Thursday 14th July: The Information launches subscriber-only social network

July 14, 2022

Good morning! Esther again as Chris and Peter are travelling back from our team meeting in the Midlands (more on that soon!)

The Information is rolling out a series of features designed to make it easier for its network of influential tech and business subscribers to connect, including a Reddit-like news feed (with up- and down-ranking for articles), direct messaging and a directory. "I think it's clear networking on the internet is a mess," The Information founder and CEO Jessica Lessin told Axios.

Communities are becoming increasingly important to publishers, whether they have subscribers or not. But how do you connect people up? It's something we're looking at here at Media Voices. Linkedin and Facebook Groups were once an answer to this. But continuous algorithm changes have made it impossible to reliably nurture communities and build proper interactions on social media platforms.

This is a really smart move from The Information. The networking features won't be a meaningful revenue driver themselves, but instead will add more value to the site's subscribers.

I deliberately left out the breaking news of Ev Williams leaving Medium yesterday as there wasn't anything especially interesting or useful in the announcement. Now Casey Newton has written up a harsh but fair look at why Williams' departure is significant for Medium, his history of pivots on the platform, and what a leadership shakeup could mean.

Conde Nast (which, remember, is apparently no longer a magazine company) is seeing its print subscriptions growing despite widespread cutbacks of the last year and a shift in focus towards digital output. Snark aside, the structural changes to centralise and build global audiences rather than focusing on regional editions makes total sense.

The BBC has declared a record income of £5.33 billion for 2021-2022, up from £5.06 billion last year. The bulk of the income - £3.8 billion - came from license fees paid for by the public. Interestingly, despite concerns about the decline in the number of people paying for licenses, that figure is up £50 million from last year.

Throwback Thursday:

We've spoken to a fair few founders this year, but this has to be one of my favourite. The Juggernaut founder Snigdha Sur talked about founding a media business with a business background rather than a journalism one, and how her knowledge of media VC and funding has influenced how she runs the publication.

In this Conversations episode we discuss the benefits of systems consolidation, from improved operational efficiency to increased profitability, as well as exploring some of the challenges publishers face when looking to consolidate, and how they can get the process started.