Our journey of helping the newspaper industry to build sustainable digital business models through collaborative innovation on a shared cloud platform
Since the advent of the internet, newspapers have undergone a significant shock in their business model. Powerful tech giants like Facebook or Google have taken important positions in the world of content distribution and attracted a major stake in the advertising market. The abundance of free news and the development of fake news add additional complexity. More than ever, newspapers are turning towards their readers to build up sustainable subscriber models.
Newspapers and journalism are an essential part of our society and news media organizations have played a key role throughout history. At Twipe we are committed to helping the industry thrive and adapt by leveraging the latest technologies and innovations.
Our mission
We help publishers to engage more readers and monetise premium content through a shared cloud-based technology platform and collaborative innovation partnerships.
Twipe – a shared platform of collaborative innovation for news publishers
Twipe was founded in 2011, from a passion for technology, innovation and media. As a young and dynamic start-up we began our journey in close collaboration with Corelio Publishing, the publisher of De Standaard and Het Nieuwsblad, which has later merged into the much larger Mediahuis group.
As true pioneers, we were the first to publish the digital news content on the emerging smartphone and tablet platforms. Through joint design and technology innovation we have created NextGen editions, a new HTML based edition format to allow a next generation of edition creation and reading. In 2013, we co-developed DS Avond, the first Digital Edition in Europe, and L’édition du Soir, the largest French digital edition, on this technology.
From the early days, we envisioned the creation of a shared cloud based digital publishing platform for newspapers. By sharing knowledge and resources, this platform would allow the publishers to focus on their core business, while we take care of the various complexities of delivering the digital editions on the wide variety of mobile phones and tablets.
Soon after De Standaard and Het Nieuwsblad, other newspapers like Het Belang van Limburg, NRC, and HMC Media joined our community of innovative publishers. That’s how our platform started to become alive and we have since expanded our services to France together with Ouest-France, Le Monde or Le Parisien, Germany together with DuMont, and the UK with partnerships like The Telegraph or The Times. In 2021 we made our first steps in the US market.
Digital editions, powerful drivers of sustainable digital subscriber growth
We believe in the power of editions to build strong reading habits, and form the basis of a sustainable subscriber business.
Read some of our insights discussing the power of editions:
- 400 years of mastery of editions almost lost with the advent of the internet in the late nineties
- Why do readers love editions?
- How large is the group of people who like to read editions?
- Edition readers are highly engaged and are willing to pay a higher subscription than the Newsflow reader
Data, research and AI to generate actionable insights for newsroom and product teams
We invest in research, data, and artificial intelligence to help the newsroom, product teams, and key decision-makers at newspapers take the right decisions every day.
Read about some of the research work we did in the past years:
- Newsrooms are blind with respect to digital editions
- DRE Research project (DRE), academic research into emotional effect arising from reading digital newspapers
- EngageReaders, the first editions analytics solution to track & predict reading behavior (funded by Google Digital News Innovation Fund)
- Source of new services like Readers@Risk, automatic pushes
- “Today in history”: how AI helps to monetize evergreen archive content at Ouest France
JAMES, a digital butler, builds daily habits with a personalised plate of news
We see a future in which personalised reading lists will provide the basis for creating new reading habits.
Check out some of the articles about JAMES:
- Collaborative research project with The Times in 2018, funded by Google Digital News Innovation Fund)
- The research report on habit formation in news products, with the Habit Formation Canvas as a tool for product development
- Launch of JAMES v1, according to the lean startup methodology with Daily Mail and NRC as Launch Partners
Thought leadership to shape the future of the news industry
We believe that only through collaboration and rapid information exchange between like-minded publishers, the industry will be able to keep up with the technological advancements, set by large tech giants.
Take a look at some of the knowledge sharing work we do:
- Yearly Digital Growth Summit
- Research Reports
- Weekly blog posts and newsletters
- Sharing knowledge at own event and industry conferences
Talent development and great place to work
We aim to create a workplace where young talent can have impact from day one. Our passionate and international team helps our customers in every problem they encounter.
Read testimonials from some of our Twipees:
In summary
Twipe is:
- A story of passion for news media and technology
- Building a shared platform that can compete with the big tech giants and is more nimble and agile to meet a variety of large corporate customers
- Partnering with traditional brands with ambitious teams who challenge us and raise our bar
- A pioneer, incubator, young, dynamic, and innovative company