At Genius HQ, rebranding is a process

A lot had to change about the Rap Genius website as it became Genius. Same for its office, too.

The rebranding didn’t just involve logos and links, it also got into the very nature of how the site worked, according to Liz Fosslien, a member of the communications team at Genius, who recently gave us a tour of the company’s Williamsburg HQ. (The company will soon be moving to Gowanus.)

Throughout the office, Fosslien showed us different spots where Rap Genius logos had been replaced with just “Genius.” One place where it wasn’t immediately replaced, however, was on the swag. The company has shelves full of clothing, with multiple designs and colors. Also stickers and lighters, among other things.

More importantly, though, the website has shifted its look to display its new channels across the top of every page: Rap, Rock, Lit, News, Sports, History, Screen, X and Meta. (“Annotate the World” is the site’s tagline.)

The site’s expanded ambitions have drawn major interest from investors.

Fosslien told us that each category is driven by feedback from the site’s community of users. Some channels have changed as a result, with Poetry Genius, for example, becoming Lit Genius to cover a greater expanse of literary works.

More deeply, though, as new kinds of content come rolling in, the site has also had to start implementing new ways of organizing itself.

Speeches by Federal Reserve members and court documents from Justin Bieber trials don’t come on albums to guide users from one item to the next. Tags have become an important way for Genius to create threads between texts, Fosslien said.

Not everyone can create tags. Members of the Genius community rise through the ranks as they prove the quality of their annotating skills. Only regulators, the highest level that a member of the community can reach, can add tags, in an effort to make them consistent and relevant to the text.

As Genius expands, it’s building up its community manager team. The main hiring focus, though, is developers, Fosslien said. “We’re more thinking of ways of how we build technology that will emphasize quality,” Fosslien said. “Our job is more outreach and how do we get more people looking at those things.”

Fosslien, who has been with the company since January, speaks enthusiastically about what the platform can do to spur curiosity. Her personal interests in the site tend toward the news vertical, which includes annotated speeches by former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

One big development coming from Genius soon is an Android app. Currently, it’s only on iOS. Users have made 13,000 annotations using the app so far, Fosslien told us.

The company is also looking to improve its “Powered by Genius” function, a feature that extends Genius onto other websites. (Here’s an example.)

When a text from Genius is embedded on another site, readers of that text will only see annotations from editors and regulators. On the Genius site, you can also see annotations that haven’t been reviewed by editors. That could change.

Another change that may be coming for the site is the addition of a new type of annotation itself: personal reflections.

Right now, annotations are strictly focused on adding some kind of verifiable information about a text or offering a reasonable interpretation of a lyric. Fosslien said there is a strong desire among users to express opinions or to say how one line or another meant something to them personally. How to display these annotations, were they to be implemented, is a subject currently under discussion within the company.

Fosslien argued that Genius’s platform is special not only because it allows readers to have subtext illuminated for them, but because it gamifies exploration and provides a social element.

“I’ve found so many poems or songs or speeches just because people I know have edited them,” Fosslien said. By “know” there, she means people she has come to follow in the Genius community.

The current office is a bit unusual.

Genius has slowly colonized every apartment on the top floor of a waterfront building in Williamsburg, save one. In fact, because it’s apartments, the company has lots of showers. Apparently there are some 20 showers across the various apartments.

One of the founders, as well as a handful of staffers, also live in other apartments inside the building.