How Bloomberg’s Tic Toc aims to disrupt media

Ian Burrell of The Drum writes about the success and the strategy behind Tic Toc, Bloomberg’s Twitter network.

Burrell writes, “Central to that plan of innovation is Tic Toc, Bloomberg’s new 24-7 news network on Twitter. It has found 150,000 followers in 10 weeks and Smith and Micklethwait are hopeful that eventually it can replace the biggest international news networks as the trusted global go-to destination for big breaking news. ‘Tic Toc is a multi-year, very ambitious, global venture that is looking to become the next generation global news network,’ says Smith. ‘I talk about it as disrupting CNN, disrupting BBC, these are multi-billion dollar legacy markets. That’s our long-term vision.’

“The logic for basing Tic Toc on Twitter rather than Facebook is clear, he says. ‘Twitter, I would argue, is today the world’s biggest news platform. Twitter is much, much larger in terms of audience and engagement with news-seeking consumers than any other media platform. So building hybrid products between a content and journalism based company and the social media platform that has the most news consumers in the world makes a lot of sense.’

“Smith has a proven track record. At his previous job as president of Atlantic Media, he took a venerable but ancient American magazine and turned it into a digital powerhouse, while also launching business-focused Quartz as a digital-only sister brand. He joined Bloomberg in 2013.

“Tic Toc is a revolutionary idea, he maintains, because while other news brands are using Twitter to publish video they have not created a product bespoke for and native to the platform. Tic Toc offers hourly five-minute global news round-ups, beside contextual video stories, live coverage of breaking stories and a safe advertising environment for its seven launch sponsors.”