The Future Of Digital Media Will Feel More Like Silicon Valley Than Time Inc.

The biggest media story of this week: Vox, the company that produces sites like The Verge, Polygon and SB Nation, bought Curbed, the media company behind Eater, Racked, and its eponymous real estate news site Curbed.

Vox’s CEO Jim Bankoff and Curb’s founder Lockhart Steele spoke about their new marriage today at Business Insider’s IGNITION conference with Business Insider’s CEO Henry Blodget.

The theme? Will digital media companies like Vox, Gawker, BuzzFeed, and Business Insider ever start consolidating into big conglomerates like a new-age Time Inc.?

That seems to be the emerging trend, at least. 

Bankoff seems to think so, but his answer as to how that will happen wasn’t what you’d expect. He focused on the technology that powers Vox media sites. Each site may look different to the user, but the back end is powered by something called Chorus, a platform for uploading content and ads to Vox media sites.

“Silicon Valley VCs like us because we’re using technology,” Bankoff said. “In Silicon Valley they celebrate hacker culture. Media is the same thing. Give them the environment and platform to make great things.”

So it comes down to great content, but it helps to have the tech that makes it easy for writers, videographers, and photographers get all that good stuff online.

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