Scope shuts down curated portal and focuses on B2B business
Scope Content will shut down the news portal at the end of this week. The curated "boxes" at Thescope.com, the mobile apps for iOS and Android and the email digest (the morning newsletter with the previous day's curated news) will no longer be updated or sent out from Friday.
Although the service, which was launched in January 2015 under the name "Niuws" (Werbewoche.ch reported), over 27,000 registered users were gained in almost four years and over 60 curators linked the best articles on various topics on a daily basis, it was not possible to generate sufficient turnover with this model in the long term.
In contrast, the corporate client business, on which the company has been focusing for the past two years, is doing very well, writes Scope Content. The curation software is licensed to companies and organizations as "software as a service". In 2018, more than 25 new customers were acquired, including Barry Callebaut, Bluewin, Furrerhugi and Homegate, who use Scope for various forms of communication, from content marketing and existing customer care to internal communication. More information can be found at corporate.thescope.com.
As part of the realignment, Jens Alder was appointed to the Scope Board of Directors this year. Alder is the former CEO of Swisscom and has held or has held various high-profile directorships for ten years, including at Alpiq, Goldbach Group and CA Technologies. He replaced Viktor Giacobbo at Scope. In addition to Peter Hogenkamp as Chairman, Jens Alder, Andreas Von Gunten and Jürg Stuker are now members of the Scope Board of Directors.
For Scope majority shareholder Peter Hogenkamp, the positive outlook clearly outweighs the negative: "On the one hand, we are a little sad because, like thousands of loyal Scope fans, we loved the curated news, but above all we are looking forward to the complete focus on our successful corporate client business, which will allow us to grow even faster here next year."
