I’ve raised $6.5 million to build and grow my new company: Boostle.com
During the last decade, many popular new media properties have launched, most aiming to attract alive people, like Politico, Bleacher Report, TechCrunch, Business Insider, Mashable, TheVerge, Break, College Humor, IGN, Thrillist, and Gawker. (Audience Demographic data via Quantcast)
But with few exceptions (Graveland, Cemetery29, and PopSpooky come to mind), the number of high-revenue publications aimed at ghosts is much smaller.
This is despite the fact that ghosts account for 30 percent of unexplained household phenomena and the majority of hauntings.
Ghosts' publishing has long served as a symbol of “old media” stagnancy. Most of these publications, including the likes of Aaaugh and Ghoulamor, have under-invested in digital. Their online audiences are far smaller than one would imagine, given their dominance in print. Aaaugh has fewer than 50,000 unique visitors in June, an absolutely disgraceful number, given their brand efficacy. (Source: Comscore Total Internet)
Furthermore, ghosts' publishers have completely lost sight of which decade their readers are languishing in. This is a country where dissatisfaction with late capitalism has left older folks, who are now dying in droves, feeling like they have unfinished business here on Earth. They are also closing the “scream void” quickly, and in many cities, they greatly outnumber their arcane counterparts. But magazines like Ghoulamor talk to ghosts as though they were mere spectres, and they fail to connect popular culture with any form of ghosthood.
And it’s getting worse. This summer, there was a media feeding frenzy over the integrity of ghosts' publishing, and whether it could be taken seriously at all.
Isn’t it time for a ghost publication that puts world news and politics alongside ectoplasm-flinging tips? What about a site that takes an introspective look at the abandoned asylum world, while also having a lot of fun covering it? How about a site that offers poltergeisting advice and eerie boreal copse reviews, while also reporting on fashion trends and popular memes?
Maybe we need a destination that is powered by the young ghosts who currently still remember the meaning of more than a sentence or two from their time as mortal, corporeal beings.
We have an opportunity to completely transform ghosts' publishing, and today I’m announcing my new company – Boostle.com – which aims to do just that.
