quality news can be a costly endeavor and without the capital necessary to support further production we are unable to continue. Our mission was always to create a news company where factual,…
Mobile news service Circa, which attracted lots of attention in media circles but had limited traction with users, is shutting down. Founder Matt Galligan says the company, which stopped updating its news app on Monday, is on “indefinite hiatus” and says his remaining employees will need new jobs. Circa raised at least $4 million since…
Is it possible comment sections aren’t as terrible as many journalists believe? That’s the argument of a new study, “A Tale of Two Stories from “Below the Line”: Comment Fields at the Guardian,” just published in the July issue of The International Journal of Press/Politics. Of course, in the slow-moving world of academia, a “new”…
SourcepointBen Barokas, Sourcepoint co-founder and CEO. Ad blocker use is on the rise. More and more ways of letting people block ads are being introduced to market. Apple, for instance, will allow ad blocking on iPhones, and there is a mobile phone service carrier plan to allow ad blocking across entire networks. Ad blocking poses an…
paging_filter This viral content site drew almost 50 million unique visitors last August. What happened next will surprise you. Upworthy, the website that made its name re-packaging heartfelt liberal content for maximum shareability on social media, is shifting its focus to the production of original content, laying off six staffers in the process. “Three years…