Fortune.com hits 20 million users, hires more staff

Fortune editor in chief Alan Murray sent out the following announcement on Friday:

Congratulations for taking Fortune.com over our target of 20 million unique users in the month of March (Omniture.)  It’s an amazing accomplishment, especially for a website that didn’t exist two years ago. It was a true team effort, for which you all deserve credit.

Our expanded tech coverage led the way, with tech readership growing more than fivefold since the summer of 2014. In addition, coverage of leadership, retail, finance and the Insiders network also showed remarkably strong and steady growth.  The breaking news desk had its best month ever in March – up 40% from the previous high.  We’ve been recognized for having one of the fastest growing mobile audiences in the magazine world, and by internal numbers have shaved a decade off the average age of our digital readers.

This isn’t just a numbers game.  The quality of our online journalism is better than ever. We’re producing a steady stream of smart stories, exclusive scoops and authoritative analysis that our readers value. In addition, subscribers to our newsletters – our most loyal and valuable readers – have grown to well over 200,000.

March also demonstrated a new level of integration between the magazine and digital products.  Both Best Companies to Work For and World’s Greatest Leaders garnered big traffic numbers, and were accompanied by dozens of online specials. The big magazine features in March also were online favorites. And our video views for the month were triple last year’s average monthly level.

Bottom line: Fortune is a true multimedia franchise – every bit as powerful in the digital world as it has long been in print and on the conference stage.

And we are not done.  Next up is a revamp of the website to improve the mobile experience, increase reader engagement and highlight our staff experts.  The beta version has cut the time it takes to load a Fortune page by well over half – an enormous improvement.

We are also making some exciting new additions to the online staff.

Aaron Pressman joined Fortune.com’s technology team on March 30 as a Senior Writer. Over the course of his career, Aaron has focused on business, technology and investing, including stints at Reuters and Bloomberg, and publications such as Wired, The Industry Standard, TheStreet.com and BusinessWeek, where his blog won silver medal for best blog of the year in 2007 from the American Society of Business Publication Editors. Most recently, he was senior writer at Yahoo Finance.  And our sister publication, Time, named him one of its 140 most interesting people on Twitter.

Wendy Frink joined Fortune.com on March 21 as Audience Engagement Editor after serving as social media editor at Entrepreneur for the past two years. Wendy has also been a guest contributor for BuzzFeed and The New York Times. She spends her downtime maintaining the rather large social media presence for her adorable rescue dog, @HamiltonPug.

Rafael Garcia joined Fortune.com on March 9 as Associate Producer, Audience Engagement.  A recent graduate of USC Annenberg’s School of Journalism and Communication, Rafael was a producer for USC’s new Digital and Emerging Platforms program, which received widespread recognition last year after producing viral video content specifically for social media. Rafael produced the Lincoln Navigator video that earned us 2.5 million views on Facebook.

Laura Entis joined Fortune.com’s new Venture vertical as a Reporter on March 28. Laura previously worked as a writer and associate editor at Entrepreneur.com, the digital arm of Entrepreneur magazine. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Hollywood Reporter, Psychology Today and Racked. Laura graduated from Boston College with a B.A. in English and from New York University’s Graduate School of Journalism with an M.A. in magazine journalism.

And, Nin-Hai Tseng has been promoted to Senior Editor, reflecting her stewardship of the Insider vertical since its launch in 2014 and its dramatic growth in the past 6 months.

Please congratulate all of the above, and congratulate yourselves.  Fortune is thriving and growing, and all of you deserve the credit.  We will gather to celebrate next week!