Tag Archives: Newswhip

newswhip

Newswhip founders Andrew Mullaney and Paul Quigley moments after widget removal

Many have asked.

Is the ‘thing’ that made the ‘sheet’s right hand side more interesting, informative and colourful no more?

Newswhip co-founder Paul Quigley writes:

You may have noticed that the trending news widget on the side of Broadsheet.ie has disappeared.

The widget was designed by the NewsWhip team to show Broadsheet readers which stories were going viral in Ireland, minute by minute. It also had the happy side effect of bringing some curious readers back to NewsWhip.com – back when it was a website showing trending news stories and massively grateful for new users.

NewsWhip has turned into a pure B2B business – our technology gives real time intelligence to the likes of the BBC, the Washington Post, Adobe and even Intel. Over that time our tech stack has changed completely. So alas: we can no longer support the widget.

So we wanted to say goodbye to Broadsheet readers. Also we wanted to say thank you to the Broadsheet team. They were incredibly sound to give us such a prominent position on their Right Hand Sidebar right when we were trying to grow users and awareness.

They’d hate to hear it and are far too modest to admit it but Broadsheet has quietly become an essential part of independent online Irish media. Broadsheet is where you get the other side of the story.

Meanwhile – if you’re interested in reading about what NewsWhip does these days – here‘s case studies with Mic.com, BuzzFeed, MasterCard and a few others.

Otherwise: farewell and love to the Broadsheet Massive

Mmf.

Newswhip

newswhip

Cockles and muscles.

Dublin-based global social media monitoring conglomorate Newswhip.

You might be familiar with their handy widget on our home page.

We knew them when they were just two blokes, a Commodore 64 and a dog called Blue (we barely hear from them these days if truth be known). Anywho.

Now?

‘Whip Founder Paul Quigley (fourth from left above) writes:

We have good news to share today: NewsWhip has taken investment from some fantastic backers, including The Associated Press, 500 Startups, Tribal.vc, Matter, Social Starts and the SaaS Syndicate.

The funding totals over $1.6 million dollars. We plan to use it to develop the next generation of NewsWhip’s platform, making it even better at tracking, predicting and understanding the sharing of news stories and other viral content. We’ll also use the funds to grow the company’s US-based business development team. Between our offices in Dublin and New York, we will add at least fifteen more jobs over the next nine months, doubling our team size.

Fair play though, in fairness.

Jammy jammy jammy jammy

Newswhip

Introducing NewsWhip’s New Investors: (Newswhip)

newswhipThe Newswhip team including founder Paul Quigley (top left)

 What!?

Dublin-based startup NewsWhip achieved revenues past the €1 million mark in 2014 with customers including BuzzFeed, BBC and the Guardian. And us (see widget on the homepage).

We knew them when they were nothing. NOTHING.

But how did they do it?

Founder Paul Quigley, in DublinGlobe explains:

When my girlfriend was a child, she used to race snails. No, dear reader, she didn’t race against snails! I mean she lined them up on a starting line on a piece of wood, placed bets with her friends as to who would get to the finish lines first, and released the slimy little hounds to postulate toward the finish line.

Unfortunately, the snails did not seem to care that they were participating in a race, and so would set off in any old direction, ruining the fun. Direct verbal instructions had no effect, with the snails defiantly sticking to their snail logic, and going any way except toward the finish line. What a problem!

But if you’ve been around startup-land for long, you’ll know that every problem story soon becomes a solution story. In this case, the innovative six-year-olds soon figured one out. Snail trails. Snail trails are not a product you can buy. Snail trails are a streak of water, placed in front of a snail using one’s fingertip.

You see, snails prefer pushing themselves over wet surfaces than dry surfaces. My girlfriend observed that a simple streak of wetness leading directly from the snail’s current position to the finish line kept them on the straight and narrow, so to speak. Snail trails saved the day, and the snail derby of 1988 was a roaring success.

Why am I telling you about snail trails? Well, mainly to instruct you in how to run a successful snail race. But also because they’re key to how a modern SaaS [Software As A Service]business should build its user base.

