Why Business Insider is doing so well

John Carney of CNBC.com writes about why the Business Insider site, where he once worked, has been so successful.

Carney writes, “Business Insider is an internally competitive place to work. The editors compete with each other on who can get the best stories and most pageviews. You hear them talking smack to each other in the newsroom about who is “winning” or who is “behind.”

“But this competitiveness doesn’t diminish their team spirit. The place is a start-up and it feels like one. They consider themselves underdogs battling vastly bigger media companies. They want to be better at what they do than everyone else.

“User-Focused. There’s a schizophrenia that runs through much of the media. Writers and editors often went into writing or editing with an eye on improving the world. They want to educate, inform, expose corruption. At the same time, they know they need to appeal to commercial and reader interests that they often hold in some degree of contempt.

“The animating forces at Business Insider are very different. They want to deliver what the reader wants. Their entire goal is producing the most “user-friendly” media company they can. They’re constantly experimenting with what level of reporting, aggregation, commentary, and summarizing will best satisfy and attract readers.”

Read more here.