Analysing ETtoday, a Taiwanese Media Company

Advanced Media W2

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Rhoda Rong Huang

  Now called ETtoday, was once recognised as the EBC News during the year 2000 to 2008.  However, after it was sold to CHUNGHWA United Telecom Group, the name was changed into NOWnews, later on, became another online news outlet.
  In November 2011, Eastern Media International reestablished a new online media outlet as the ETtoday. Furthermore, in April 2014, partly separated from its mother company the EMI, ETtoday Co., Ltd. became the owner of the ETtoday news outlet and has been running it ever since.

  The unique business model of this media outlet is that it engages its followers from several different perspective and interests. As ETtoday tries to run the news outlet more like a social media community. It divided its news into various types of "clouds", easier for followers to choose from their own likes and dislikes. For example, there is "travel clouds", "instant news", "sport clouds" and "pet clouds", each contains related articles which are convenient for the audience to read and enjoy.

  According to the company's "About Us" section, it has been quite successful in these days of online news competition.

  As shown in the above screenshot from ETtoday's website, it has an 85% rate of reach, has become No.1 in Taiwan's popular websites. Furthermore, it has the most fans/followers on social media outlets and had won the Google award for publishers in 2016.

  The core of ETtoday is the general manager, as he is in charges of most decisions within the company (as shown in below's graph)

  However, one interesting fact that can be observed from the graph is that the section for international news is taken care of by the company's chairmen. This suggested that the company's international interests will be highly influenced by the chairmen's view of the international world. 

  Nevertheless, ETtoday is successful mainly due to its business model and how it operates its social media outlets, which is really important in nowadays. Cooperations with other media have also made it reach a broader audience base. However, as it is currently in cooperation with Baidu, a Chinese media, it thus suggests its political point of view in sometimes might seem rather subjective and friendlier towards mainland China. 

References:

https://events.ettoday.net/about-ettoday/index.htm

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETtoday%E6%96%B0%E8%81%9E%E9%9B%B2