Right now, your customers are in many places. They’re pecking emails into their smartphones, they’re waiting in traffic, they’re feeding babies, they’re sitting on the toilet checking Facebook, and doing all the other things early 21st century humans do all day.

But sometimes, just sometimes, they’re somewhere you can start a snail trail from. They’re on Twitter, where you can target (or re-target) them, or where your blog post might get shared by someone who they follow. They’re searching for something on Google, and hey presto, your ad comes up.

Or they’re in a meeting, where a brochure for your company gets produced. That’s where your snail trail begins. There are only a few moments where it can happen in their day, and you should figure out what they are, and how you can get a snail trail starting at those moments. As you already know, the snail trails ends with them signing up for your product.

So how slick is your snail trail? Remove all splinters. Make sure you’re attracting the right snails. Some people think of a snail trail as a funnel, which I think is misleading.

All liquid flows through a funnel eventually. But most snails will drop off your snail trail unless you keep it well slicked the whole way through. At this moment of technological development and low barriers to entry, snail trails are 100% the way to go for the vast majority of capital efficient SaaS startups.

To slick our trail, we started a blog publishing our data and analysing the future of media. So through word of mouth, Twitter clicks, and content, many potential customers start down the path that, if we keep it smooth enough, will eventually lead to many curious people starting a free trial. If the slickness continues, they might even buy access to our platform.

Today, the NewsWhip free trial brings in hundreds of potential customers every week. We have many shiny snail trails leading to our landing page and on to a free trial of our software.

The takeaway from this slick little anecdote: one warm, open lead crawling his way into a free trial of your product is worth a lot of discouraging cold-calls. Make it easy for yourself, and for your prospective customer… Wet the wood.

FIGHT!

World Domination, Part 2 – Snail Trails (Paul Quigley, Dublin Globe)

Pic: Newswhip

 

newswhip

From left: Rhona Togher, of Restored Hearing; Andrew Mullaney, of NewsWhip; Eimear O’Carroll, of Restored Hearing; and Newswhip’s Paul Quigley

Newswhip, the Dublin based social media trackers whose popular widget has been a mainstay on our site since before Ewok emigrated,

There’s no stopping them.

Via Silicon Republic

“Two well-known Irish start-ups NewsWhip and Restored Hearing have won places on the prestigious Blackbox Connect accelerator programme in Silicon Valley, California.
Blackbox Connect takes the best young companies from all over the world and brings them to Palo Alto for two weeks to meet with investors, develop relationships in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, and launch into the wider US market…
…NewsWhip continuously tracks the spread of millions of news stories, videos, pictures and other content attracting engagement on social networks. NewsWhip technology is used by more than 60pc of the most shared publishers, including BuzzFeed, NBC, BBC, AOL and Bloomberg, and is also used by PR firms, marketers and communications departments.

“This springboard comes at a perfect time for us. We’ve just opened our office in New York and it’s off to a roaring start, with dozens of new clients and relationships. Now we’re interested in exploring the west coast for both investment and business development,” said co founder Andrew Mullaney.”

But are they happy?

*checks empty Pringles tube*

NewsWhip and Restored Hearing make it onto Silicon Valley’s top accelerator (Silicon Republic)

Thanks Ciaran Walsh

FB-Infographic-Final_600

A controversial  inforgraphic from Dublin-bred social media monster Newswhip

Paul Quigley, of the ‘whip, writes:

“We published this infographic last week. Got a good deal of interest in the media insider sites – MediaBistro, Poyntr, that kind of thing. What we’ve seen and wanted to show here is that Facebook is getting less about pictures of your friends and more about content, especially news or news-ish content. Sharing, liking and commenting on content have all grown significantly in the past few months, even in the developed English language markets where Facebook is no longer picking up new users quickly. So user behaviour is changing. Facebook might be becoming the new front page of the internet. (And maybe the new newspaper front page too.)”

Gulp.

People Are Sharing More On Facebook (Newswhip)

newswhip2

The ‘boffins’ at Newswhip, the Dublin-based global social media news behomoth, have updated their already pretty fine app.

