Kinja is a free online

news aggregator In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, ...

, launched in April 2004. It is operated by

G/O Media G/O Media Inc. is an American media holding company that runs ''Gizmodo'', ''Kotaku'', ''Jalopnik'', '' Deadspin'', ''Lifehacker'', '' Jezebel'', '' The Root'', '' The A.V. Club'', ''The Takeout'', '' The Onion'', and ''The Inventory''. Hist ...

. It was formerly operated by

Gizmodo Media Group Gizmodo Media Group was an online media company and blog network formerly operated by Univision Communications (now TelevisaUnivision) in its Fusion Media Group division. The company was created from assets acquired from Gawker Media during i ...

, which was purchased by Univision Communications during

Gawker Media Gawker Media LLC (formerly Blogwire, Inc. and Gawker Media, Inc.) was an American online media company and blog network. It was founded by Nick Denton in October 2003 as Blogwire, and was based in New York City. Incorporated in the Cayman Isla ...

's bankruptcy.

History

With the intention of making blogs more accessible to the public,

Nick Denton Nicholas Guido Anthony Denton (born 24 August 1966) is a British Internet entrepreneur, journalist and blogger, the founder and former proprietor of the blog collective Gawker Media, and was the managing editor of the New York-based ''Gawker' ...

of Gawker Media and

Meg Hourihan Meg Hourihan is the cofounder of Pyra Labs, the company that launched the Blogger.com, Blogger personal blogging software that was acquired by Google. Career Hourihan graduated from Tufts University in 1994. In 1999, she and Evan Williams (Int ...

Pyra Labs Pyra Labs is a subsidiary of Google (Alphabet) that created the Blogger service in 1999. Google acquired Pyra Labs in 2003. History Pyra was co-founded by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan. The company's first product, also named "Pyra", was a web ...

created Kinja, which began as an investigation into the navigation of blogs. It was dubbed Kinja in October 2003. On February 11, 2013, Kinja 1.0 was launched on

Jalopnik G/O Media Inc. is an American media holding company that runs ''Gizmodo'', ''Kotaku'', ''Jalopnik'', '' Deadspin'', ''Lifehacker'', '' Jezebel'', '' The Root'', '' The A.V. Club'', ''The Takeout'', '' The Onion'', and ''The Inventory''. Hist ...

. Changes included an entire site and platform redesign, favoring a more

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...

-esque design. Users received the ability to create their own blogs on Kinja, replacing the old profile system. Comments, replies, and posts all aggregate on the user's personal blog. On March 11, 2013, Kinja was launched on Gawker Media blogs

io9 ''io9'' is part of Gizmodo media since 2015, and it began as blog launched in 2008 by Gawker Media. The site initially focused on the subjects of science fiction, fantasy, futurism, science, technology and related areas but over the years has ...

and

Deadspin ''Deadspin'' is a sports blog founded by Will Leitch in 2005 and based in Chicago. Previously owned by Gawker Media and Univision Communications, it is currently owned by G/O Media. ''Deadspin'' posted daily previews, recaps, and commentaries o ...

, followed by Kotaku on March 25, 2013;

Jezebel Jezebel (;"Jezebel"
(US) and ) was the daughte ...

on April 8, 2013; Lifehacker on April 15, 2013; and Gizmodo on April 29, 2013. In 2017, following Univision Communications' purchase of Gawker Media assets and their reorganization as

, the company began to migrate some of its existing websites to Kinja as well, including ''

The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...

'',

Fusion Fusion, or synthesis, is the process of combining two or more distinct entities into a new whole. Fusion may also refer to: Science and technology Physics *Nuclear fusion, multiple atomic nuclei combining to form one or more different atomic nucl ...

(whose online editorial operation was later re-launched as ''

Splinter A splinter (also known as a sliver) is a fragment of a larger object, or a foreign body that penetrates or is purposely injected into a body. The foreign body must be lodged inside tissue to be considered a splinter. Splinters may cause initia ...

''), ''

The Root "The Root" is a song by American recording artist D'Angelo. It is the eighth track on his second studio album, ''Voodoo'', which was released on January 25, 2000, by Virgin Records. "The Root" was recorded and produced by D'Angelo at New York's ...

'', and ''

The Onion ''The Onion'' is an American digital media company and newspaper organization that publishes satire, satirical articles on international, national, and local news. The company is based in Chicago but originated as a weekly print publication on ...

''. As of April 2018, ''

ClickHole ClickHole is a satirical website (formerly owned by ''The Onion'') that parodies clickbait websites such as BuzzFeed and Upworthy. It was launched on June 12, 2014, in conjunction with ''The Onion''s decision to stop its print edition and shif ...

'' is also on the Kinja platform. The move was made as Univision staff were heavily interested in Kinja's "inset" feature for external links—which can display

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential econo ...

affiliate links with product thumbnails and prices, as they can be used to generate e-commerce revenue.

Usage

Kinja is a personal web service that allows its users to "bookmark" blogs, Kinja providing the user with excerpts of recent posts of the chosen blogs. These excerpts, known as personal "digests", are compiled into one page of excerpts, with other categorized compilations available based on such labels as media, music, liberal, conservative, and more. A user's personal selection of digests is easily available to any outside user, allowing others to share their favorite blogs and recent blog posts. Utilizing a

webcrawler WebCrawler is a search engine, and one of the oldest surviving search engines on the web today. For many years, it operated as a metasearch engine. WebCrawler was the first web search engine to provide full text search. History Brian Pinkerto ...

dubbed Kinjabot (similar to Google's webcrawlers), Kinja creates an internal index of all available weblogs as defined by Kinjabot.

References

Sources

External links

* American news websites Gawker Media Internet properties established in 2004 News aggregators Former Univision Communications subsidiaries {{news-website-stub