With Pulse Following Zite’s Lead, Mark Johnson Talks About News Reading App Landscape
Earlier this week, I reported that LinkedIn was readying a purchase of Pulse, one of the more popular of the many news reader apps, for upward of $50 million.
By coincidence, only days before, I had done a video interview with Mark Johnson, CEO of
Zite, which was bought by CNN for $20 million in mid-2011.
Since then, the San Francisco-based startup has remained relatively independent, said Johnson, although it’s a delicate balance.
In December, Zite released new versions of its Apple iPhone and iPad apps that aggregate a variety of content, expanding its offerings to more than 40,000 interest topics for its magazine-style offering.
The redesign got a lot of criticism, including from Katherine Boehret, and some of the changes were rolled back.
In any case, here’s my interview with Johnson, which touches on a number of topics, including what it’s like to get bought (pay attention, Pulse guys!):
