Brijit
“Brijit aggregates the world’s best long-form content and abstracts it in 100 words or less, providing busy, omnivorous, and increasingly mobile readers with rich, qualitative summaries as well as better guideposts for what to read, watch or listen to now.”
Good idea. Jack Hidary had it back in 2004 with OpinionSource, which is still a really great service, but limited.
Brijit is pretty slick looking, and covers all articles (not just opinions). I absolutely love it. Now you can get a quick idea about what to pick out of the mass of content still coming from the New Yorker, Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, etc.
I’m not sure how they’ll keep it up, unless the recession gets so bad that their method of (derivative) content creation — getting people to write 100-word summaries for $5 — continues to be viable. I gave it two seconds of thought, but decided I could probably earn more at a second job in retail.
Also, can they really get the click-throughs to justify the cost? The whole notion that summaries of magazines could bring in enough eyeballs to make a business seems kind of improbable or just plain risky to me.
I think some of these entrepreneurs would be better off buying copper or, as a hedge, the companies that make PVC piping. The Chinese need buildings, people! Buildings are real. We’ve got too many web 2.0 businesses. Invest in something real.
* Incidentally, Brijit has no connection to Brigitte Bardot, but which would you rather look at?
May 14th, 2008 at
Thanks for the notice, Josh — glad to know you like what we’re doing. As for the business model, keep an eye out in the coming months and I think it’ll start seem a little less “improbable or just plain risky.” And of course, we’d love to have you as a Brijit writer. If you’re reading / watching / listening to the sources we cover anyway, you may as well get paid a little to write about it. Just a thought.
Best,
Jeremy
Jeremy Brosowsky
founder, Brijit
May 14th, 2008 at
Jeremy: I do hope it’s a good model! I think the design and functionality are quite good. I did actually think about writing up articles, but the possibility of overlapping writers troubles me. Is their a queue system? Or designated beats?
May 16th, 2008 at
Already offline!?
It says:
“You’ve reached this page because, at the moment, Brijit is out of money and can no longer afford to bring you the world in 100 words. We’re working hard to find a way forward for our service and hope to relaunch in the not-too-distant future.”
May 16
May 17th, 2008 at
[...] to take a hesitant bow now, because this is truly sad, but also a vindication. Only days after I remarked that a web site based entirely off of sumarizing magazine articles had an “improbable or just [...]