An Interview with Martin Bryant — Editor-at-Large at The Next Web
An interview with Martin Bryant of The Next Web on The App Guy Podcast with Paul Kemp
Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it’s Paul Kemp. I love this show, because we go around the world and really chat with the most interesting founders. We’ve recorded 375 episodes almost and I am yet to speak with an editor or journalist, and that’s who we’ve got on. This is going to be a great episode. Do stay tuned for it. I want to introduce Martin Bryant. He is the editor-at-large at The Next Web.
Everyone listening to this show must have heard of The Next Web. You can obviously go there as well and check it out. We’re going to talk about The Next Web, tech and journalism, and just how to help us when approaching journalists. So Martin, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.
Martin: Hello Paul, good to be here.
Paul: It’s great to have you on. You are actually I think our first journalist on this show, which is wonderful. What is it you do at The Next Web? I’ve noticed you are editor-at-large - what does this mean?
Martin: Yes! Well this is a brand new role for me. At the time of recording I’ve been doing it for less than a week. I was previously editor-in-chief (which is a lot easier to explain). I was managing the team, making sure we were covering everything that we were supposed to, looking at how to grow traffic, hiring new people, all that kind of thing. Another think I did in that role was going to accelerators, to meet startups, talk about pitching to the press, things like that. I was on TV and radio a lot, that kind of thing, talking about tech news and things. We had a good growth spurt over the last few months. In July, it was our best traffic month ever. In September, it was our second best traffic month ever. So traffic is growing nicely. We want to really push forward even faster into 2016. So, we had a reshuffle in the team. Matthew Hussey, who was previously our commissioning editor, he’s become our new editor-in-chief. He’s got a lot of ideas for growing the site and pushing things forward. I am focusing on really getting out there and being a voice for The Next Web in all sorts of different ways, including appearing on this podcast.
Paul: Martin, it’s really refreshing to hear someone like yourself who actually does provide really good exposure for some of the startups and the apps that we have on this show. It’s refreshing to hear that you are also thinking about traffic, growing and trying to promote The Next Web.
Martin: At the moment, it’s all social. This is where we can really make an impact with our growth. I think it’s the same for most publishers. Over the last few years, publishers have seen Facebook become a really key traffic source. For some publishers, it’s more than Google. I don’t think we’re quite at that stage, but it’s certainly an important source of traffic for us. Of course, the problem with relying on Facebook for your traffic is that you are reliant on Facebook’s algorithm. It decides whether each post you put on Facebook is of interest to your audience. Sometimes you might post something and a very small number of people will see it. So the rules for what will be successful on Facebook are changing constantly. So, we have a number of staff who are focused on this social traffic and the strategies around social growth. For example, we find posting on Twitter with an image pretty much always does better than without an image. Again, you see that with a lot of publishers now — almost every time they tweet they have an image because it just gets more engagement.
Paul: Yes, I would actually agree with you on that one Martin, because I’ve been following a strategy of posting images. I’ve seen my audience grow to something like 3 million one month for the number of people that saw a tweet. It’s clearly better with images. So it’s good to reinforce the requirement of posting with images.
Martin: Absolutely! Yes. If you look beyond that, there are all these social platforms, Instagram, Snapchat etc. where they can’t really drive traffic to your site, but it’s good to build a community around them. I think BuzzFeed is a great example of a site that’s being very smart in the way they use these platforms.
What they’re basically saying is you don’t necessarily need to go to BuzzFeed. You can go to Snapchat, Instagram or whatever and see BuzzFeed content. You might not necessarily have a click through from this social traffic (because actually getting a link into these services is hard and sometimes even impossible). However, you’ll experience the content in a distributed form around the web. Figuring out ways to monetize this traffic through maybe sponsored content etc. is an interesting challenge.
Yes! Social media is definitely our big traffic growth area.
Paul: I have a lot of app entrepreneurs listening to this show. I’ve gone out to a community of them and some of them have actually come back and suggested that we focus on some of these questions here.
How do app entrepreneurs and startup founders catch your eye as a potential journalist who has the ability to give good exposure to maybe a new idea or a new app? I can imagine your e-mail is completely over bloated. How’s the best way of catching your eye and getting through to people like yourself?
