Mic Network: A media company by Millennials for Millennials.
Mic is an online media start up that broadcasts focused on young people. The company wants to inform young people about everything from politics to digital culture, in a way they can understand it. As it says on it’s website Mic helps the digital generation to stay informed. The thing that distinguishes it from all the other media platforms is that the stories are written by young people for young people.
Mic’s Diary
Mic, back then PolicyMic, was founded in 2011 by Chris Altchek and Jake Horowitz. Altchek and Horowitz were high school friends who shared a vision for an online space where young people could talk about big ideas. Mic’s belief is that “Young people will define the future and we deserve a news outlet that offers quality coverage tailored to them. They are hungry for news that keeps them informed and helps them make sense of the world.» In December 2013, Mic worked with the White House on what was called “Open Mic” competition to “make health care work for our generation”. More specifically Open Mic was a competition in which young people were asked to submit ideas about how to make A.C.A. insurance programs more accessible to them. Following in early 2014 PolicyMic announced they would re-brand the company to target millennials, and renamed themselves as “Mic”. The company is also rumored to have walked away from early Twitter acquisition talks. At last in 2016, Mic acquired Hyper, a mobile app that aggregates video content from across the Web and packages it into a digital magazine-type format.
With a focus on millenials
Mic stays focused on the millennial generation, defined as 18 to 34 years old. It reaches more than half of all college-educated millennials in the U.S. Between January 2014 and May 2015 its audience tripled, from 9 million to 30 million monthly unique visitors. From them 70 percent were under the age of 35.
Content made for younger generations
Mic features ten different sections: News, Tech, PolicyMic, World.Mic, Arts, Connections, Science, Style, Music and Identities.Futhermore to explain some of the least known sections Identities is about investigating and telling dynamic stories about race, class, gender and sexuality, with a critical focus on how these categories impact the lives of the millennials. It seems that even after the rebranding politics is still a big part of the mix and a main focus for the startup. In adittion Mic’s content of politics-heavy coverage and social features were described by The Hollywood Reporter as “Twitter meets The Economist.” Mic’s content is smart, approachable and it is optimized for all the new platforms and devices its audience reads news on. Due to its focus on younger generation news are presented like they were a newsfeed on a social media platform. This means that they are more conversational and inclusive.
In order to expand it’s content and engagement even more in 2015 Mic launched “MicCheck” a mobile app which shows users a curated stream of stories, integrated both by Mic content and non-Mic content into a single stream. In the end of 2016 Mic launched an updated version of this app called Mic, that provides a full newsreading and viewing experience without even having to turn on the app.
Most known stories
Mic got early attention for its on-the-ground coverage during the revolution in Tunisia. Τhat was followed by a twenty minute interview in the White House with the President of the U.S. Barack Obama, regarding the Iran nuclear deal in August 2015. Mic was one of the two media outlets granted an interview that day. The other one was CNN. Last summer Mic dropped a Facebook video titled “23 Ways You Could Be Killed If You Are Black in America.”, generated from a story in their site. In the video, celebrities like Alicia Keys and Beyonce read a list of “all the seemingly mundane interactions with police that have led to high-profile black deaths.” The video had cross-platform reach of over 100 million people.
Revenue stream
Mic’s approach to advertising different than other media organisations. Ιt creates authentic stories that are informing and engaging. This is called branded advertising. Digiday.com reported in November 2014 that “brands like Microsoft, Cole Haan, Cadillac and most recently GE have all tapped Mic in the last few months in the hopes of using its millennial expertise to reach the site’s audience of educated 20-somethings”. Mic works with brand partners to create custom branded content, a magazine-inspired “Hero” advertisement unit and editorial sponsorships. The “hero” ad appears on both mobile and desktop. It spans the full width of Mic’s site and it is used as a page break between articles. Mic’s website and mobile app use infinite scroll, which means one article feeds directly into another, and users are never actually able to reach the bottom of the page.
Apart from advertising Mic raises money through investors. At first they received $15 million from investors, including Jim Clark, the founder of Netscape. Moreover in Series A funding in 2015 Mic raised more than $32 million from investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lerer Ventures, Advancit Capital, Red Swan Ventures, and The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
