Nicholas White is the co-founder and CEO of The Daily Dot, an online publication that covers the Internet. Credit: Tamir Kalifa for AMERICAN-STATESMAN
This week's Digital Savant column is a profile of The Daily Dot, a continually growing website that covers the web the way a newspaper might cover its hometown. Many people may not even be aware that the site, which attracts about 11 to 14 million unique visitors a month, is based in Austin, where it's been headquartered since its 2011 launch.
Here’s an excerpt from the article, which runs in Tuesday’s American-Statesman print edition and on MyStatesman.com:
For the first year and a half, the Daily Dot had a staff of seven and had a goal of posting about a dozen stories a day about the culture of the Web. Memes, social media, the goings-on of the then-nascent message-board communities on Reddit. But instead of just focusing on the nuts and bolts of the pop Web — popular links, weird trends, funny videos — Daily Dot kept the focus on its citizens, CEO Nicholas White says. "The Internet may be enabled by technology, but it's a story about people. That's what we try to focus on."
It started to work. A few months after its launch, the site published a story about publications paying Reddit power users to promote their stories. It drew about 60,000 views, a lot for the Daily Dot at the time.
"It's one of those first moments where we thought, "There really is a readership," White said.
You can read the rest of the column on MyStatesman. Do you read The Daily Dot? Let me know what you think in the comments.
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