Martin: Yes! It can be difficult to get attention through e-mail, but at the same time it is the best way. I say this and some people may disagree, but certainly a lot of tech journalists I speak to feel the same way. Although they have trouble keeping up with their e-mail, they much prefer pitches by e-mail than any other way. I get people who pitch me by a Twitter Direct Message, via Facebook messages, all these different ways. I had one via Instagram message once as well. The problem is — it’s impossible to keep up with all these pitches in different places. LinkedIn is another one. I’ll get messages there and it’s hard for me to reply. This is because I’ll be going through my e-mail and I’ll get the “You’ve got a new LinkedIn message. Here it is.” But then I have to click through and go to LinkedIn and reply there. Then the person will probably reply to me on LinkedIn — even if I say e-mail me back. So, it just becomes really hard to deal with. If all our messages are in one place it’s a lot easier.
In terms of ways to get my attention:
- Keep your e-mails short (especially for your first contact)
- Use really plain and straightforward English
- Really just get to the point about what’s new and different about what you’re doing and why we should be interested.
- Don’t tell us everything
I get some people who will paste in a 500-word press release that explains everything about them and has loads of buzz words and things in. This is not a good way [to get through to me]. Just think someone is working through their e-mail [trying to get to inbox zero]. If they don’t already know you through an introduction (and they see a wall of text), they are not necessarily going to be inclined to read through it.
I personally know I’ve missed some great apps through pitches that just didn’t catch my eye. That’s partly my fault through not paying enough attention, but I only have a certain amount of time to check my e-mail.
So, send a brief e-mail which only tells me enough to be of interest to me. Then, I’ll get back to you. Then we can take it from there.
Paul: Martin, you’re teasing us! What big apps did you miss?
Martin: To be honest, it’s hard to remember.
I just know that (for example) I’ve seen things coming on to the site. I’ve immediately got in touch with the people who launched the apps to say, “Why didn’t you contact The Next Web?” and they say:
“We did, we contacted you about two weeks ago.”
I’ll look back and I’ll have archived an e-mail (for example). I’ll be like, “Oh, no…” So yes, it has happened.
Paul: It’s like all those investors that said no to Google and Twitter.
Martin: Absolutely.
Paul: Moving on. This is a show about apps! You’ll know that Apple just released the Apple News default app. I noticed it was also on your website. Do you have a view about the app and how it may impact the way we consume our news?
Martin: This is part of a broader trend that encapsulates everything from ad blockers at the users end — through to things like Facebook instant articles and Google’s AMP project (Accelerated Mobile Pages). These are examples of mobile pages being stripped down and fast-loading. Apple News is similar in that it’s a way to browse news in one place. [Apple News] loads really quickly. A lot of people complain about slow loading pages on the web, especially on mobile where you might have a slow connection. So in that way it’s good. It’s good that people are looking to solve the problem of slow loading pages.
Facebook instant articles is another really interesting way of tackling this problem (although it’s really slow to roll out). We would like to get in on [Facebook instant articles]. Hopefully, Facebook will get us in at some point. We’re certainly looking at developing accelerated mobile pages as well. This is another really fast way of making sure that people can load our pages nicely on their phones.
So, in terms of Apple News: I think the speed is great, but the product isn’t quite there yet. As an example, I’ve got the Apple News app on the home screen of my phone, but I haven’t opened it that much. The first time I opened it I thought, “Hm, this is…”
Paul: … You thought
“where did this come from?”
Martin: Well no, I thought…
“This is cool.”
I knew it was coming on iOS 9, but when I opened it I was like, “Hm, this is actually quite a good idea, but I don’t feel like I should go there.” I still find my news through social media mainly or through an RSS reader (old school). It’s because I’m a journalist, so I like to keep up with what people are writing. I’ll go through a list of everything they’ve written. Compare this to the Apple way of having to go through and choose interesting topics and publications, then having Apple learn what you read and giving you a feed of the news and things you want is interesting. There’s something about the Apple News App (I’m not exactly sure what it is). There is something about the way it’s presented or about the algorithm that just doesn’t draw me back to the app.
Paul: Yes! Actually, the Apple News App is not as impressive as the Google AMP project. When you have your first go at Google Amp
NOW THAT”S IMPRESSIVE.
I’ll make sure I put links to these in your show notes Martin. Episode 375 of The App Guy Podcast.
Paul: So, we are app entrepreneurs! A lot of us are running small startups. We’re often competing for your time against the big companies (with big budgets) and also large venture capital funded startups. A listener asked
How do the tech press take more responsibility for maybe promoting diverse role models and sustainable business models — as oppose to jumping on the bandwagon and the hype around big venture capital startups?
