Axel Springer Acquires Business Insider | Hacker News Reader

Axel Springer Acquires Business Insider

axelspringer.de

65 pointsjayzalowitz25 comments

When I see the stuff posted on Facebook from Buzzfeed, Business Insider, Mashable, etc., I'm reminded of an interview with Steve Jobs from the mid-90's, pulled from another HN thread:

A lot of times we think “Why is the television programming so bad? Why are television shows so demeaning, so poor?” The first thought that occurs to you is “Well, there is a conspiracy: the networks are feeding us this slop because its cheap to produce. [...] but the truth of the matter, if you study it in any depth, is that networks absolutely want to give people what they want so that they will watch the shows. If people wanted something different, they would get it. And the truth of the matter is that the shows that are on television, are on television because that’s what people want. [...] And that’s far more depressing than a conspiracy. Conspiracies are much more fun than the truth of the matter, which is that the vast majority of the public are pretty mindless most of the time.

I want to hate these publications, but the truth of the matter is that if I could run a financially successful blog catering to the crap that people will get somewhere else if not from me, I'd be happy to do it.

So you're right there's a lot of low quality stuffy on Buzzfeed, but also some amazing pieces of journalism. Business Insider is at NY Post levels most of the time. I can't even think of something I read on Business Insider that was both accurate (and I don't mean technically accurate, I mean addressed the main issue of the story) and more than 500 words long. That being said it's been so bad that I actively avoid BI links, it's possible that the ones I don't click are better.

Buzzfeed, for all the flack they take, makes it quite obvious that that the article is going to be of a certain quality from the title. "7 tricks..." is actually great because I know I don't need to click.

You should understand that Axel Springer AG is the parent company of Bild, a German conservative populist type sensationalist newspaper and publication that fits almost perfectly with Business Insider. If anything, I think AS may be looking to learn from BI's social media chops and elevate Bild's niveau. In case you are wondering, Bild is very much the same as you described Buzzfeed and BI. It's often dismissed and scoffed at but their sales and views are what every newspaper publisher dreams wet dreams of. The undeniable reality though is that beyond the sensationalism and the NSFA(merican)W nature, they also have broken open many political and economic scandal.

Yes, but there are a lot of people who are fed up with the kinds of online media you described. While clickbait works, it's not the only thing that does. It's just the cheapest.

When I get upset about low-quality media, I just remember it's not intended for me.

In Brave New World, did the alphas and betas spend their time complaining about the terrible dumb entertainment produced for the deltas and epsilons? No, they understood that it wasn't intended for them, it would be silly to complain about it.

One year ago, they did this expose on Tesla:

http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-the-origin-story-2014-1...

I remember being shocked that anything worth reading would have been written by BI.

Ugh. Such a piece of trash organization that sadly represents today's "new" media. Mostly just useless clickbait (eg, headline reads "Stock Crashing!" when it's down like 5.5%) and re-posting of other real organizations' work, like Reuters and the AP. Or some worthless anecdote crafted into an "article" written by some horrible 24 year old about why Abercrombie & Fitch is "really" struggling. BI is the remora fish of the "news" world. All with the occasional laughably wrong piece by Henry Blodget on Apple, or the stock market.

Oh well, whatever. Hell of a second act for that guy.

Sounds like a perfect fit. Axel Springer publishes "Bild" in Germany which is essentially the written version of click bait/sensationalism.

While plenty of their articles are useless clickbait, they have earned my respect by also writing a high % of the articles that I find useful and interesting. Searched my gmail to find the last article of theirs I sent around: http://www.businessinsider.com/share-of-media-time-spent-201...

That's not even an article, it's a single graph. An unsourced one at that, with no methodology provided. It is essentially worthless eye-candy.

> an unsourced one at that

"Source: eMarketer, April 2014"

Seriously?? That is a single chart, free of commentary, quotes, context...anything. And it's sourced from - shock - yet another "real" organization! Meanwhile, look at the rest of the page. It's entirely banner ads, sponsored content, clickbait about what Ann Coulter thinks of Donald Trump, and other drivel ("Forget Shake Shack — this is the burger chain everyone is talking about").

I'm telling you, 95% of what BI employees do is scan news from actual companies, then repost it. It's a sad state of affairs that BI is worth almost as much as Tribune, and not terribly less than the New York Times.

I know of plenty really worthy startups solving real business problems, who struggle to survive or went out of business, because they could not get more financing.

And then you have investors throwing a lot of money at a laughable, trashy "news" media outlet.

I just don't understand this world anymore.

haha indeed! Then we also have these stupid investors throwing money at some kids renting out their homes for some little money, we have hotels for that kind of stuff!

There is an issue with startups in that we are constantly fed the line that we must aspire to be billion dollar companies or we won't get funding. This puts the focus on the wrong areas if we want to solve hard (real) problems. It's much easier to build a company that makes money than one that solves the difficult problems we are facing today. Almost all VC style investors like to roll out the billion dollar line. I believe in building things that help the world and her people even if it is not a billion dollar idea. Not all worthwhile ideas are profitable. If I am successful the billion dollars will be a (an admittedly welcome) side effect but I can't get excited by it being a goal and I'm hesitant on working with people who do get excited by it.

To put it another way no one is going to remember you because you bought a sports car.

Right - but Business Insider, unlike a the "really worthy startups," don't actually provide a lot of value to the world.

BI did.

Different generation consumes news differently. I am the "newspapers" generation, but I found BI useful. If it is clickbait, I just skip it. The UI/UX makes easy to skip things you don't like. Try to do that on a piece of newspaper...

With that said, I did skip a lot on BI. I go to BI because of its fast updates and maybe just a habit.

> Oh well, whatever. Hell of a second act for that guy.

And a much more legal one, too. For those that don't know the history on Blodget, you should look it up. He's barred for life from the securities industry. Silicon Valley really is the place for second chances. He played this game of musical chairs correctly.

> Silicon Valley really is the place for second chances.

Silicon Valley is also a place where using misinformation to manipulate the price of securities is the local trade, rather than something that will get you in trouble with the authorities.

In fairness to the prosecutors, it is really, really hard to prove insider trading cases. You have to prove, with evidence, that the person traded on confidential information. Short of already wiretapping someone's phone or email, that's hard to prove. That said, I still can't believe the number of people who stupidly send out this information over email or text, rather than face to face.

interesting comparable: AOL purchased huffington post in february 2011 for $315MM and at the time they had 25MM monthly unique visitors which equates to $12.60 per monthly unique.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/07/aol-huffington-post...

business insider is selling for $442MM with 76MM monthly uniques = $5.81/monthly-unique.

so, on a per-monthly-unique basis, business insider is selling for less than half of huffington post.

Probably because growth trend. I remember when HuffPost was acquired it was a pretty hot property, so I'm sure they were growing fast. Like BuzzFeed today. comScore jan 2015 says "The Huffington Post has 214 million monthly unique visitors globally on a multiplatform basis.", so growth has been 10x (i know the metric isn't really the same, but for the sake of the argument) in 4 years since the acquisition. Not bad.

> "Business Insider has set new standards in digital business journalism globally"

I guess that's one way of putting it...

Interesting side note, Axel Springer has been suing the makers of Adblock Plus: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/29/us-axel-sprngr-adb...

I guess Axel didn't do his due diligence.

http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/the-truth-about-bus...

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