Encroachment and Overreach: In Search of Unicorn Status

There are several reasons for building yet another news aggregator app. I am sharing some of these reasons in a series of short notes, in no particular order. This is Note 5.

Everywhere I turn, I see examples of tech companies that began by serving a particular market segment and then, out of sheer greed, ended up unfairly competing with the very customers they originally intended to support. There are far too many examples to provide an exhaustive list, but I will include a few at the end of this note.

Many mobile news aggregators are similarly afflicted. They have moved very quickly from being technology platforms for news publications to curating news, modifying headlines to make them click-worthy, and generally deciding what the user should read. All of this is done to grab eyeballs and make money, journalistic ethics be damned!

At Tikker News, our endeavour is to remain a technology platform and to build all the tools necessary for publications to reclaim their editorial control and to help readers like me access well-researched, factually correct, cross-checked and consistently unbiased, or at least less biased, news.

Here are some other recognizable examples of encroachment and overreach:

Netflix: Over 50% of the budget for new content now comes from OTT platforms. They decide the script, they decide the genre, and they decide how simplified a movie or series must be.

Amazon: Many top-selling products now have Amazon-branded equivalents. What began as a platform for buyers and sellers has evolved into one of the largest sellers on its own marketplace.

Swiggy and Zomato: Many places you order from are not restaurants at all; they are cloud kitchens run by Swiggy or Zomato.

Spotify: The company has moved from streaming music to producing its own Spotify Originals.

OYO and Airbnb: These services have moved from being hotel aggregators to managing their own properties.

Is there a specialized, local or vernacular publication you would like to see on Tikker? Are you one such publication that would like to join Tikker? Let us know.