The Majority
The Devlins launch The Majority, a website that aims to unite the silent majority who are dismayed and frustrated about the rise of Nationalism in Scotland, and give them the tools to fight back.
NewsBlocks launches Blockchain-based trusted news platform
The Social News Company Ltd. launches NewsBlocks, a blockchain platform for building next-generation news applications, such as trusted news feeds, fact-checking systems and fake news detectors. NewsBlocks starts from the insight that the traditional news article — a form of news designed to be printed on paper and thrown away each day — is not well suited to the digital age of mobile, instant data. The project’s primary goal is to convert all the world’s news articles into data, and store it permanently on a tamper-proof, censorship-resistant blockchain, where it can be searched, sorted, filtered and organised by anyone in new ways to create trusted news applications. Because each piece of data also has a price, NewsBlocks also creates the first global marketplace for news data.
Mark Devlin, CEO:
Once news is data, it can — for the first time — be verified, stored and priced so that anyone can use it to create the next-generation of news products and services.
Japan Today sold
GPlus Media, the company that publishes Japan Today, is sold to Fuji TV-Lab, a subsidiary of Fuji Media Holdings Inc. The sales also includes GPlus’ other internet properties, including GaijinPot and Real Estate Japan. Fuji TV-Lab:
The Japanese government has set an annual target of 20 million foreign visitors to Japan in 2020 for the Tokyo Olympic/Paralympics Games and Fuji Media Holdings expects this will increase the demand for media targeting foreign residents and visitors to Japan at an accelerated pace. In the context of this trend, Fuji Media Holdings understands that there is a favorable opportunity to create several inbound/outbound businesses and thus welcomes GPlus Media and REJ into the group to strengthen its ability to reach the foreign community in Japan.
Kroaky’s closes
0 0 Mark Devlin Mark Devlin2016-04-17 08:40:402016-04-17 08:40:41Kroaky’s closes
Japan Today sold
The Devlins sell Japan Today to GPlus Media, a Tokyo-based publishing company known for Real Estate Japan and GaijinPot, a community site for foreigners in Japan.
Metropolis sale
After publishing over 700 issues, the Devlins sell Metropolis to Lloyd, a New Zealand and Australian dual national, based in Japan. Over 14 years the magazine has grown to over 80 full-color pages every week made by a team of 35 staff from all over the world. The magazine has annual sales of ¥360 million and 20% profit, from hundreds of display and commercial classified advertisers and is, by far, Japan’s No 1 English magazine. A brief history of Metropolis is here.
Launch Crisscross Social Network
Crisscross Social Network is launched. The site uses a sophisticated drill-down search to connect people with the multiple, diverse interests.
The system grows to over 30,000 users, mainly in Japan.
It was not until 2012 that sites like Facebook offered similar “graph search” functions. In 2012 the site was being prepared for relaunch in the U.S. as CRXSS, a social search engine.
Start Crisscross Internet
From 1994 Tokyo Classified readers are able to place ads using an online BBS system. As the Internet grows in popularity Mark & Mary start Crisscross Internet, one of the first Internet Providers in Japan. Crisscross’s “Instant Internet” allows anyone to access the Internet by calling a premium-rate telephone number from their modem for an per-minute fee of ¥20 (approx $0.2). The business grows rapidly and gains over 5000 customers.