Inside The Hive’s powerbroker newsletter

Max Willens of Digiday writes about Vanity Fair’s business news site The Hive’s personalized newsletter product, The Players, which lets readers follow 150 specific figures because anytime the Hive writes a piece about a person someone follows, that reader receives an email with that story.

Willens writes, “Nearly 36,000 people have signed up for the emails since launch in March, with most users following between one and two people. In the coming months, the Hive’s product team will experiment with where sign-up modules are placed, both on and off the Hive’s site.

“‘This is for the people who care the most and know exactly what they want,’ said Jon Kelly, the Hive’s editor.

“The idea of being able to follow people grew out of the earliest conversations Kelly had about the Hive with Zac Frank, a Condé Nast product director who works on titles including The New Yorker, Wired and Pitchfork. Since one of the blog’s core focuses is extensive coverage of Washington, Wall Street and Silicon Valley power players, they knew the site would pay sustained attention to the same people.”

Read more here.