Martin: You mean in terms of not necessarily just going down the route of rating a load of money — rather than bootstrapping and rating money through revenue and growing slower but in a way that means you’re in control?
Paul: It’s more about getting attention from the tech press even though you maybe a bootstrapped startup and don’t have a big VC firm behind you (for example. a VC with large investors who maybe have the relationships with the tech press).
Martin: Yes, well in terms of that, we make no distinction between a VC-backed firm or a bootstrapped firm at all. It’s all about the product and the pitch. So yes, a startup that has millions in the bank from well-known VC firms might be able to afford an on-staff PR person who knows how to pitch the press, but really the skills you need to contact the press are not that great. It’s about relationship building, it’s about (like I said earlier) being prompt and being brief in your e-mails and just getting what we need to know into those e-mails so that we’re not overloaded with information and so we’re actually interested. So, we really make no distinction.
a great product is a great product — wherever it’s from
and we want to tell our readers about it. So yes, do get in touch.
Paul: Someone else asks:
Have you noticed anything unexpected from your readers?
anything we can glean from you that you’re seeing as an upcoming trend based on the amount of interest from readers.
Martin: I think that the most interesting trend this year that we’re seeing from readers is (and this feeds into what we’ve been saying already) is a lack of tolerance around:
- slow-loading pages
- overloaded ads
that kind of thing. And this is something that publishers are seeing across the web. When iOS 9 launched and included support for ad blockers, people were very worried saying this would be an
adblockalypse
and
- overnight people will install ad blockers
- nobody would get any revenue
- traffic would drop on all sites
and all that kind of thing. It hasn’t happened. Certainly, we’ve noticed no notable drop in traffic at all that we can really attribute to ad blockers and get worried about. So I don’t think that’s going to happen overnight, but there’s definitely room for improvements amongst publishers. Definitely, an increasing awareness in the readers that there is more that publishers could be doing. So, that’s certainly something that we’re looking at (from a technical point of view).
Paul: Do you feel like the makers of today (the startup founders) are they making stuff that your users and your readers actually want?
Martin: It’s hard to say! I don’t think there’s anything that our readers are asking for that isn’t being made (or anything like that). For example, we have an overlapping audience with this podcast. For example, we have a lot of people who are:
- developers
- designers
- in the app building business in some way shape or form
If these people have got a problem — they’ll probably work to solve it with a product that they’ll build themselves. So yes, I don’t think there’s anything that I can really highlight that isn’t being made and that could be made. But that’s what’s great about apps —
you don’t know what you want until suddenly it appears in front of you and you’re like: “Wow, this is just perfect for me.”
Paul: Yes, and I’m actually thinking Instagram’s latest app with the one second video.
Martin: Yes, absolutely. Boomerang is a great example of an app that when it came out last week I was like, “That’s a bit of a silly idea for an app.” Because everyone’s saying, “Oh, it’s like Vine, but rather than seven seconds it’s one second loops.” But it’s not that at all; it’s more like a Boomerang of one second videos. It comes forward and goes back again. So you have these very fun individual-looking, very unique-looking videos that you can make with it. I made one the other day of one of my dogs rolling his eyes; it was just waking up and it was rolling its eyes. Now, because it plays backwards — it then looks like my dog is rolling its eyes back the other way and then also forward again.
https://www.instagram.com/p/9JJZTMStpI/
I did one of a tram here in Manchester, where I’m based, with a tram pulling into a stop, and then as it pulls in, it reverses back out again. It’s just fun. I saw a really good one of dancing at a wedding. So yes, I don’t know whether it’s going to stick. I think the problem with Instagram (and Facebook in general) is that they come up with these experimental apps. They might learn a bit about user interaction and what works and what doesn’t work, but you end up with all these apps on your phone that never get used. The other Instagram example is Layout which I think I’ve opened once to try it. After that, I have no interest in that at all.
Paul: Yes! I think the same.
Now, I want to switch gears slightly. You are a guest who has a background of writing. You’ve got into journalism. I’m curious about your story Martin.
- Have you got any suggestions for anyone who wants to follow a similar path to you?
- How did you manage to became the editor at The Next Web?
- What are you doing now?
Any advice for anyone who wants to follow a similar type of career path to you?
