iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 16h

How a few local meetups spawned a B2B media company that spans across podcasts, events, and a 40,000-member Slack community simonowens.substack.com/p/how-a-few-...

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 17h

Thinking of starting a service where every time I get a completely irrelevant PR pitch I then email the PR person’s client and inform them that they’re wasting their money and then ask them for a small “thank you” fee for helping them identify wasteful spending.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 19h

bluesky sucks so much ass

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 22h

Just imagine if you found a way to redistribute that wealth to the bottom 50% of Americans. The .1% would still be insanely wealthy and yet the average household wealth would shoot up to over $100,000.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 23h

Right wing media pundits when they thought Senator Eric Schmitt was about to unveil a new conspiracy theory about Jack Smith that they could devote the next several months to spreading.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I truly hope that Democratic voters never forget how quickly these guys bent the knee the second a fascist took power.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

How Semafor is redefining the head of video role digiday.com/media/how-se...

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Does official White House access even matter anymore? puck.news/does-trumps-...

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is the perfect example of how not to pitch me. I can’t tell you how many pitches I get where at the end of the email I’m still not even sure what the person does.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Fox News’ Latest Digital Expansion Is a Podcast for ‘The Girls’ www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This is why I never made a go at trying to become a full-time freelance journalist. The math just doesn’t math anymore. I’d rather toil away at building my own content business than build someone else’s for the mediocre pay.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

As Wattpad Takes a Corporate Turn, Users Miss Its Cringe Years thewalrus.ca/wattpad-corp...

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Adjusting how you think about YouTube view numbers businessoftv.substack.com/p/adjusting-...

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The Recipe Site That Ate Itself airmail.news/issues/2026-...

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Amid the existential Google Zero era, some publications are trying to reclaim the direct relationship with their audiences via… apps. But can they mimic ‘The New York Times’ digital success with its scale? puck.news/why-news-pub...

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Thinking of creating a gmail filter that sends all emails that contain the words “sent by an AI agent” straight to spam.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Pretty amazing that Elon Musk went from leading a government agency to calling Trump a pedophile to sitting at a table with him at an official White House dinner all in a little over a year.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

From now on, every time I try to post a message and it runs up against Bluesky's stupid character limits, I'm going to delete the message and replace it with "Bluesky sucks ass." Bluesky sucks ass.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I think I'm about done trying to post native content to Bluesky. There's very little engagement to be had here, mostly because the company's leadership has made absolutely god awful product decisions that make the platform barely usable as a content sharing network.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Now that Paramount has settled its legal fight with the state AGs, its acquisition of WBD is all but certain.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

RedBird Capital invested in Puck at a $250 million valuation. While I’m a big fan of and paid subscriber to Puck, I can’t help but wonder what the scale play is. Remember, while the current valuation is $250 million, the investment comes with the hope that it’ll exit at far north of that number.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

New York Magazine profiled Andrew Kaczynski, who’s done a remarkable job carving out a beat for himself by combing through politicians’ digital histories to unearth embarrassing statements they’ve made in the past.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Ernest Hemmingway famously wrote a depressing short story in only six words. I can write one in three: “For sale: Baby.”

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

BUSINESS NEWS: Every economic indicator is heading in the wrong direction. ALSO BUSINESS NEWS: The stock market hit another record high today!

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

your regular reminder that bluesky sucks ass as a product

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

When Adam Ryan launched Workweek in 2021, the thesis was that some of the most valuable voices in B2B weren’t professional journalists or full-time creators, but practitioners who had spent years accumulating expertise inside their industries.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Congrats on the start of running season for all those who celebrate

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I’m terrible at the business part of running a media business. Is that bad?

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The UK newspaper The Times cut its story output by 20% while doubling down on higher impact, deeply reported journalism and saw its traffic go up 50% year-on-year. SOURCE: themediaroundup.beehiiv.com/p/how-the-ti...

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A social video creator who specialized in game highlights took a sponsorship deal in 2021 with a sports fantasy app when it was valued at $50 million. Recently that same app sold for $1.3 billion. SOURCE: www.creatorspotlight.com/p/jack-settl...

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Extremely proud that I've never read a Bret Stephens column, not even as a hate read.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A Brazilian YouTuber has pulled off something unprecedented: convincing major sports leagues to let him stream entire games live on his channel.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

California AG Rob Bonta will probably try to tout “major” concessions in his settlement with Paramount, but there’s really no sugarcoating it: he caved spectacularly after talking such a big game about how he was going to bring David Ellison to heel.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

AI slop will not save legacy newspapers Check out the piece: simonowens.substack.com/p/ai-slop-wi...

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Never ceases to amaze me that Apple had a 12-year head start on launching a voice chatbot, yet til this day Siri is still dumb as a bag of rocks.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The Cut profiled Quen Blackwell, a former Vine star who really blew up when she launched a celebrity cooking show on YouTube a few years back. Now she’s being courted by luxury brands and recently landed her first co-starring role in an HBO show. SOURCE: www.thecut.com/article/quen...

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Creator Spotlight interviewed the editor in chief of NowThis, which got its start as a social first newsroom and has now expanded into an entire roster of shows that are distributed across all vertical video platforms.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Earlier this month, McClatchy laid off upwards of 90 journalists across its various newspapers, and afterwards former staffers pointed to the company’s prioritization of clickbait blog posts over local news reporting as the true source of its woes.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Are we starting to see the early signs of a fan backlash against the NFL? For years, viewers have complained that game rights are being spread across more and more services, each of which seems to keep raising its prices.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The New York Times has become one of the few legacy media companies to successfully reinvent itself for the digital era, but that doesn’t mean it’s immune to disruption.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

god, bluesky continues to suck so much ass as a product. Leftists sequestered themselves onto a shitty platform that's anti-growth, thereby diminishing their influence in the political discourse.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Design Anthology was founded in 2014 around a simple idea: some of the most interesting design work in Asia-Pacific wasn’t getting the attention it deserved.

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I block like five to 10 PR people a day and still the bad pitches keep on rolling in. Could you imagine how bad my inbox would be if I didn’t actively block these people?

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Simon Owens @simonowens.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I have to hand it to THE GENTLEMEN. I barely remembered the plot of the first season and went into the second season with low expectations. The first few episodes were a little meh, but it kept ratcheting up the tension and I was at the edge of my seat by the final episode.

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