Founder Paul Quigley sez:

“We’ve made a major overhaul – improving usability, speed, sharing and other features.Fundamentally, we’re still using all the sharing and tweeting activity from social networks to find the most worthwhile news stories from about 50,000 sources.
The real magic in the app is in the niche areas, where you can see what stories are engaging peoplein about 40 different topics. Like this morning, in Health we see “Giving Birth Later in Life Linked to Longer Life”, in Environment a new “tiny wallaby” has been discovered, in Startups, “Advice for Women Leaders”. The App remembers your favourite sections so you get to them quicker.
We’d invite all the early adopters, trend setters and news lovers from the Broadsheet Massive to download and have a play. It’s priced at the enticing price of Free.”

FREE!

iTunes here

Android here

-1   -4
USA-Today
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-5That’s better.

Or is It?

You may know Dublin-based ‘news trading floor’ Newswhip.

They provide free of charge the excellent widget to your right tracking the most popular stories  on social media..

Newswhip launch their NEW site today which is responsive so – FINALLY – people with smartphones don’t have to squint any more to see the most shared stories.

Founder Paul Quigley writes:

To mark the occasion and moved by BS posting de papers [every night]. We decided to see what they would look like if we replaced the front page with the stories from each paper that people were sharing and talking about most on social media. Some photoshopping later and: Viola – the People Powered front pages from Wednesday’s papers, stacked next to their original equivalents…

This could get ugly.

Full set here

Newswhip

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir93QOqPqRk

You may be familiar with the Newswhip widget thing on Broadsheet’s home page.

The box on the right which tabulates the most shared stories on social media.

Yes, that thing.

Now – finally! – Dublin-based Newswhip.com have created an app that may well become literally indispensable among the mediarati and news hounds of all breeds.

Founder Paul Quigley writes:

NewsWhip now comes in a pocket size App format for anyone with an iPhone. Like our site, it shows the news spreading fastest now on social networks, and lets you filter for news from different countries and loads of niches (like environment, psychology, or gaming).

Unlike our site, it’s really easy to use while sitting on the toilet, remembers your preferences, and has a neat picture of the Cliffs of Moher (on our Ireland page)

It’s actually a fantastic app. The best of over 100,000 stories each day, as picked by your peers, i.e. the other billion people on social networks.

Before anyone asks: Android version is on the way. 8 weeks-ish.

 

iTunes link here

NewsWhip Launches iOS Flipboard-Style News App Which Scans Facebook And Twitter (Mike Butchder, TechCrunch)

The Irish Times brings the love this morning to Digital Hub-based Newswhip.ie, (they provide the ‘what’s trending’ widget thing to your right).

And founder Paul Quigley and programming whiz Andrew Mullaney are plotting world domination.

And rather than cannibalising the content created by paid journalists, NewsWhip always links out to the site of the story’s creator. “The internet has its own morality. If a story is doing well, we want to send people to that story and send traffic to that site.”

The company’s Spike product has been developed with newsrooms in mind, says Quigley.

“If we can tell a publisher like MSNBC or the Huffington Post which of their stories is the most social, they can then push that story into a stream perhaps for mobile apps or into widgets that suggest news stories for their readers.”

He says NewsWhip is also talking to wire services such as Reuters and Associated Press about giving them intelligence on their most social stories.

Oh. That’s why they haven’t been returning our faxes.

Tracking The News To Headline Their Own Internet Success Story (Joanna Hunt, Irish Times)

Paul Quigley of Dublin-based Newswhip.com writes:

Today, Mashable published our infographic of the most viral news sources in the English language. The infographic ranks news sites based on how many viral stories they produced during the month of January 2012. We define a viral story as one getting at least 100 likes or shares (on Facebook) or 100 Tweets (on Twitter). We collected all this data using NewsWhip’s discovery and data collection engines. They discover almost all the free news and major blog posts produced in the English-speaking world each day, and track how they spread on social networks. One thing we’re missing: sites with paywalls and partial paywalls. Hence NYTimes.com, WSJ.com and FT.com are not included.While we only use the data temporarily – to build a picture of what’s taking off in real time – we collect it, to make a  neat data set.

From that, we extracted the following:

NewsWhip.com.