Twitter buys Scroll, the $5/month service that removes ads from partner news sites; Scroll's Nuzzel email service will shut down on May 6
Manage your Stratechery subscription. Scroll Blog : Scroll is joining Twitter! Casey Newton / Platformer : Twitter subscribes to Scroll Dave Winer / Scripting News : Having written so much about paywalls and subscriptions, it was a big deal for me that yesterday … Sarah Scire / Nieman Lab : Eying a future subscription service, Twitter acquires the ad-free news startup Scroll Aroon Deep / MediaNama : Daily Digest Of Tech Policy News And Updates (May 5, 2021) Ryan McNeal / Forbes : Twitter Acquires Scroll To Bolster Its Planned Subscription Service Tweets: Tony Haile / @arctictony : I'm so excited to say that Twitter is acquiring @tryscroll! We'll be going into private beta as we integrate into a broader Twitter subscription later in the year. https://scroll.blog/... Here's why... https://twitter.com/... Mike Park / @mep : Along with @Revue, our acquisition of @tryscroll will accelerate a new workstream we're calling Longform. Articles, threads and newsletters deserve a first-class experience on and off Twitter. Mike Park / @mep : 🥁... NEWS! Twitter is acquiring @tryscroll. Scroll gives readers what they want: clutter-free reading across the web, and publishers what they need: a way to make more money than they would through ads on their site. A short 🧵... https://blog.twitter.com/... Craig Silverman / @craigsilverman : Joining the chorus of media nerds who are devastated by this news. Nuzzel is hands down one of my most used apps. At the same time, it's a no brainer for Twitter to offer similar functionality in its main app. Just do it quickly, please! https://blog.nuzzel.com/... Josh Stearns / @jcstearns : Alas it looks like Nuzzel will be going dark after the acquisition. That's really a shame. There may be hope for a rebuilt version someday but for now it looks like it is goodbye to one of the news discovery apps I use daily. https://blog.nuzzel.com/... Tony Haile / @arctictony : Why Twitter? For every other platform, journalism is dispensable. Twitter is *the only* large platform whose core success is intertwined with a sustainable journalism ecosystem. Mike Park / @mep : Readers: we're planning to re-launch Scroll as part of a future subscription service on Twitter. Imagine unlocking a clean, fast-loading experience for articles (or even newsletters from @Revue) with a portion of your subscription going to the sites and writers you read 📖 https://twitter.com/... @om : This is one smart move by Twitter and frankly this opens up so many opportunities for “paid content” for the company. Congrats @arctictony and team @tryscroll. I am excited to see what you folks do together. https://t.co/JSGNPby4qy Jeremy C. Owens / @jowens510 : Twitter has finally acquired Nuzzel ... And it's going to shut it down. https://twitter.com/... Scroll / @tryscroll : Above-the-fold, A-1 news: @tryscroll is joining @twitter! https://scroll.blog/... Brandon Wall / @walldo : I sincerely loved Nuzzel, this is such a bummer. To note: “Twitter has spun up an internal team of Nuzzel acolytes whose goal is to take the best of the Nuzzel experience and build it directly into Twitter.” https://blog.nuzzel.com/... Alex Fitzpatrick / @alexjamesfitz : nuzzel is the best way to experience twitter—perhaps the only good way—and this is a huge bummer https://twitter.com/... Tony Haile / @arctictony : Om was the first person to encourage me to follow the idea that became Scroll. Thank you for the inspiration @om! https://twitter.com/... Giri.Co / @giri_sreenivas : I realize I'm saying this on Twitter, but the more we distribute our speech to properties we own, the better off we will all be https://twitter.com/... Marshall Kirkpatrick / @marshallk : If you are sad that Nuzzle is being shut down (it sure was great), you might like reading your Twitter stream or lists in @Flipboard. https://www.techmeme.com/... Martin Sfp Bryant / @martinsfp : As part of the Scroll acquisition, Nuzzel is shutting down but... “Twitter has spun up an internal team of Nuzzel acolytes whose goal is to take the best of the Nuzzel experience and build it directly into Twitter.” https://blog.nuzzel.com/... See also Mediagazer
The VergeDieter Bohn
Context & Ripple Effects
Scroll had already absorbed Nuzzel in a 2019 push to build a news subscription service; Twitter is now taking over that stack while ending Nuzzel’s email product. The acquisition turns Scroll’s earlier Nuzzel acquisition from an independent subscription bet into part of Twitter’s planned offering.
Twitter gains Scroll’s ad-free news service for its planned subscription product, while Scroll’s partner-news experience loses its independent owner.
Nuzzel users must move on from the email service when it shuts down on May 6; Twitter retains the underlying news-curation capability rather than the standalone product.
Second-order effects
Scroll’s publisher partners must work through Twitter’s subscription bundle rather than a standalone $5 service, tying their ad-free distribution more closely to Twitter’s product decisions.
The sequence points toward social platforms using acquisitions to assemble subscription bundles from previously separate news products, reducing room for standalone ad-free and curation services.
For publishers, the durable trade-off is between access to a platform’s subscriber base and dependence on that platform’s packaging, pricing, and product roadmap.
The trend: Social platforms are turning news access and curation tools into bundled subscription features rather than leaving them as independent services.
I'm so excited to say that Twitter is acquiring @tryscroll! We'll be going into private beta as we integrate into a broader Twitter subscription later in the year. https://scroll.blog/... Here's why... https://twitter.com/...
Along with @Revue, our acquisition of @tryscroll will accelerate a new workstream we're calling Longform. Articles, threads and newsletters deserve a first-class experience on and off Twitter.
🥁... NEWS! Twitter is acquiring @tryscroll. Scroll gives readers what they want: clutter-free reading across the web, and publishers what they need: a way to make more money than they would through ads on their site. A short 🧵... https://blog.twitter.com/...