Martin: Yes! In my case, I was working in a school and I had a job where I was helping kids make TV and radio programs (in the school). It was a fun job but I didn’t exactly know where I’d go next. This is because it wasn’t really something you could turn into a career. So, at lunch times and after work I’d head over in my office room and I’d write technology blog posts. I’d just write them on my own site. Sadly I’d left that particular website neglected. I didn’t update Wordpress for some time. As a result, it got hacked and then the ISP closed it down. So I’ve basically lost it now — although I’m sure it will be somewhere online if someone wants to dig out and find it. So, I was just doing that for fun. I was back on FriendFeed (which was a very innovative service back in 2008–2009 which Facebook ended up buying). It was the first place that had real-time feeds.
I remember the day they launched real-time feeds. It was like you couldn’t keep up. Just a rain of content flying down your screen. People were like:
“Wow, this is amazing! Real-time!”
On there, Zee (who was a former editor-in-chief at The Next Web before me) had just started in his role. He was looking for part-time people to write and maybe post once a day (or something like that). So I said:
“How about me?”
I ended up joining the team and writing one, two (or maybe) three posts a day while I was doing my main day job.
My first ever post was about Google Wave. People were learning about Google Wave, it had launched at Google I/O 2009. It launched a day after Bing was launched by Microsoft. My headline was “Google’s Wave drowns out Microsoft’s Bing hype.” I remember that to this day.
So, in terms of how I did it [becoming a journalist]. I just got out there and wrote stuff.
Most people will maybe join a site that’s quite small (first) and then maybe join another site that’s bigger. I advanced while staying at the same site. The Next Web was tiny when I joined them. We’re a lot bigger now. We want to grow even bigger. So YES!
The best way to become a writer is to just start writing.
Paul: Yes. I’s actually so ironic that I’m talking to you on a day following a launch of something I’ve been involved with which helps writers. It helps writers avoid all the distractions that can cause writers block. It’s called ilys.
What I was going to ask you is about your discipline of writing. I can imagine that producing one to three posts a day whilst you’ve actually got some other full-time role or job must be quite challenging. How do you keep the discipline of actually writing and getting the content and articles actually written and published?
Martin: If it was for just my own personal blog — I wouldn’t have the discipline. I would probably just say:
“Well, I’ve had a busy day, I just want to sit and watch TV.”
So yes, on my personal blog I used to sometimes go a few days without writing a post. If I look at my personal blog now, I wrote a very short post last week, that was my first post in about four or five months. So yes, that would probably be the same. I was writing for The Next Web and we were small at the time. There was only one full-time editorial team member — Zee (who was editor-in-chief — that’s how small it was). I think there were like two or three part-time people writing with him. So, the pressure was on to grow the site. I was really passionate about writing about technology. I really wanted to grow the site. So, I would just make the time. Back in those days (in 2009) I had one of those little Asus netbooks that ran Windows XP. You used to be able to get them for £150 or £200. Sometimes, I’d be sitting on the bus whilst writing a post and tethering to my phone to get it published. I did that many times
- on the rush hour bus through the Manchester traffic
- at lunch breaks
- staying late after work
to write something.
Writing something really late at night to go out the next morning. The real drive was that:
- we were a small team
- we were ambitious
- we wanted to grow
and the way to do that was just to make sure that we wrote stuff and put it out there.
Paul: So Martin, there are two things we need to do before we say goodbye to you. One is that we’d love to learn about the challenges that our guests face in their day-to-day work. It helps us come up with ideas for potential apps. So,
what big obstacles and frustrations are you seeing?
Martin: A big frustration I’ve always had (and continue to have) is e-mail. I think this is common for a lot of people:
having too much e-mail.
It’s funny! When I announced that I turned editor-in-chief — I got so much e-mail. I very often couldn’t keep up. I’d have to spend maybe two or three hours of the weekend catching up with my e-mail. This is because I’m not one of those people who can have an inbox of loads of unread e-mails for weeks or months at a time. I like to keep an empty inbox as much as possible. So I’d be using Inbox by Gmail / Mailbox (or whatever I was using at the time) to schedule e-mails to come back to me at a time when I could deal with them. I’d sit in a coffee shop on Saturdays and reply to them. I’ve noticed that just in the few days since I announced I was moving to a new role where I won’t be maybe writing as much news (or at least I won’t be assigning news for the people quite as much as I used to) I have got a lot less e-mail — which is nice. It’s still something I need to keep an eye on. It’s still something I need to spend a lot of time thinking about and replying to people.
