Ben Thompson | |
|---|---|
 Thompson in 2016 | |
| Occupation | Business, technology, and media analyst |
| Alma mater | |
Ben Thompson is an American business, technology, and media analyst who lives in Taipei, where he founded Stratechery, a subscription-based newsletter/podcast featuring commentary on tech and media news., [1] and cohosts tech podcasts Exponent with James Allworth and Dithering with John Gruber, respectively. [2]
Thompson's undergraduate education was at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and his graduate education at Northwestern University, where he received an Master of Business Administration from the Kellogg School as well as an Master of Engineering Management from the McCormick School of Engineering. [3]
Thompson's career includes stints at Apple, where he interned at Apple University; [4] Microsoft, where he worked on its Windows Apps team; [5] and at WordPress developer Automattic as a growth engineer. [6]
Thompson launched Stratechery as a blog while still a Microsoft employee, and in April 2014 devoted himself to the site full-time, operating on a "freemium" subscription model. [7] He has stated his primary inspiration was John Gruber, author of the site Daring Fireball. [8]
As of April 2015, Thompson had more than 2,000 paying subscribers. [9] By 2017, Recode described Stratechery as having pioneered the paid newsletter business model. [10] The founders of Substack, a newsletter platform launched in 2018, called Thompson a major inspiration for their project. [10]
Thompson is a proponent of aggregation theory, which describes how platforms (i.e. aggregators such as Google and Facebook) come to dominate the industries in which they compete in a systematic and predictable way. Aggregators have all three of the following characteristics: 1. direct relationship with users; 2. zero marginal costs for serving users; 3. and demand-driven multi-sided networks with decreasing acquisition costs. [11]
Dave Winer is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web services, as well as blogging and podcasting. He is the founder of the software companies Living Videotext, Userland Software and Small Picture Inc., a former contributing editor for the Web magazine HotWired, the author of the Scripting News weblog, a former research fellow at Harvard Law School, and current visiting scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, content aggregator, feed reader, news reader, or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates digital content such as online newspapers, blogs, podcasts, and video blogs (vlogs) in one location for easy viewing. The updates distributed may include journal tables of contents, podcasts, videos, and news items.
Kara Anne Swisher is an American journalist. She has covered the business of the internet since 1994. As of 2023, Swisher was a contributing editor at New York Magazine, the host of the podcast On with Kara Swisher, and the co-host of the podcast Pivot.
John Gruber is a technology blogger, UI designer, and co-creator of the Markdown markup language. Gruber authors the Apple enthusiast blog Daring Fireball and produces its accompanying podcast, The Talk Show.
Podcasts, previously known as "audioblogs", have roots dating back to the 1980s. With the advent of broadband Internet access and portable digital audio playback devices such as the iPod, podcasting began to catch hold in late 2004. Today there are more than 115,000 English-language podcasts available on the Internet, and dozens of websites available for distribution at little or no cost to the producer or listener.
Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium", is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (offline) goods that expand the functionality of the free version of the software. This business model has been used in the software industry since the 1980s. A subset of this model used by the video game industry is called free-to-play.
Gigaom is a technology-focused analyst firm and media company. It was founded by Om Malik in San Francisco, California. In March 2015, it was shut down and in June 2015, its website and content were acquired by Knowingly and relaunched.
Scribd Inc. operates three primary platforms: Scribd, Everand, and SlideShare. Scribd is a digital document library that hosts over 195 million documents. Everand is a digital content subscription service offering a wide selection of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, podcasts, and sheet music. SlideShare is an online platform featuring over 15 million presentations from subject matter experts.
Spotify is a Swedish audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. As of June 2024, it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services, with over 626 million monthly active users comprising 246 million paying subscribers. Spotify is listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American depositary receipts.
CloudMe is a file storage service operated by CloudMe AB that offers cloud storage, file synchronization and client software. It features a blue folder that appears on all devices with the same content, all files are synchronized between devices. The CloudMe service is offered with a freemium business model and provides encrypted SSL connection with SSL Extended Validation Certificate. CloudMe provides client software for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Google TV, Samsung Smart TV, WD TV, Windows Storage Server for NAS and web browsers.
Vox Media, Inc. is an American mass media company founded in Washington, D.C. with operational headquarters in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in November 2011 by CEO Jim Bankoff and Trei Brundrett to encompass SB Nation and The Verge. Bankoff had been the CEO for SB Nation since 2009.
LinkedIn Learning is an American online learning platform. It provides video courses taught by industry experts in software, creative, and business skills. It is a subsidiary of LinkedIn. All the courses on LinkedIn fall into four categories: Business, Creative, Technology, and Certifications.
Jessica E. Lessin is an American journalist who serves as editor-in-chief of the technology website The Information, which she founded in December 2013. Lessin had previously spent eight years at The Wall Street Journal covering the technology and media industries.
The Skimm is an American media company, founded in 2012 by Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin, providing a subscription-only newsletter. The newsletter is a digest of news stories intended to be simple and easy to read.
Readability was an Internet-based "read it later" service launched in 2009 by Arc90. It ceased its 'bookmarklet' service on September 10, 2016, and discontinued its API service on December 10, 2016. It was similar to competitors Instapaper and Pocket in that it allows a user to save an article from the web and read it later without the clutter of the original website. It started originally as a bookmarklet to remove clutter from webpages and reformat the main article text in a readable font and layout, but following the popularity of the bookmarklet, it evolved to become a service with an app.
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Apple Podcasts is an audio streaming service and media player application developed by Apple Inc. for playing podcasts. Apple began supporting podcasts with iTunes 4.9 released in June 2005 and launched its first standalone mobile app in 2012. The app was later pre-installed with iOS beginning October 2014. The Apple Podcasts directory features more than two million shows. Apple Podcasts is available on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, CarPlay, Microsoft Windows operating systems, and on Amazon Alexa devices.
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Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack is headquartered in San Francisco.
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