Storyful Sold

IRE60

Well done Storyful:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/dec/20/news-corp-buys-storyful-social-news

Nice little earner for the founders I hope.

Loafing Oaf

Kudos to Mark and the team. I must admit to being admit skeptical about the Storyful business model as I understood it but obviously this vindicates them. I'm sure this 'real-world' success gives Mark more satisfaction than any amount of US election reporting and whatever for RTE.

I work in 'media analysis' so not a million miles from Storyful but I've never heard of them recruiting.

IRE60

Yea, I be with you there. Couldn't for the life of me understand what they were at when they set out, but perhaps that was their fault in communication.
But I get it now and its a good space to be in, and a good space if you're the first.
Yea - 18 bars will always overshadow US election results!

MidlandsM

It's a good new story alright..........well done to him.

Eamon Dunphy has egg on his face now, he branded Mark Little as a Whinger once.



what does Storyful do exactly? Do they deliver "ready to print" story content for papers is it? Therefore papers can keep they costs down and buy in content cheaper than generate it themselves?

SpaceTime

I think it's actually really good news for the Irish indigenous tech sector as it shows that we can produce some decent online services here with our own talent pool.
It also says quite a lot for the quality of Irish journalism and media outlets that we have that pool to start with.

Imagine if we'd put even 10% of the money we'd borrowed for the property bubble into quality tech and biopharma startups instead of selling each other badly designed piles of blocks at rip off prices.

Well done to the team at Storyful, I look forward to seeing the next venture!

PS : if you've any decent techie / comms jobs going please do feel free to PM me

Loafing Oaf

MidlandsM wrote: »

It's a good new story alright..........well done to him.

Eamon Dunphy has egg on his face now, he branded Mark Little as a Whinger once.



what does Storyful do exactly? Do they deliver "ready to print" story content for papers is it? Therefore papers can keep they costs down and buy in content cheaper than generate it themselves?

News Corp said Storyful would continue to work with existing customers, which include its own title the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, New York Times, YouTube, ITN and Channel 4 News.
Storyful discovers, verifies, acquires and distributes video and user-generated content to its partners.

Obviously news organisations would be doing this stuff for themselves in any case, but Storyful evidently makes the process more scientific. You wonder if News Corp are adopting a scattergun approach to tech, going around frantically buying up and investing in startups in the hope of hitting on the next big thing, but clearly Mark doesn't care about that...

SpaceTime

The problem for organisations like News Corp is that they can see the print media's income is dwindling and that more and more content is going on line.

They can leverage their TV assets to provide a lot of interactive and online content which will keep them afloat and profitable but they absolutely need to find some way of grasping the whole online media / social media sector as they fundamentally do not understand it.

News Corp has a vast array of publications, and I would strongly suspect that many of them are nearing the end of their profitable lifespans.
So far, very few print outlets have made a successful transition to online.

There are a few examples of good online content, apps etc, but the revenue stream that was produced by print is gone.

So, yeah, I would absolutely think that News Corp and others are buying up small startups to see if they can strike gold or come up with a new formula to take their older publications into a new paradigm entirely.

I don't think any of the old media houses fully understand the online world and they are increasingly aware of just how vast their knowledge gap is. There was a period of ignorance and arrogance from print media management but, the dawn of very portable devices like iPads and other tablets and ultra portable laptops has really hit them *VERY* hard.

The next big hit will be television news. The rolling 24/7/365 news channel model will have to become much, much more on-demand and interactive.
To be fair to News Corp, they have innovated a lot in this with Sky News on demand etc, but there's a LONG way to go and I think when you see a really workable interactive TV platform emerge in the next 24-48 months, that will really change!

Current set-top-box interactivity isn't very developed and the current generation of smart TVs are mostly abysmally badly designed to the point that many of them have almost unusable software.

A VERY big shift will happen in the coming months when either Apple or Google (quite likely both) launches something usable.
You could also see something emerging from Spotify or someone like that.

The likes of News Corp, Time-Warner (CNN etc), Viacom, CBS Corp, even BBC etc etc etc all have HUGE news gathering resources. However, they need to find a way to move that to a new platform and move it quickly or they're in big trouble.

IRE60

A fella from the Guardian on a doc last night said that Twitter was excellent in the first five minutes of an incident – but absolute rubbish in the proceeding 12 hours. He went on to site the amazing real time coverage in the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombs which then descended into conspiracy theories and tweets from self made twitter detectives that ‘outed’ the totally wrong people in the following few hours.

Storyful is a verification system – a ‘story’ pops upon a social media site and they go to great lengths to verify/deny it for their clients and limits their exposure to defamation/ridicule jumping on the bandwagon without (as all good hacks were taught) checking their facts.

Look at the terrible Twitter spikes around the late Brian Lenihan who ‘died’ three times on twitter before he actually passed away. On one occasion, if memory serves me correctly, he responded in person to one of the rumours to simply quell it.

I think Spacetime makes some very valid points; the most salient of these is the arrogance, in the main within the printed media, showed the rise of the “interweb”. I was part of the ship (not, thankfully at the tiller) and the distain and ignorant attitude shown to the web was amazing. And I suggest not fully vanished as well. I can say that having jettisoned that ship some time back.

Some companies namely the LA Times and the FT have made major inroads to a digital first strategy and made plenty of money on the back of it. You only have to look at the penetration of smartphones, currently at about 55% share of the mobile market here and the shipments of tablets and other larger sim free handhelds to see which direction the market is moving.

But, back to the point – the one thing that news organisations have is (most of the time) great news gathering skills. They have to harness this and be content driven, unique content.

Diving behind a paywall with content that people will scale the wall for is the trick.

But as a race we are a strange bunch. 40% of all Europeans will pay on average around €1 per day to buy a newspaper – every day of the year – but are repulsed at paying €50 for an online subscription to the same publication.

The real problem there is that the newspapers have put two distinct currencies on their product. The ‘real world’ product in this country comes in at around €1.50 to €2. They, through their arrogance and fundamental misunderstanding of the web, put a price on their online offering – free.

Their choice, their mistake.

Evan DietrichSmith

Have to say I thought Mark Little was a bit mad when he left RTE for this.

Like many times before, I was wrong.

Good call .

Aidric

Very pleased for Mark Little on the realisation of his vision, a consummate professional.

monument

IRE60 wrote: »

Couldn't for the life of me understand what they were at when they set out, but perhaps that was their fault in communication.

From talking to a lot of people back when Storyful was fairly new and they still had a daily updated website: It was a common problem that many consumers / media heads / journalists / etc looked at the site the public site and wondered 'is that it?' or asked 'how are you going to make money out of that'.

What most people did not see was the Storyful business-to-business service (and all the tech, research and journalism processes which came with that product).

It thankfully turned out that it did not matter what most people in Ireland or elsewhere did or did not know. Storyful targeted the international newsrooms and services which mattered when it came to their offering and their offering has garnered the attention of more than a few of the people who matter.

Well done to them!

keane2097

Anybody know what in the world this is about?