I’m not one of those journalists who likes to ignore people. There are a lot of e-mails that I won’t reply to. That I think are completely irrelevant to The Next Web, or sometimes I literally don’t have time to reply. But I do like to reply where I can, even though it eats up a lot of time.
People appreciate it.
So, [I’d like a solution] to manage pitches in a way that’s really nice and (maybe) centralized. This way, everyone can pick it up. I know ReadWrite, the tech blog, they actually use Zendesk for their e-mail. (They were saying that recently on Twitter). That’s obviously a customer service platform and the people who send e-mails to them don’t necessarily notice that the e-mails are going to Zendesk. Nevertheless, this means that anyone can handle them as they come in.
There’s got to be a smarter way of dealing with massive amounts of e-mail.
Maybe it’s a solution that doesn’t use e-mail at all.
Paul: Well if we have any app developers who want to solve this problem, listen to some past episodes. I know we had Dave Baggett, he was trying to solve that. He was actually the founding engineer of Crash Bandicoot (the big game in the ’90s).
Then there’s another guy, Branko Cerny who’s obsessed with trying to solve the email overload problem.
Martin, this is a show about apps. We love talking about apps. It wouldn’t be right to let you get away without asking you to give us maybe one or two really cool app recommendations from your phone. Apps which you think we may not have come across before.
Martin: Well, I was listening to a couple of shows earlier. I was thinking, “Hm, what could I suggest for this?” And I was actually going to suggest Boomerang, as the app that has come out most recently that I’ve been having fun with. We’ve discussed this one already. Boomerang — definitely a fun app. Very minimalist, there’s not a lot to it. A single-purpose app, but it does the job very well.
I’ll tell you an app that I use every day. A lot of people have forgotten or moved away from the app.
It’s Swarm, which is obviously Foursquare’s app for checking in. Foursquare had one app for place recommendations (where do I go for a restaurant) but also all the checking in (e.g. I’m at McDonald’s — I don’t know if I’ve ever checked into a McDonald’s) However, they split off the app a couple of years ago. Now it’s a separate app. A lot of people didn’t really like the move and gave up on it. However, in recent months they’ve really improved the app. It’s so much fun to use. I’m a religious user of Swarm for checking in at places. I literally check in every place I go. If the NSA ever wants to find out where I’ve been they will just have to hack my Swarm account.
I check in everywhere. I just love the fact that if I check in somewhere that I have not been for a while, it will say “This is your first check in here in 3 years”, or whatever. They now give you so many fun reasons to keep using the app. I love the coins you get when you check in. For example, if I check in at a place I check in every week (and I’m the mayor), I might get 13 points rather than 1 for checking. 3 because I’m the mayor, 10 because it’s my 15th week in a row checking in at that place. Just all these fun things you never know. It surprises you with a lot of different things. Every Monday you get extra coins for your total. They are in the form of a piñata that you have to keep tapping on the screen to make all the coins explode all over the street. It’s not for everyone, but I love it. I follow a lot of people that I know, so it’s fun to see where people are and what they’re doing all over the world. Someone I know is at The Wall Street Journal Europe in London at the moment. I’m thinking: “What’s he doing there?” Someone else I know is on a train on the subway in Queens. So yes, it’s a fun app. It’s been around for 6 years in various forms, but I think they’ve really got it right in the last few months. I really love using it, this is one to definitely check out.
Paul: Well Martin. I’m thrilled! You happen to have mentioned an app that has never been mentioned before. An app that I use every day as well. I am a big swarm user. I’m obsessed with checking in. It’s wonderful. I can’t believe the app has never been talked about.
This has been great, Martin. What a terrific chat. I’m going to make sure that we have all the links to those apps on your episode. It’s episode 375 on TheAppGuy.co, Search Martin Bryant if you can’t see it.
Martin, in the meantime, obviously now your e-mails are drying up a little bit. How is the best way of getting in contact with you?
Martin: Always, always e-mail. Yes, it’s Martin (at) thenextweb.com
Paul: Wonderful. Martin, thank you so much for coming on The App Guy Podcast. It’s really a pleasure talking to you. All the best with your new role and growing The Next Web to the next level.
Martin: Thank you very much.
