27
G
Going, Going, Digital
Ten years ago,
Politico
,
Vox Media
, and
Gawker Media
weren’t even blips on the radar. Now there are hundreds,
if not thousands, of digital-only publications that have
dedicated resources to grab hold of niche consumers,
enough to saturate every minute of the average workday
with a blog post, a tweet or a Facebook post. And many
of them started from scratch.
Writer
Marian Bull ’06
, a former digital editor at
Saveur
and a contributor to
Bon Appetit
, had no previous exper-
ience as a journalist, except for a small blog that soon
caught the attention of an editor at
Food52.com
, who
happened to be browsing content online. As Bull’s work
started to generate traffic, her profile grew. She landed
a full-time job at
Saveur
, working on the publication’s
print-to-digital platform before transitioning to full-
time freelance work on long-form features. The rise
from blogger to editor to feature writer came quickly
for Bull, who points out that an overly saturated news
cycle isn’t necessarily a better one, but one that needs
to be embraced, a reflection of her own career trajectory
in the digital realm.
“The world is becoming smaller by the day because
more people, regardless of interests, are spending time
on the Internet and finding communities there,” explains
Bull. “There might be a financial broker who uses Insta-
gram all the time, but doesn’t use Twitter because his
friends don’t or nobody in his industry does. But social
media is a way to keep up with people and consume infor-
mation and promote your own work. It’s a legitimate way
to do more and more.”
For graduates like
Jonathan Jackson ’09
, the breadth
of the web has afforded him and his colleagues a great
deal of experimentation. Jackson, who now works as
an editor for LinkedIn, co-founded the digital journal
Blavity
, a tech startup and digital community that creates
written, video, and social content for underrepresented
Millennials. He created
Blavity
in May of 2014 in response
city, she was approached to write short reviews and post
them to her Twitter account. Later, she had a realization:
Why not recruit others to do the work on a bigger scale?
“There weren’t many people who were doing [social
media], or really knew what was going to happen with
it,” she explains. “I thought if I could find an opportunity
to jump out in front, that would be great. It’s such an
interesting time for entrepreneurship and startups in
general. You have this, ‘Hey we’re going to have an idea
and we’re going to launch it so fast.’ The barriers for
entry are so low. You have so much less overhead than
20 years ago.”
Recently, Karwowski sent one influencer around the
world on a five-month cruise on behalf of Plymouth Gin.
He’s been posting articles twice a day, while using the
hashtag #PlymouthExplorer. The campaign generated
13 million impressions for Plymouth in the first month
alone. Karwowski’s Soho-based company also produced
2,700 pieces of social content on behalf of New York
Fashion Week and increased the BBC’s Facebook traffic
by 83 percent in two months. For the UNIQLO Flagship
store in Philadelphia, Karwowski’s team accounted for
more than 23 million impressions through its influencer
marketing campaign.
Like Kaplan and Karwowski,
Roddy Lindsay ’03
can
relate to success in a new tech age. A Stanford graduate
and former Facebook employee, Lindsay and his younger
brother,
Alec ’07,
co-founded and developed
WineGlass
,
an app that lets users access a throng of wine-friendly
information by simply snapping a photo with a smart-
phone, an idea that sprung from a social faux pas the
Lindsay brothers encountered while traveling in Russia.
Elaborating on their product for the App Store: “How
are we normals ever supposed to know what the hell
Coche-Dury Auxey-Duresses, Cote de Beaune
means?
Is it a red, or a white? Will I like it more than
Domaine
Dujac Aux Malconsorts, Vosne-Romanee?
”
Inspired by the success of WineGlass, Roddy decided
to leave grad school (also at Stanford) for a chance to
work on other projects. He’s since founded a company
called
Hustle, Inc.
, a group that builds custom com-
munications software for organizations looking to build
enduring, personal relationships with their contacts.
Lindsay says Hustle was born of an idea to help people
communicate on a more intimate level. It has since
drawn the attention of high-profile clients and even
a few 2016 presidential contenders (Lindsay declined
to mention any person or company by name for confi-
dentiality reasons).
Jonathan Jackson ’09, co-founder of
Blavity
Roddy Lindsay ’03, co-founder and CEO of Hustle, Inc.
