But now, with a new mobile app, it’s aiming for a different, less-monied crowd: consumers. People who don’t necessarily need (or even want) to know every industry twist and turn but who do want to stay updated on major tech news.
Over the past six years, “tech has become an everything story,” Jessica Lessin, The Information’s founder and CEO, told me. “We hear from our friends from all corners of our lives who want to know things like: What is Alexa doing with my data? What does WeWork’s collapse mean for how I work in my business? We realized our team in the newsroom can help inform a much broader group of people about the most important tech stories.” (The “team in the newsroom” is a differentiator here; these small pieces are all written by Information staffers and feature a heavy dose of their analysis and context, even when they’re about stories that have been broken elsewhere.)
The Tech Top 10 app (available for iOS and Android now) is for “consumers who want to be plugged into the big tech stories without searching through Twitter or watered-down general news sites,” and it costs $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year. (The Information’s next cheapest product is a $199/year “Young Professionals” plan for people under 30 — but they also offer an “All-Access” subscription guaranteed to get you into Information events and conference calls for $749.)Tech Top 10 is, in essence, the same product as The Information’s Briefing, which is mostly consumed as a nightly email to subscribers that summarizes and analyzes a mix of the day’s tech stories — most of them pointing to other sites’ coverage of them, but also some original to The Information but not worth a full story. They’re “quick briefs that just tell you what’s important,” Lessin said.
The 10 stories in the app today are all Briefing pieces from the past 24 hours, and as a result they still peer through The Information’s editorial lens. For example, you get “Sequoia Raises Two More Massive Funds,” “SoftBank-Backed Katerra to Close Phoenix Factory,” “Postmates Exits Mexico City, Cuts Staff,” and “Bird, Lime Lose D.C. Scooter Permit Contest” as top stories — quite different from the editorial mix you’d get from TechCrunch, The Verge, Axios, Ars Technica, Wired, or the tech sections of major newspapers.
3/Now the industry has another problem. Tech news has become SO important to the lives of everyone, not just business professionals. But the choices for following it—really following it—are tough.
— Jessica Lessin (@Jessicalessin) December 4, 2019
It was going to cost $30 a year, but then Apple said we couldn't charge that price (another story for another day :) so $29.99 a year it is! But there is a free trial. I am so excited to see what you think! https://t.co/BNieBHJzJs
— Jessica Lessin (@Jessicalessin) December 4, 2019
TheInformation's is launching today a new app today: Tech Top 10 – it is a continuous summary of what is happening in the tech world. While biased of course, I think the curation and editing makes it the best way to stay up to date. #homescreenhttps://t.co/YcBFNdeY8b https://t.co/HcDhnFQjp7
— sam lessin (@lessin) December 4, 2019
@theinformation just launched our new app, Tech Top 10 — Our first product created for the consumer market. Now, tech enthusiasts have access to our secret weapon of the most essential technology reporting in the industry that CEOs and investors have known for the past six years. https://t.co/dZ87n0KUov
— Chris Bowlby (@chrisrbowlby) December 4, 2019
“Quick briefs” sounds newsletter-esque, but the app allows editors to update (and reorder) stories continuously rather than in a single daily edition, doing Tech Top 10 as an app made more sense; a tech events calendar is also included. Plus, apps for media companies are seemingly hot again, if two makes a trend: The Atlantic recently relaunched its app as an email newsletter–inspired product.
Tech Top 10 is free for existing Information subscribers, and it also includes links to all of the site’s full stories, which are still only accessible to full subscribers. (They open up in Safari instead of in-app.) But “what a hedge fund needs to know about tech is very different from what a consumer needs to know,” Lessin said. “I’m super excited to serve everyone from the hedge fund to the consumer.”