Bitchez, we back. And this time with a theme song.
My name is Averie Timm and I will be taking over this mission. Join us on our voyage, or don’t. Either way I’m going to continue posting things that make you laugh, things that make you cry, things that make you want to punch your expensive Mac computer screen, and things that only occasionally involve the word hipster.
YO. BIG MUFUHN ANNOUNCEMENT. LISTEN:
Averie Timm is another intern I basically stole from BlackBook (sorry guys, I love you, but you need to share). I didn’t steal her because I enjoy stealing things from BlackBook (though there’s something to be said for that time I came back for my booze collection and literally ALL OF IT BUT HALF A BOTTLE OF SVEDKA was gone, you fuckers). I stole her because she’s a smart, funny young lady and a great writer with the kind of intuitive sense needed from someone doing this: a sense of what people want to read, what people didn’t know they wanted to read, and how to package it. She was the one who took the BlackBook Tumblr from me - for the record, the first media outlet to “officially” have a Tumblr, what’s up - and increased its following by like, four times what it was when I had it in about, like, a month (BlackBook Assistant Ed. Cayte Grieve is still and has been doing a solid job growing and running it for a while, now, as well).
She’s going to be manning the Village Voice Tumblr, which I set up about a week before I got here in March, and have barely touched since. It will not be her only responsibility, she will not be its sole contributor, and yes, she is getting college credit for Tumbling. Don’t be “jels.” The idea, of course, is to provide anything but a place to feed our content into, and of course, to interact with a lot of people. If they choose to read the Voice from there, rad. If not, no big deal. But part of Averie’s very smart strategy was to engage people other than, you know, the people everyone else reads. [Someone recently ranted against, I don’t know, print publications on Tumblr sucking. (INJUSTICE! HORROR!) Naturally, BlackBook, who did it right, didn’t make it into his case.]
And it worked, not because we brought readers to BlackBook’s moneymaker, but because it was a two-way exchange: we were giving rise to people with really, really good ideas and pieces of culture and perspective on it, who basically just didn’t get heard like they should, and trading with them and our audience, it wasn’t costing us anything (or any more time we already spent distracted by Tumblr). Of all the self-professed “social media” “experts” in New York, Averie probably has a better track record than any of them, and oh yeah, she’s still at Pratt, and doesn’t call herself a “social media expert,” even though there’s money to be made in that con. Anyway, everyone, say hi to the Village Voice Tumblr (again), and Averie, who we couldn’t be happier to have on board with us.
