Who wants to pay for articles and news? Someone? Anyone? It is no secret that online publishing is a tough market. More and more startups that are looking at alternative models of distribution for publishers are finding this out the hard way. Amsterdam startup Maggy just announced that from December 1st it will close its doors. There were not enough paying customers, and the founders could not find a strategic partner to bring the company to the future.
Survival of the fittest
The end of Maggy is the latest chapter in the mostly sad story for Dutch online kiosks. This year already two other, similar startups went belly up. Online kiosk MyJour closed its doors earlier this year, closely followed by the bankrupcy of all-you-can-read platform of eLinea. It’s a tough market where only the fittest survive. So far, this seems to be Blendle which shows no signs of slowing down. The Utrecht based startup seems to be the only one to make the idea of ‘Spotify for articles’ work by growing its userbase, raising capital, scaling up, rolling out internationally and gobbling up a similar initiative PAPER.