Quartz – Email As Front Page

The shifting models in publishing continue to be fascinating. Buzzfeed, who base their approach on a ruthless focus on the spreadability of content recently announced that they'd surpassed 85 million unique visitors in August (3 times bigger than they were a year ago). Then there's Quartz, which has been growing rapidly over the past year. There's a lot to like about Quartz. I like the way that articles sit within a (very mobile-friendly) 'flow' of content. I like the adoption of Medium-like annotations (leaving comments against specific paragraphs rather than at the end of articles – the modern equivalent of notes in margins, perhaps). I like the way they aggregate subject areas they're writing about into 'obsessions'.

But I particularly like their daily email. I like that it pops into my inbox around 5.00am but when I open it it gives me a quick summary of 'what to watch for today' as well as one for 'whilst you were sleeping'. I like that about half way down it features an 'obsesison interlude' (very often an enticing read). I like the way that it features links to third party content as well as their own (with no differentiation – this makes me feel like they really are giving me the critical things I need to know). I like their 'matters of debate' and 'surprising discoveries' links. It's a well thought through, well curated, list of content. For me, it plays the equivalent role that the front page of a traditional news website might do. And that's the interesting thing. Publishing is now very much about distributed and destination thinking. About every page on your site being your hompage. But also about the multiple homepages that you create out there.