Atlas Obscura Wants to Become the National Geographic of the Digital Age
Skift Take
Building a new media brand in any sector is difficult, but expensive experiential writing about travel, history, art, and science is even harder to churn into a viable business. Atlas Obscura's intentions are pure, but it will take viral connection with a younger generation to guarantee its longevity.
Atlas Obscura was launched in 2009 as a platform where travelers, explorers, and the curious could post stories about their strange and fascinating experiences around the world.
The brand, which grew quickly and now has about 1.5 million monthly site visitors, is ready to take its project to the next stage.
Last week, founders Joshua Foer and Dylan Thuras hired former Slate editor-in-chief David Plotz as the company's first CEO. Now they're going out to raise funding with plans to transform Atlas Obscura from user-generated travel stories into the National Geographic of the digital age.
Although Plotz comes from the editorial side of the fence, he has some clear ideas about what it takes to make money online: His recent missive 76 ways to make money in digital media went viral. In additional to traditional advertising, which the site already runs from brands like Acura and Dos Equis, Plotz sees clear revenue opportunities in native content and branded events, the latter of which Atlas has already found early success.
Skift caught up with Plotz to learn more about the evolution of the brand and how it plans to compete by leveraging original reporting, a curious attitude, and Plotz's digital expertise.
An edited version of our interview is below:
Skift: What role is travel going to play in the new Atlas Obscura?
David Plotz: Our strong belief is that Atlas Obscura has the potential to become, for our and our children’s generation, what National Geographic was for our parents’ and grandparents’ generation: A defining media brand around wonder and discovery.
The reason we think th
