Why Circa failed

> Circa was cold and rational at a time when journalism was becoming more entertaining and emotional

Too bad, the reason I liked Circa was exactly the cold, rational, to-the-point approach, wrapped in a nice and usable app.

I actually liked Circa. I think there is a need for a just the facts articles.

I liked Circa, especially its "breaking news" feature. The only reason I didn't use it that much was that it was very US-centric (I live in Europe). In particular, it would give me "breaking news" about some US sports celebrities I'd never heard of. Other that that, I really liked the way it structured stories that unfolded over time.

Circa failed because it used expensive journalists to create what should have been cheap aggregated content. The content itself had little added value compared with thousands of other daily news sites. Aggregators need to keep costs low and volume high -- Circa had this backwards.

I tried circa when it first came out. I failed to find a reason to prefer it over subscribing to the pertinent subs on Reddit for the news I wanted.

The beauty of Reddit and HN is that you can glance at the comments first and usually know instantly whether the article is worth your time. Of course this only works on the smaller communities on reddit. The front page stuff is just drowned in jokes and quips.

Additionally, many experts and thought leaders are active in both communities and actively comment. This helps immensely to cut through rhetoric and falsities in the content.

"We’re trying to make it so that people educate themselves for 5 minutes as opposed to play Angry Birds," Galligan said.

Yup, that'd do it.. if you predicate your success on changing human nature, you're gonna have a hard time.

Circa had some very good elements - following the stories, and the clean no-nonsense layout. I was very excited about it when it first came out (and mad at them, because I thought they'd built something I was trying to make). After a while I noticed I used the app less and less - partially because it was a bit buggy on iOS, partially because I could not share stories outside of the app (they eventually fixed that).

Although they don't have summaries for every article, the NYTNow app is probably my favorite implementation of these snack-sized newsreader apps.

They have daily and nightly briefings that contain ~10-15 short paragraph summaries that link to a longform article if you want to dive deep. They also link to their favorite NYTimes articles from today and their favorite articles from other publications. I've pretty much stopped using the main NYTimes app on my phone now.

They also made recently made it free. Sorry if this sounds like an advert, but I really can't say how much I enjoy using it.

From Free Spending by Startups Stir Memories of Dot-Com Era Excesses published in the Wall Street Journal on October 5, 2014:

> Matt Galligan, co-founder and chief executive of Circa 1605 Inc., which runs a mobile application for news, says rent on his 3,000-square-foot office in SoMa has roughly doubled since the company moved in two years ago. But the rent and renovations to expose the brick walls weren’t “unnecessary burn,” he says. His 12 employees “are spending nearly a third of their life there,” he says. “It helps for it to be a positive experience.”

I guess exposed brick walls do come in handy when you need something to bang your head against.

[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/startups-spend-with-abandon-flus...

Circa was great. It was exactly what I wanted.

I suspect it failed because, as is snuck into a middle paragraph, "... Circa never turned itself into a business." All of the other complaints in this article were positives (or at least "don't care"s) for me.

I tried Circa because I have interest in this category of app/site but it didn't stick and I can't remember when I last looked at it. I'm surprised there haven't been more solid plays at the abbreviated news area, even despite the content component itself being challenging.

If you have expertise in this field, I've got a concept I'd be keen to collaborate on. It'd need iOS/Android development and someone handling content. My usual app guy is wrapped up in other projects. Email in my profile. It'd work as a skunkworks thing within a media company or a second project by a news startup even.

Circa failed because I've seen several articles about it failing and had never even heard about it while it was operating. They got their PR backwards.

...or maybe it just had a higher burn rate than income... and failed to generate enough hype to attract venture capital