NowThis Shutters Website To Deliver Exclusively Via Social Media

Video news publisher NowThis has gone all-in on social media. Today it stripped its website of all content except for links to all the places where users can get its content.

NowThis, founded in 2012 by former Huffington Post and Buzzfeed veterans, already emphasized off-site distribution of its short-form, millennial-focused and mobile-optimized video clips, pushing content to Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr and other networks. It was an early adopter on Kik, building a follower base of more than 200,000 in two months as we reported in November.

So it’s no surprise that NowThis has become the first publisher to bow to consumer demand and the realities of how most people consume content. Basically, the company decided to fish exclusively in the most well-stocked fishing holes. NowThis won’t be alone following this strategy, Athan Stephanopoulos, senior vice president strategy and partnerships, told Capital, “unless we live in a world where people are not awake.”

“We’re not trying to lead the industry,” he said. “We are leading the industry and kind of redefining what a media company today looks like.”

We just shut down our homepage bc who goes to web sites anymore? (ps you can still get @nowthisnews everywhere, duh.) pic.twitter.com/ojjeLdPS3p

— Sarah Frank (@sarah_frank) February 6, 2015

NowThis has been planning the move since the summer of 2014. That it came the day after John Herrman’s piece in The Awl arguing that websites are “unnecessary vestiges” for publishers, is a coincidence, NowThis executive producer Sarah Frank said.