Media startup The Messenger got off to a rocky launch that was met with widespread ridicule on social media — with users noting, among other oddities, that the site is difficult to find on Google.
The brainchild of former Hollywood Reporter part-owner Jimmy Finkelstein, The Messenger went online on Monday — the culmination of a months-long build-up fueled by a reported $50 million venture capital infusion.
Finkelstein, who hopes the site will appeal to a wide swath of Americans in the same vein as “60 Minutes” and Vanity Fair magazine, has said that he hopes to eventually employ some 550 journalists in offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC.
Media industry observers blasted Finkelstein as “delusional” for his stated ambition of attracting 100 million monthly readers in a years’ time — all while turning a profit in an intensely competitive landscape in which outlets are fighting for dwindling advertising dollars.
Hitting Finkelstein’s lofty goals seems even more improbable considering how difficult it was to find the site after it launched.
A Google search of “The Messenger” yielded countless results on the first page of options — none of which lead to the news site.
Scott Nover, a technology and business reporter for Quartz, noted on Twitter: “I would dunk on The Messenger but I googled the site’s name and cannot find it.”
Others noted that the site’s “SEO (search engine optimization) strategy” was “not quite ready to support $100 million in year one ad revenue.”
Aram Zucker-Scharff, a privacy engineer, tweeted that The Messenger failed to grasp “the modern basics of SEO set up pre-launch.”
“Between the lack of modern SEO and the ad configuration I’m getting 2015 vibes all around,” Zucker-Scharff tweeted.
Zucker-Scharff also took issue with “just the s–ttiest possible Outbrain configuration.”
Outbrain is a web recommendation platform used by publishers to drive traffic to their website.
“In fact, zero seems to be the target number and, heck, they may get there,” Rosen told The Wrap.
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The Post has sought comment from The Messenger.
The Messenger sought to make a splash in its debut by featuring an interview with former President Donald Trump.
But industry sources were not impressed.
There’s a “discrepancy with what they promised and what they pretended to be,” a media source said, noting that Finkelstein is friends with Trump and the interview was a “soft ball interview.”
The source said that the site, which is being run by former People editor-in-chief Dan Wakeford, is missing a hard-news edge.
“It feels like People Magazine,” the source said, citing Wakeford’s soft touch.
“The interview [with Trump] feels like it belongs in an entertainment magazine. It had no follow up questions and no real questions,” the source said
Others on social media took issue with the news stories posted by The Messenger.
Dan Froomkin, a veteran journalist who edits the media watchdog site Press Watch, blasted the site for commissioning a survey which found that a majority of Americans have a preference for “more objective media” — one of Finkelstein’s key selling points.
“Nothing says ‘credible and objective’ like paying for a poll to show how desperate the nation is for a news organization like yours,” Froomkin tweeted, adding: “Dimwits.”
Jay Rosen, who teaches journalism at New York University, said that The Messenger was launched “with as few ideas as possible.”
Twitter user Jon Christian commented: “[You] gotta respect how The Messenger talked a HUGE talk about revolutionizing journalism that would heal a divided nation, then started churning out viral dumpster juice literally the day it launched.”
Christian’s tweet included a screenshot of a Messenger post linking to a news story about two people being arrested “after cocaine drops out of fake pregnant belly.”
