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July 1, 2008

Apture: A Tech Company Banking on Journalistic Cred

Posted by April Joyner at 1:11 PM

There's certainly no shortage of tech companies these days. Apture, based in San Mateo, California, and led by 23-year-old Tristan Harris, who left a master's degree program at Stanford to start the company, has added itself to the mix. But while Apture announced itself to the blogosphere at large yesterday, it has been courting traditional-media clients since April.

Apture provides a point and click system for publishers to add cross-reference links to their Web pages: for instance, a background article plus video and audio on a topic within a blog post. Rather than rounding up embed codes, like those used to post YouTube videos, or individual links, publishers can search for relevant multimedia without leaving their page and then insert links with one click. By moving their mouse over the resultant links, visitors can view the multimedia--whether a background Wikipedia article, a PDF, or a video--on the same page.

While developing Apture, Harris consulted with journalists in Stanford's John S. Knight Fellowship program. The company's investors include Stephen E. Taylor, former executive vice-president of The Boston Globe. (Apture thus far has raised an undisclosed amount, reported by Om Malik at under $1 million, in angel funding.) And its first clients include The Washington Post and the non-profit news organization ProPublica, in addition to the technology blog O'Reilly Radar. Harris believes that Apture is particularly well-suited to investigative journalism online by enabling publishers to share, through technology from the document-sharing site Scribd, primary documents used in reporting stories. (You can find examples at The Washington Post and ProPublica.) Other multimedia-heavy sites are also prime customers. "We're looking for large sites with lots of content," says Harris, who visited Inc.'s office last week. "We think sports and entertainment sites will love the technology."

Like many tech companies these days, Apture faces challenges of developing a business model and fending off quick-to-develop copycats. The company has a two-tiered service offering. Starting today, bloggers will have access to the service for free, whereas publishers like The Washington Post subscribe to a paid version, which serves ads within the link windows. Apture will take a share of the ad revenue as well as the charge for setting up the platform, which can be installed in under 5 minutes, Harris says.

As far as barriers to entry are concerned, Harris is confident that the technology he has developed and patented cannot be easily replicated. A similar technology developed by a company called Snap generates page previews from links. Apture's pop-ups are fully functional, unlike Snap's previews, which are called Snapshots. "People tend to find those previews annoying," says Harris. "Annotation software offers a similar function [as Apture], but you have to download a plug-in, and visitors have to have that plug-in in order to see it."

Reactions from the blogosphere lend credence to Harris' technological claims, with TechCrunch and Mashable giving Apture positive reviews. In April, however, Om Malik raised doubt about Apture's ability to scale:

"Their entire business, despite their technology, is that of business development. It would need supreme execution on their part to become a major force. That is why they should shift their attention to the e-commerce and travel sectors. In high-end e-tail, their technology is highly applicable because visual and video context can help close a sale."

For his part, Harris believes that Apture not only offers a game-changing technology for the Web at large but also provides a potential boon to the publishing industry. "Publications are going through a reinvention period," he says. "They want to keep readers' attention and to become more profitable online." Apture, he surmises, will help meet both demands.

2 Comments

Posted by: Mike at July 2, 2008 12:59 PM: Please tell me if the VCs are lining up!
Posted by: April Joyner at July 2, 2008 1:46 PM: They haven't had a VC round yet. We'll see what happens.

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