Monday, November 13, 2006
How Topix founders have raised the bar
Out of all the news and information site avalible on the web, topix has seemed to have found a way to outsmart the competition. The site itself is not run by journalists, or supported by a team of traditional information gatherers. Instead this highly popular news site is run by Chris Tolles and Rich Skrenta, a couple of really smart and detailed oreinted "techies." The question I kept asking myself as I read that the net worth of topix is valued at 64 million dollars is:"How did two people who were not groomed in the journalism feild become so succussful in from a news site?" Well after reading the entire article it semmed to have come down to paying attention to the fine details and working hard to constantly re-evaluate, reinvent and adjust topix into a user friendly and demographic relevent site.
"We might be lay people, but we can study the field," "That's what programmers do. This statment sums up what Rich skrenta and Chris Tolles do to excell in an unnatural feild, they learn everything they can about it and try to do it better than anyone else. What they really did was reinvent the box, and they did this in a few different ways. First and formost they intrusted mathamatical algorythmns to gather and agrogate local, national and world news from a variety of online sources. This descicion to intrust computers to do the job of what had up until this point been done by a human online editor was a quinntiessial decision and has proved to be the corner stone of the operation. First, if a computer gathers the info, no human can be held accountable for it's content. This creats a buffer between topix founders and anyone who would grip over the sites content. They can always hide behind the code. Second by constantly updating and refining the algorthymns topix founders have been able to keep the operation simple compaired to newsgroups who have to hire many more employees just to deal with and orginize the information gathered. In comparision these algorthymns are doing to internet editors what mass production did to factory workers in the earluy 1900's. It's an example of how programmers are creating competition between humans and technology. Topix founders have coded information gathering programs well enough to have the content relevent to the demographic that views it. This happends in a few ways.
The site operates with cookies, as most sites do. The difference with topix is that they use the info gathered by the cookies to its potential. Lets say you like music and the first few times you visited topix you found yopur way to music revelent content. Well the next time you visit the site you can expect music content to be featured on the topix site just for you where you sister who is more interested in the love and love lost in hollywood would find featured gossip colomns on her topix front page. Keeping it relevent and consistaint is what keeps people clicking back to topix. Another detail orentied improvment was in the advertising.
It is such a turn off to read an article only to have a loosly realated ad shoved in your face. At least make the ad more relevent. I think of a fine retailer whose montra is not the hard sell but rather to make people aware of what they might need. The topix founders shared a rather humerous examples of bad ad relevence. The one that sticks out in my mind was the story of a washed up suit case full of body parts on the hudson. The accompanying ad was for, you guessed it luggage! Man I had a good laugh at that one. what shut me up was the idea the topix guys used to raise ad revenue. If you have a review of a cd, then make the cd avalible for sale on that same page. It seems like a no brainer but so many sites don't go that extra mile the way the topix guys do.
What topix has done is found a good balance between human and technology based descisions. By finding this happy medium they have maximized the potetial which keeping their payroll surprisingly low. Hats off to these visionaries.
"We might be lay people, but we can study the field," "That's what programmers do. This statment sums up what Rich skrenta and Chris Tolles do to excell in an unnatural feild, they learn everything they can about it and try to do it better than anyone else. What they really did was reinvent the box, and they did this in a few different ways. First and formost they intrusted mathamatical algorythmns to gather and agrogate local, national and world news from a variety of online sources. This descicion to intrust computers to do the job of what had up until this point been done by a human online editor was a quinntiessial decision and has proved to be the corner stone of the operation. First, if a computer gathers the info, no human can be held accountable for it's content. This creats a buffer between topix founders and anyone who would grip over the sites content. They can always hide behind the code. Second by constantly updating and refining the algorthymns topix founders have been able to keep the operation simple compaired to newsgroups who have to hire many more employees just to deal with and orginize the information gathered. In comparision these algorthymns are doing to internet editors what mass production did to factory workers in the earluy 1900's. It's an example of how programmers are creating competition between humans and technology. Topix founders have coded information gathering programs well enough to have the content relevent to the demographic that views it. This happends in a few ways.
The site operates with cookies, as most sites do. The difference with topix is that they use the info gathered by the cookies to its potential. Lets say you like music and the first few times you visited topix you found yopur way to music revelent content. Well the next time you visit the site you can expect music content to be featured on the topix site just for you where you sister who is more interested in the love and love lost in hollywood would find featured gossip colomns on her topix front page. Keeping it relevent and consistaint is what keeps people clicking back to topix. Another detail orentied improvment was in the advertising.
It is such a turn off to read an article only to have a loosly realated ad shoved in your face. At least make the ad more relevent. I think of a fine retailer whose montra is not the hard sell but rather to make people aware of what they might need. The topix founders shared a rather humerous examples of bad ad relevence. The one that sticks out in my mind was the story of a washed up suit case full of body parts on the hudson. The accompanying ad was for, you guessed it luggage! Man I had a good laugh at that one. what shut me up was the idea the topix guys used to raise ad revenue. If you have a review of a cd, then make the cd avalible for sale on that same page. It seems like a no brainer but so many sites don't go that extra mile the way the topix guys do.
What topix has done is found a good balance between human and technology based descisions. By finding this happy medium they have maximized the potetial which keeping their payroll surprisingly low. Hats off to these visionaries.
