Topix Cracks the Top 20 & Gets a New Suit
For the first time, Topix hit the top 20 most visited news and info sites, according to Hitwise May 2007 data. I'm especially happy about this, since the other big news is that Rich is stepping up to manage from the board, and I'm stepping in as CEO of Topix.
Context & Ripple Effects
Two moves define this moment for Topix. The first is reach: Hitwise's May 2007 data puts the aggregator in the top 20 most-visited news and information sites for the first time — notable for a company whose bet has been algorithmic aggregation rather than original reporting. The second is control: the founding CEO hands day-to-day management over, with Rich moving up to run things from the board and a new CEO stepping in.
The arc matters here. Topix spent 2005-2007 widening its funnel — it opened its index to tagged blog content back in November 2005 — while the space around it heated up, with social news plays like MySpace News arriving in early 2007 to pull audiences toward community-driven feeds. Cracking Hitwise's top 20 is the traffic-market's verdict on the pure-aggregation model at exactly the point the leadership changes.
First-order effects
- The incoming CEO inherits a property at its visibility peak — a top-20 Hitwise ranking that strengthens Topix's hand in ad sales and partnership talks immediately.
- Rich's shift to board-level management concentrates oversight above a new operator, changing who answers for growth against entrenched portal incumbents already inside the top 20.
Second-order effects
- Fellow aggregators and social-news entrants now have a measurable benchmark: Hitwise's monthly rankings turn 'who leads news aggregation' into a tracked contest, pressuring rivals like MySpace News to buy or build equivalent reach.
- Advertisers and distribution partners gain a third-party metric to price Topix against legacy news portals, tightening the gap between aggregator inventory and established-brand rates.
Third-order effects
- If Hitwise-style panel data keeps serving as the industry's scoreboard, measurement firms — not editors — increasingly decide which news properties count as major, steering attention and dollars toward aggregation volume over editorial brand.
- Sustained aggregator growth at the expense of destination news sites points toward a market where audience ownership migrates to whoever controls routing — search, tags, and community feeds — rather than those who report the stories.
The trend: News consumption is migrating from destination publishers to algorithmically aggregated and socially routed feeds, with third-party traffic measurers like Hitwise anointing the winners.