Type Private Website Official website Founded 2013 | Industry Digital Publishing Founder Taylor Luk | |
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Number of locations San Francisco; Sydney Australia | ||
History
The company was founded in late 2012 by Taylor Luk, through the AngelPad that offers seed funding and three months of mentorship. The founder had previously started a popular online lyrics site LyricsTime.
Contents
The initial idea originated from Shop2, a social shopping site developed by Taylor Luk, Mark Guo and Khoa Nguyen. The company was later re-incorporated as Issue, Inc. in June 2013.
Issue received investments from AngelPad, Syd.Ventures and funding from Mondelēz International in their "Mobile Futures Australia", In the program Mondelez partnered with Mobile Marketing startups to help build the future of in-store and mobile engagement.
Business overview
Issue is a technology company that aims to address the challenges of smartphones and tablets from the ground up, for digital consumption on mobile that is free from legacy concerns of traditional magazine or publishing workflow.
Issue offers a Software as a service publishing solution for users to produce digital magazines on mobile devices. The company operates in California and Sydney with a development team that is based in Sydney, Australia.
Bianca Melky, Senior Brand Manager of Mondelēz International, said that "A big challenge we have is that digital is this awesome new space where consumers are increasingly going first for inspiration, so how do we play in that space in a way that is economical and timely," Melky continued. "And that is what Issue allowed us to do – it allows us to democratise content and publish it really efficiently and at low cost."
Issue’s client base includes brand marketers such as Mondelez, e-commerce companies Minkpink and Top3 by Design. These companies can publish Mobile content that is distributed through Issue App in the Apple App Store (iOS) and their own media channels such as social networking sites and mailing list.
Issue Platform
Issue allows users to create their own digital magazines via a web interface. "Issues" can be viewed as a series of pages with a small footprint (micro-magazines) that has built-in shopping capabilities. These micro-magazines can be consumed via mobile devices (such as iPads and smartphones) with short download time, touch-based page swiping and built-in sharing capabilities. Issue Platform consists of two components:
Issue Magazine Format: A Mobile publishing format that contains HTML5 pages with a proprietary CSS framework, Metadata, Assets (images, audios and videos) and Scripts that enable interactivity. According to Taylor, the magazine format has a strong emphasis on the social web including the ability to preview images of Issue magazines on social media sites. It also continues to engage users offline, without the need of Wi-Fi or Internet data.
Issue Publisher: A web-based publishing platform that includes content management and aggregation features that can synchronize content from RSS feed, social media and product feeds from e-commerce platforms. It keeps track of the number of views, actions and subscribers for each "Issue" and estimates the amount of shopping intents.