Vox Media, the D.C. and New York-based media company that publishes Vox.com and Eater and SB Nation and The Verge and more, debuted a new venture on Monday.
Circuit Breaker is a tech gadget blog, and a call out to the blogging ways of old. No getting bogged down in the culture or business of tech here, folks, it’s just the gadgets.
Unlike other Vox properties that boast their own websites, however, Circuit Breaker is primarily a Facebook page. Or at least that seems to be the vision. For now, and it’s worth noting the page has only been officially live for two days, Circuit Breaker is more like a niche vertical of The Verge with its own Facebook page.
Circuit Breaker has branded presence on The Verge’s website, but according to this profile in the New York Times, “the primary focus of the editors is on Facebook.” This, Verge editor Nilay Patel told the Times, means lots of live video and instant articles.
It’s interesting that Vox is experimenting with distribution models, but it’s not unprecedented. Vox.com, for example, is a participant in Snapchat Discover, where the site creates daily vertical video content specifically for the messaging service. Other noteworthy experiments in social distribution of news content include the organization NowThis, which only publishes on social media platforms.
The key with social publishing, of course, is to find out where the right subject-matter audience lives. So where do the hardcore gadget lovers spend time on the internet? Circuit Breaker, it seems, is hoping to find them on Facebook.
Read the full profile in the Times here, and Verge editor Patel’s into to Circuit Breaker here.
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