Number
Media Takeout claims 30 million visitors a day
Media Takeout, a gossip site targeting African-American and urban audiences, was once among the top 500 most-visited US sites with 16 million monthly readers. Its CEO claims it now does 30 million visitors a day.
$30M
Claimed daily visitors to Media Takeout · visitors/day
“Media Takeout is among the top 500 most visited sites in the country. It was that. Is that— is it still the case? Yes, but everything's, you know, changing pretty frequently. That's pretty crazy. So it had 16 million readers a month at one point, and then it's a lot more now. He says 30 million visitors a day.”
Framework
Crossing the threshold: get people saying your name to friends
Sam's theory of trashy/gossip media: success comes from crossing a cultural threshold where people say your brand name to friends and family (WorldStar, Fashion Nova, Media Takeout). You can't stay purely behind the scenes; you need one impactful moment, like Drudge breaking the Clinton story, to become part of culture.
“So for example, WorldStarHipHop or WorldStar, they crossed the chasm of the threshold by people screaming WorldStar. And like, what's part of that became part of culture. Same with Fashion Nova. So like Fashion Nova is like the shitty, you know, I mean, there's like pretty fucking shitty clothes. And once it crossed the threshold of like, oh, it's just another Fashion Nova ad. Like once you start saying with that, your friends, it became a thing.”
Steal thisEngineer one culture-piercing moment so customers say your brand name to friends; that word-of-mouth threshold is what turns trashy media into a habit.