Joining the chorus of media nerds who are devastated by this news. Nuzzel is hands down one of my most used apps. At the same time, it's a no brainer for Twitter to offer similar functionality in its main app. Just do it quickly, please! https://blog.nuzzel.com/...
Alas it looks like Nuzzel will be going dark after the acquisition. That's really a shame. There may be hope for a rebuilt version someday but for now it looks like it is goodbye to one of the news discovery apps I use daily. https://blog.nuzzel.com/...
Why Twitter? For every other platform, journalism is dispensable. Twitter is *the only* large platform whose core success is intertwined with a sustainable journalism ecosystem.
Readers: we're planning to re-launch Scroll as part of a future subscription service on Twitter. Imagine unlocking a clean, fast-loading experience for articles (or even newsletters from @Revue) with a portion of your subscription going to the sites and writers you read 📖 https:/…
This is one smart move by Twitter and frankly this opens up so many opportunities for “paid content” for the company. Congrats @arctictony and team @tryscroll. I am excited to see what you folks do together. https://t.co/JSGNPby4qy
I sincerely loved Nuzzel, this is such a bummer. To note: “Twitter has spun up an internal team of Nuzzel acolytes whose goal is to take the best of the Nuzzel experience and build it directly into Twitter.” https://blog.nuzzel.com/...
As part of the Scroll acquisition, Nuzzel is shutting down but... “Twitter has spun up an internal team of Nuzzel acolytes whose goal is to take the best of the Nuzzel experience and build it directly into Twitter.” https://blog.nuzzel.com/...
Scroll has proven that there's a model that gives consumers a better experience and journalists a better future. With the team at Twitter we can accelerate our vision to build a better internet.
If you are sad that Nuzzle is being shut down (it sure was great), you might like reading your Twitter stream or lists in @Flipboard. https://www.techmeme.com/...
I realize I'm saying this on Twitter, but the more we distribute our speech to properties we own, the better off we will all be https://twitter.com/...
Scroll is an interesting idea, and people have been thinking about federated pay walls for ages. I wonder if plugging it into your Twitter graph is the right GTM? It would be handy for it to be built right into twitter's in-app browser... https://scroll.blog/...
It's easy to see Twitter and Facebook as the bad guys here, but these companies start as features and make no attempts to create a real business, so its their fault when they have no futures outside of acquisition. https://twitter.com/...
Before Nuzzel I used Crowdtangle, which was actually a much better tool to monitor the conversation on Twitter. It was incredible. But then Crowdtangle was acquired by Facebook and eventually stopped tracking Twitter data
Twitter and Facebook have systematically acquired and destroyed every app that is useful for news discovery. Today it's Nuzzel, which I probably use a dozen times a day https://blog.nuzzel.com/...
Twitter is acquiring @tryscroll. Scroll's 13-person team is joining Twitter, and the startup is pausing new sign-ups to its product. https://www.cnn.com/...
We are serious about investing in the future of the news and partnering with journalists and news outlets to help them succeed. First Revue, now scroll. We are building something great. Really proud of this work. Welcome @arctictony and @tryscroll https://twitter.com/...
The acquisition of Scroll — and, previously, the newsletter company Revue — are part of something called “Longform” taking shape at Twitter. https://www.niemanlab.org/...
Congrats to @arctictony @sachinsaysrelax and @krave on the acquisition of @tryscroll. You had a crazy vision 5 years ago (an Internet ad free experience) and Twitter is going to take it to the next level. It was an awesome adventure, and we wish you the best! #uncorkcapital https…
It looks like Twitter finally got to the part of this post that suggested buying Nuzzel. It's a long read, as they say: https://lowercasecapital.com/ ...
Love Nuzzel? What should you use instead? I conducted a 469-hour Wirecutter-style investigation and here are my objective and disinterested recommendations: 1. for tech news: @Techmeme 2. for media news: @mediagazer 3. US political buzz: @memeorandum 4. more niche stuff: 🤷♂️
Mixed emotions. I've tweeted in the past that Twitter really should have bought Nuzzel years ago, and was surprised it hadn't. But also had been getting a bit annoyed that Scroll basically hadn't done any updating to Nuzzel.
I, of course, found out about this story via Nuzzel, an app I use multiple times a day. This is going to upset my entire news finding process. https://twitter.com/...
Well. RIP Scroll, I guess. It was a good idea: you pay some money for a subscription and partner sites suppress ads for you. The partner site gets a cut of your subscription. (They just got acquired by Twitter, hence the RIP.) https://blog.twitter.com/...
Very excited to welcome @tryscroll to Twitter. Scroll has built a phenomenal product which gives subscribers a refreshingly clean, fast loading and ads-free article reading experience while supporting publishers based on what the subscriber reads. https://twitter.com/...
Twitter “spun up an internal team of @Nuzzel acolytes whose goal is to take the best of the Nuzzel experience & build it directly into @Twitter.” https://scroll.com/nuzzel In related news, @Twitter acquired @TryScroll & will integrate it into subscriptions: https://blog.twitter.c…
There was a depressingly long period of time where Nick Denton's only measure of success was whether a blog showed up on his Nuzzel. I still have no idea what Nuzzel is. https://blog.nuzzel.com/...
If you subscribe to my Nuzzel newsletter, I regret to announce that it will be coming to an abrupt end. Once I come up with an alternative, I will let you all know. I would move to Substack, but then I would only be allowed to write about Substack 😀 https://blog.nuzzel.com/...
After years of profiting off journalists, Twitter will continue to profit off journalists...but now will maybe make it so some journalists (not all journalists, but some journalists) can make some sort of profit off the time they spend on Twitter. https://scroll.blog/...