A yr after its founding, Dubai-based digital startup Blinx, which produces information and short-form tales for Gen Z and Millennials throughout the Center East and North Africa, has already racked up important numbers.
The groundbreaking content material hub, which has racked up 5 billion views up to now 12 months, was launched in September 2023 in a high-tech studio in Dubai Media Metropolis by famend Arab journalist Nakhlé Elhage, who beforehand ran Al Arabiya Information Community for 16 years. Blinx at the moment has 6.5 million followers, cut up nearly equally between Instagram and TikTok, and has generated about 125,000 social media posts, in response to the corporate.
Numbers apart, it is clear that Blinx, whose lead investor is Tareq Ahmed Al Masaood, head of regional automobile gross sales large Al Masaood Group, is changing into a significant power within the media sector within the MENA area, in response to the World Financial institution. Two-thirds of the inhabitants are below 35 years previous.
Beneath, Erhag speaks sort On how Blinx gained consideration and his plans to take it to the subsequent degree.
In brief, what makes Blinx stand out?
Blinx is a storytelling hub. It isn’t a community. This isn’t a broadcaster. This isn’t a newspaper. This isn’t a platform. We don’t care what platform our tales are printed on, so long as we make good tales. Blinx’s audience is these below 35, younger Millennials and Technology Z, who make up the vast majority of the area’s inhabitants.
What’s your enterprise mannequin?
We get funding by means of model activation, we’ve some monetization on promoting, product placement and different widespread issues. Now could be the time to draw extra funding. I am unable to say we have reached double digits [making] million {dollars} this yr. We hope this occurs quickly. Any longer, we’ll concentrate on the gamification of storytelling.
How is your content material produced?
Once we began this venture, we had the concept it could be story-centric. All of the know-how options and workflows that work for broadcasters, newspapers and conventional platforms might not essentially work for us. Everybody at Blinx, together with safety, has a narrative to inform. Then, after we filtered the tones, we determined to show them into tales. Each story we determine on, is reworked into a special sentence. Every sentence has a special format for a selected platform. That is how we function.
To do that we have to construct a machine. We recruit from universities, we’ve plenty of interns, and we proceed to recruit interns. We prepare them lots after which throw them out on the sector they usually begin telling us tales. The primary factor we educate younger storytellers is: What’s in it for me? We inform them to place themselves within the viewers’s sneakers and say, “Why am I telling you this story?” After that, we apply KPIs [key performance indicators]they’re to replace, inform, make concepts, encourage, entertain and join.
What are the favored tales? On Brinks? What sort of content material are you producing?
there are two issues [at play] right here. One is the theme, and the opposite is inform the story. In terms of matters, it’s undoubtedly not a political matter [that dominates interest]. Perhaps it is political fatigue. Though the Gaza struggle continues to be happening, fatigue might have set in. We seen that the matters that enchantment to persons are people who affect their day by day lives. For instance, we did a narrative about Shein [the Chinese online fashion retailer] It garnered round 16 million views on one platform and round 10 million on one other. Gossip tales additionally get plenty of views, as do some human tales, in addition to tech tales.
Inform me extra about Shein.
This story is concerning the high quality and well being requirements they comply with. Individuals are actually serious about these sorts of tales. Well being is essential. Meals is essential to individuals. Well being is essential to individuals.
How does your workers function when overlaying a narrative like this?
We produce about 50 tales a day – tales informed on digicam or by voice-over narrators. Roughly 30% of the content material is predicated fully on purely unique reporting. We take some supplies from open supply or establishments and rework them with some added worth like graphics, analysis and different stuff.
As an old-school journalist, do you are feeling the burden of delivering “dependable” information rests in your shoulders?
What we do at Blinx is mix the very best of conventional media and digital media. Conventional media is credible {and professional}, nevertheless it has turn into boring and unattractive to the youthful technology. Digital media is thrilling, new, and fascinating, however additionally it is not at all times well-researched, credible, and reliable. Sadly, conventional media has turn into tied to sure political agendas through the years. Someway, social media is kind of complicated on the subject of political agendas.
What we do is leverage the very best of conventional and digital media to ship data within the type of storytelling – deeply researched messages delivered in a enjoyable, inspiring and interesting manner. That is our worth proposition and I consider that is what we have been profitable in delivering over the previous 12 months.
Nahle Elhag
Supplied by Brinks
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability.
