Hi, welcome to your Weekend: 10th Anniversary Edition!
Ten years isn't a lot in geologic or California redwood time—but it's an eternity in media time. Just ask some of the news startups that went bankrupt over the last decade. So what secrets have we at The Information gathered in our first ten years of bringing business news to the business class?
Our founder and CEO Jessica lays out some of the key lessons she's learned in her essay, "The Next News Disruption Has Already Begun." As the title suggests, her piece anticipates the huge set of changes that are coming to the news business, and suggests some of the technology tools journalists will use to confront them.
We've also learned that there's an insatiable demand for information about tech's most powerful companies. Scanning our list of the 100 most popular stories for subscribers, the same businesses pop up often. Google: 12 articles. Uber: 7 articles. Apple and OpenAI: 6 each. Microsoft: 4. Andreessen Horowitz, Stripe and Tiger Global: 3 a piece.
Then there's the Great Man Theory of tech coverage. Intentionally or not, we've written a ton about the tycoons of our age, all of whom happen to be male. See this table below, which tallies up the most mentioned people in our 9,000-plus stories.
I'm a little embarrassed by that list. Elon Musk clearly owns a lot of real estate in our heads—no Neuralinks necessary. But there's no denying that tech moguls loom large in our economic, cultural and political lives.
Of course, that doesn't mean these people impervious to criticism or don't make some laughable business mistakes. Just see our 10X Awards Awards for examples. The last decade has clearly taught everyone in tech lessons—some are just more costly than others.
Enjoy your weekend reading. And here's to another ten years!
the takeaway
The Next News Disruption Has Already Begun
Jessica Lessin, The Information’s founder and CEO, writes about navigating the changing relationship between readers and the news. She reflects on our past ten years—and looks ahead to the next decade.
top tens
The 10X Awards: Ranking the Winners and Losers of The Information’s First Decade
In honor of our 10th anniversary, we present the 10X Awards: Our subjectively chosen rankings of the decade’s highest highs, lowest lows and most seminal (and cringeworthy) moments.
the big list
The Top 100 Articles from The Information’s First 10 Years
If you wanted to track the ups and downs of Silicon Valley’s last decade, you could do worse than scanning the most popular stories from The Information’s archives. Here, the 100 articles that drove the most new subscriptions over the past 10 years.
The Information staffers on the one piece of new tech that’s been most beneficial to their lives over the last decade.
Reporter Aaron Holmes on FaceTime Audio:
When my husband and I first started dating, we were long-distance between Toronto and New York. Much of our early relationship progressed on nightly FaceTime Audio calls, where we’d cook meals in tandem and watch synced up Netflix movies. The technology allowed us to get to know each other without racking up hundreds of dollars of phone bills. Who knows if we would have made it to marriage without it?
Executive editor Amir Efrati on CPAP machines:
If you snore a lot, don’t remember your dreams and rely heavily on coffee to shake off fatigue, then you, gentle reader, may have sleep apnea. (Ask your doctor.) For those of us suffering from condition, continuous positive airway pressure machines have been life-changing. If it’s good enough for Joe Biden, who recently got one, it should be good enough for you. Yes, they aren’t the most comfortable, but you’ll thank yourself in the morning when you wake up refreshed.
Reporter Julia Black on AI-powered search:
I have famously bad recall, and I’ve always relied on pictures, diaries and notes-to-self to externalize my memories before they disappear. Advances in AI-powered search, like the iPhone’s photo search, have been game-changing. What was that amazing taco place I went to a few months ago? As long as I snapped a picture, I can figure it out. Most important of all: Would you like to see pictures of my cats? I can pull up 2,227 of them with a simple, three-letter search.
Reporter Annie Goldsmith on the TikTok algorithm:
Hi, I'm Annie, and I am an addict. But a highly functioning one! TikTok has helped me discover some of my favorite clothes, restaurants and books. I've found sources for stories there. I've even learned how to optimize credit card points. It’s also a useful (albeit toxic) form of stress relief for me—how can you possibly think about war or climate change when you’re bombarded by dopamine hits of light and sound? It’s the social platform I spend the most time on and I…probably, maybe…wouldn’t want to exist without it.
Reporter Anissa Gardizy on instant delivery:
As someone who obsessively tries to maximize my free time ("Sorry, can't go—too busy!"), the rise of instant delivery services has been a game-changer. Sometimes on a walk home from work or the gym, I’ll use my phone to order dinner on Uber Eats, then arrive at my apartment to find a taco salad or sushi rolls waiting for me. On work trips, when I realize at 11 p.m. that I forgot to pack a toothbrush, it’s nice to know I can rely on apps like GoPuff to send one over.
Designer Clark Miller on AI text-to-image generation:
As a graphic designer, I rely on Photoshop’s AI image generation tool more than I care to admit. It's vastly sped up many of the tedious tasks I do on a regular basis, like removing small, distracting elements from photos, or recreating a part of someone’s arm that was cropped out of an image. As someone who needs to deliver artwork on very short timescales (thanks a lot, Jon!) this feature gives me back not just minutes, but hours of time.
Until next Weekend, thanks for reading.
—Jon
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