Zig Media is a mobile-media technology company based in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

owned by Billboard-Hollywood Reporter. Called an "

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

of news" by

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

, the company's platform distills original and sourced content into images and video, then distributes it through mobile phone and desktop computer applications.

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is an American business magazine published monthly in print and online, focusing on technology, business, and design. It releases six print issues annually. History ''Fast Company'' was founded in November 1995 by Alan Webb ...

reported that Zig had 400,000 users as of June 2018 following investment from Graydon Carter,

Ronald Meyer Ronald Meyer (born September 25, 1944) is an American entertainment executive and former talent agent. He co-founded Creative Artists Agency in 1975, and served as the President and Chief Operating Officer at Universal Studios from 1995-2013 and t ...

, Quincy Jones, and LiveNation.

History

In 2016, cofounders Joshua James and Adam Platzner approached '' Vanity Fair'' editor Graydon Carter to offer a modern, visual solution to changing magazine tastes and consumer news consumption. The ''New York Times'' reported that "at the time, Mr. Carter was mulling the state of news; he recalled an assistant pointing out to him that millennials ‘think in more visual terms, than in textual terms.’" With cofounder John Tornow, James and Platzner built an

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

that captures personalized consumer data from

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

preferences. The technology feeds news articles in the form of picture-heavy content back to each consumer according to their tastes. Zig’s iOS application launched in January 2018. Reported by ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

'', first investors included

Graydon Carter Edward Graydon Carter, Order of Canada, CM (born July 14, 1949) is a Canadian journalist who was the editor of ''Vanity Fair (magazine), Vanity Fair'' from 1992 until 2017. He also co-founded, with Kurt Andersen and Thomas L. Phillips, Jr., Tom P ...

, Ron Meyer, and Quincy Jones. In May 2018 ''

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Media Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations r ...

'' reported additional funding of $1.6 million from Alan Docter, Aviv Nevo, and LiveNation. In October 2018 The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Valence Media, part of

Eldridge Industries Eldridge Industries, LLC is an American holding company headquartered in Miami, with offices in New York City, Greenwich, Connecticut, London, and Beverly Hills. Eldridge Industries makes investments in various industries including insurance, as ...

, invested in Zig. In 2019, The Hollywood Reporter-Billboard acquired Zig Media.

Technology

Users sign up for the Zig app or use Zig distribution channels to provide personalized media-consumption preferences to the platform’s algorithm. The platform returns media in a visual format based on the user’s personalized preferences and tailors each

news feed Facebook's Feed, formerly known as the News Feed, is a web feed feature for the social network. The feed is the primary system through which users are exposed to content posted on the network. Feed highlights information that includes profile ...

over time based on additional consumer data. The technology tracks stories that users skip and click to optimize the news feed for each user. In 2018, ''Fast Company'' compared Zig to

Apple News Apple News is a news aggregator app developed by Apple Inc., for its iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and macOS operating systems. The iOS version was launched with the release of iOS 9. It is the successor to the Newsstand app included in previous versi ...

and

Flipboard Flipboard is a news aggregator and social network aggregation company based in Palo Alto, California, with offices in New York, Vancouver, and Beijing. Its software, also known as Flipboard, was first released in July 2010. It aggregates cont ...

with "more images and more personalization." CNBC explained that Zig "emphasizes photos over text" and reduces the time that consumers use to peruse the internet for news.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://zig.com/ Companies based in Brooklyn Online mass media companies of the United States Mass media companies established in 2016 American companies established in 2016 Mass media companies based in New York City