Stoop seeks to offer readers what CEO Tim Raybould described as "a healthier information diet."
To do that, launched an application for iOS and Android where you can browse through different newsletters according to the category and when. If you find one that you like, you will be directed to the standard subscription page. If you provide your Stoop email address, you can read all your favorite newsletters in the application.
"The easiest way to describe it is like a podcast application, but for newsletters," Raybould said. "It's a great directory of bulletins, and then there's the side where you can consume them."
Why bulletins? Well, he argued that they are one of the key ways for editors to develop a direct relationship with their audience. Podcasts are others, but he said the bulletins are "an order of magnitude more important" because more information can be transmitted with the written word and there are lower production costs.
That direct relationship is obviously important for publishers, especially because Facebook's changing priorities have made it clear that publications should "establish the right relationship with readers, rather than renting someone else's audience." But Raybould said it's also better for readers, because he will spend his time in journalism designed to provide value to the reader, not just by attracting clicks: "You'll find that you use less news feed and consume more content directly from the source."
"Most of the content [currently] is distributed through a third party and that software" is to choose what will appear next, not depending on the quality of the content, but rather on what will make people move. "Relying on an algorithm with what you are going to read next is like trusting a nutritionist who is incentivized according to the amount of chips you eat."
] So Raybould is a fan of newsletters, but he said that the current system is quite cumbersome, there is not a single place where he can find new newsletters to read, and he can also hesitate to subscribe to another one because he "eliminates his personal inbox "Therefore, Stoop is designed to reduce friction, which makes it easy to subscribe and read as many newsletters as your heart desires.
Raybould said the team has already cured a directory of about 650 newsletters. is (including the TechCrunch Daily Crunch) and the list continues to grow. Additional features include the "random" option to discover new newsletters, in addition to the possibility of sharing a newsletter with other Stoop users, or to forward it to your personal address, where they can be sent to whomever you want.
The Stoop app is free, with Raybould hoping to eventually add a premium plan for features such as full newsletter archives. He also hopes to collaborate with the editors. Initially, most publishers will likely treat Stoop's readers as a group of more subscribers, but Raybould said they could gain access to additional analysis and also facilitate subscriptions by integrating with the application's instant subscription option. [19659002] And the ambitions of the company go even beyond the bulletins. Raybould said that Stoop is the first consumer product of a team with a larger mission to help publishers. "They are also working on OpenBundle, an initiative around news subscriptions grouped with a planned release in 2019 or 2020.
" The most important thing is the OpenBundle thesis and the Stoop thesis, "he said. the editors return to the role of delivering content directly to the audience is the antidote to the supply of news. "