Storyful

Storyful is a social media intelligence agency headquartered in Dublin, Ireland that is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp offering services such as social news monitoring and reputation risk management tools for corporate clients.[1] The startup was launched as the first social media newswire, a content aggregator, verifying news sources and online content[2] in Dublin in 2010 by Mark Little, a former journalist with Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) News (Radio-Television of Ireland).[2] Storyful was acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2013 for USD$25 million.[3]

Storyful
Founded2010
Dublin, Ireland
FounderMark Little
Headquarters
Dublin
,
Ireland
Area served
global
Key people
Sharb Farjami (CEO)
Martina Moran (CFO)
ProductsSocial media intelligence
OwnerRupert Murdoch
ParentNews Corp
Websitestoryful.com

Background

Mark Little, who had worked as a journalist with Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) News(Radio-Television of Ireland).[2] founded startup Storyful in Dublin, Ireland in 2010[2][4] as a service that "verified news sources and online content".[2] According to Nieman Lab, Storyful had a reputation for content aggregation as a social news agency—finding, verifying, distributing, licensing, and commercializing user-generated content, social media and online content from social networking services, including videos about stories in the news, such as the Syrian Civil War, Arab Spring protests, as well as "smaller viral moments".[3][5][6] Storyful aimed to provide authority through its verification and monitoring tools while providing authenticity through user-generated content.[5]

In December 20, 2013 News Corp, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, purchased Storyful for US$25 million[3] and opened a New York office in the same building as Fox News' main studios.[7]

Little left Storyful in 2015 and Gavin Sheridan, Storyful's director of innovation left in 2014.[8]

News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said that through Storyful, News Corp would "define the opportunities that the digital landscape presents, rather than simply adapt to them."[3][5] After the acquisition, the company expanded its service to include "commercial and creative work".[6]

After Murdoch acquired the company, from 2014 through to February 2018, losses "swelled", requiring a series of cash injections from News Corp.[1] During that time the company expanded aggressively globally with a staff of about 200 worldwide up from about 30 in 2014.[1]

According to The Guardian, in 2016, journalists were encouraged by Storyful to use the social media monitoring software called Verify developed by Storyful. By installing Verify's web browser extension on their computers, Verify would inform the journalists when social media content had been "verified and cleared".[9] The Guardian revealed that through the Verify plugin, dozens of Storify staff in four offices had access to the journalists browsing activity without them knowing. This data allowed Storyful to actively monitor its own clients' activities on social media and to "turn it into an internal feed" at Storyful that "updates in real time".[9]

In November 2018, when a video circulated by Infowars' Paul Joseph Watson appeared to prove that CNN's Jim Acosta's contact with a White House intern was a physical blow,[10] Storyful was able to prove that the 15-second-long clip had been doctored.[11][Notes 1][12]

According to a January 21, 2019 article in CNN Business, Rob McDonagh, the editor of Storyful's U.S. news team,[7] had proven that one of the viral videos that served as catalysts in the January 2019 Lincoln Memorial confrontation at January 18, 2019 Indigenous Peoples March, was posted by a suspicious account, under the handle @2020fight.[13] McDonagh's team validates videos and posts before adding them to their "digest", distinguishing true stories from those that are not.[7][Notes 2] Storyful attempts to validate each post or video before including it in its digest. McDonagh reviewed previous content from @2020fight's account, and found it suspicious because it had a "high follower count, a "highly polarized and yet inconsistent political messaging", an "unusually high rate of tweets", and "the use of someone else's image in the profile photo." reporter Donie O'Sullivan said that the @2020fight video that had been posted on January 18, which had 2.5 million views by January 22, was the one that "helped frame the news cycle".[13]

Services

Services include a newswire service—one of their "core pillars"—and social news monitoring. By February 2018, Storyful was developing "risk and reputation monitoring" services through which they would source and verify social news, fact-checking it and contextualising it for corporate clients.[1] They were "developing tech tools" to "explore obscure or closed networks" for their intelligence team.[1] can use to explore obscure or closed networks. They "track deviations in social conversations around brands and organisations and catch potential risks before they blow up. Like an alerts system."[1] The company "released a re-booted version of its Newswire platform in 2018. According to FORA, Storyful was developing new tools to combat fake news online.[2]

Clients

When Storyful was acquired by News Corp in 2013, the company already had the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, New York Times, YouTube, ITN and Channel 4 News as clients.[14] By 2018 their clients included CNN, ABC News and Fox News, The New York Times, the Washington Post, in the United States, ABC in Australia, and all of News Corp’s own publications.[9] Most of their "reputation-conscious corporate customers" clients prefer to not be named.[1]

Notes
  1. A two-second long snippet was repeated, pausing three frames for a fraction of a second, which resulted in a slight time compression elsewhere.
  2. According to The New Yorker article, McDonagh's team includes news analysts with different specialties including Anne Winberry who is a trends editor. Michael Edison Hayden "covers the dark underbellies of the Internet" such as the 4chan, 8chan, Daily Caller, etc.
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References
  1. Woods, Killian (February 11, 2018). "Four years after its News Corp takeover, Storyful is going through a painful adolescence". Fora. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
  2. Keane, Jonathan (January 14, 2019). "Irish-founded media firm Storyful has shut its Hong Kong office as it lays off staff". FORA. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
  3. Sharma, Amol; Rubin, Ben Fox (December 20, 2013). "News Corp Makes Social-Media Push". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 22, 2019. Media Company Acquires Storyful for $25 Million...News Corp said Friday it purchased Storyful, a Dublin-based startup that scours social-media services like Twitter and Instagram to help newsrooms source, verify and distribute breaking news and viral online content. News Corp owns The Wall Street Journal. The $25 million acquisition is the first for News Corp since it was spun off in late June from
  4. Little, Mark. "10 Principles that Power Social Journalism". Storyful. Retrieved 12 March 2014.
  5. Deans, Jason (December 20, 2013). "News Corp buys Storyful for £15m". The Guardian. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
  6. Lichterman, Joseph (March 31, 2015). "Why Storyful is expanding its business to work with brands". Nieman Lab. Cambridge, MA. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
  7. Marantz, Andrew (November 19, 2018). "Election Night with the Meme Debunkers". The New Yorker. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
  8. Lyons, Tom. "Ex-Storyful director launches legal information firm". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2019-01-22.
  9. Lewis, Paul; Waterson, Jim (May 17, 2018). "Revealed: Storyful uses tool to monitor what reporters watch". The Guardian. World news. Retrieved January 21, 2019.
  10. "White House shares doctored video to support punishment of journalist Jim Acosta". The Washington Post.
  11. "Acosta Video Posted by White House Was Altered, Analysis Says". The Wall Street Journal. November 8, 2018. Retrieved November 8, 2018.
  12. "Acosta and the Intern: A Media Double Standard? - RealClearPolitics".
  13. O'Sullivan, Donie (January 22, 2019). "Twitter suspends account that helped ignite controversy over viral encounter". CNN. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
  14. Deans, Jason (December 20, 2013). "News Corp buys Storyful for £15m". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
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