Kinja (website)
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Type of site | news aggregator |
|---|---|
| Owner | Univision Communications |
| URL | kinja |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Launched | April 2004 |
Kinja is a free online news aggregator, launched in April 2004. It is operated by Gizmodo Media Group, which was purchased by Univision Communications during Gawker Media's bankruptcy.[2]
History
With the intention of making blogs more accessible to the public, Nick Denton of Gawker Media and Meg Hourihan of Pyra Labs created Kinja, which began as an investigation into the navigation of blogs. It was dubbed Kinja in October 2003.[3]
On February 11, 2013, Kinja 1.0 was launched on Jalopnik.[4] Changes included an entire site and platform redesign, favoring a more Tumblr-esque design. Users received the ability to create their own blogs on Kinja, replacing the old profile system. Comments, replies, and posts all aggregate on the user's personal blog.
On March 11, 2013,[5] Kinja was launched on Gawker Media blogs io9 and Deadspin, followed by Kotaku on March 25, 2013;[6] Jezebel on April 8, 2013;[7] Lifehacker on April 15, 2013;[8] and Gizmodo on April 29, 2013.[9]
In 2017, following Univision Communications' purchase of Gawker Media assets and their reorganization as Gizmodo Media Group, the company began to migrate some of its other websites to Kinja as well, including The A.V. Club, Fusion (whose online editorial operation was later re-launched as Splinter), and The Root. ClickHole and The Onion are also slated to be moved to the platform; these two sites, as well as The A.V. Club, had previously used an in-house publishing platform known as Bulbs, and others had used WordPress. The Univision staff were heavily interested in its "inset" feature for external links—which can display Amazon.com affiliate links with product thumbnails and prices, as they can be used to generate e-commerce revenue.[10][11]
Controversy
Commenters on many Kinja-run sites have long complained that it lacks basic features, such as multithreading, and is generally very difficult to use. Further problems were found in August 2017 when The A.V. Club website was redesigned under the Kinja mantle, given that Kinja is aimed largely at blog-type posts, rather than longer form works. Users of other Kinja websites have complained that their feedback to Kinja staff often is dismissed. Complaints have also been made about vulgarities and lack of professionalism of the Kinja-produced trainings.
Usage
Kinja is a personal web service that allows its users to "bookmark" blogs, Kinja providing the user with excerpts of recent posts of the chosen blogs. These excerpts, known as personal "digests", are compiled into one page of excerpts, with other categorized compilations available based on such labels as media, music, liberal, conservative, and more. A user's personal choice of digests are easily available to any outside user, allowing others to share their favorite blogs and recent blog posts. Utilizing a webcrawler dubbed Kinjabot (similar to Google's webcrawlers), Kinja creates an internal index of all available web logs as defined by Kinjabot.
References
- ^ "Alexa Ranking". Alexa Internet. Retrieved December 21, 2016.
- ^ "Univision Rebrands Gawker Media As Gizmodo Media Group; Starts Translating Content For Univision.com". Forbes. 2016-09-22. Retrieved 2017-01-13.
- ^ "Gawker's Kinja, circa 2003". kottke.org. Retrieved 2014-08-12.
- ^ "Welcome To What's Next". jalopnik.com. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
- ^ "Check Out io9's New Design!". io9.com. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
- ^ "Welcome To The New Kotaku: Better Graphics, More Interactive, Same Low Price". kotaku.com. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
- ^ "Welcome to the New Jezebel". jezebel.com. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
- ^ "Welcome to the New Lifehacker". lifehacker.com. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
- ^ "Welcome to the New Gizmodo". gizmodo.com. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
- ^ "Fusion is changing its name to Splinter". Poynter. Retrieved 2017-09-25.
- ^ "Kinja, the publishing system at the heart of Gawker, lives on under Univision". Poynter. Retrieved 2017-09-25.
Sources
- New York Times Blog-Bleary? Try (What Else?) a Blog Thursday, April 1, 2004
External links
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