I am a news junkie and I have been using a product called Circa when I read on my phone. I opened Circa this evening and the lead was that Circa is going on hiatus (shutting down).
I became interested in Circa when reading the Jeff Jarvis book “Geeks bearing gifts”. Jarvis writes about innovation in the news industry and used Circa as an example. Circa proposed that no one wants to read extended articles on a mobile device and came up with a way of “atomizing” content. The idea is to break a story down into the main idea and supporting pieces and allow readers to take in as much as they want. Circa also attempted to follow stories over time so if you wanted to follow a given story you would receive additional updates. I offer an extended description and thoughts on the potential of this approach as a general model for content presentation in a previous post.
I am not certain where Circa thought it was going with its cool idea. It did not contain ads and access is free. This has worked for other companies (e.g., Twitter), but sooner or later investors evidently want to see the money flow.
This analysis from The Verge describes various difficulties.
- News is a difficult content area
- There was no monetization plan
- The atomized approach does not share easily.
One of the reasons given bothered me. The author suggested people no longer want information that is cold and rational, they want entertainment and emotion. The author described the summarization methods employed as “flavorless bullet points” (if I remember correctly). Yes, ed tech types, this does sound like death by PowerPoint.
I see this assumption that we need to entertain everywhere. Whatever happened to just learning because learning itself is interesting.
