Media monitoring company Streem launches with claim to offer better service than rivals
The lucrative world of media monitoring today sees the arrival of a new player with the launch of Streem.
Antoine Sabourin and Elgar Welch at the launch of Streem at MCA this week
According to 29-year-old Streem co-founder Elgar Welch’s LinkedIn profile, he spent a brief period in politics including as “Digital Adviser to Prime Minister’s Office” in 2013. Earlier in his career he worked at production house FSM.
The launch appears to be a reboot of an earlier offering launched by Welch in 2008 which was also called Streem. This offering was a subscription news service mainly carrying content from AAP. It shut down four months after launch. Welch was also behind a short-lived news service called Scopical which at the time billed itself as “one of Australia’s first independent online media portals”.
Nice to see more choice in the market! Refreshing to see a new company shake up a very dull and out of date industry
The top team at home-grown iSentia keep winning worldwide industry awards for innovation and client commitment.
The negative/cynical angle at the top of this piece wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact iSentia (the company Streem are trying to challenge) are the sponsors of Mumbrella’s Commscon would it? #conflict
Hi “Disclosure Needed”,
Not even slightly. We’re certainly not scared of writing bad news about Isentia. There’s been a fair bit of it about in their last couple of ASX results which we’ve covered thoroughly.
Our first impression on receiving the announcement about Streem was that a credible new media monitoring player had entered the market. And that’s how we set out to write it.
However, the impression given in the announcement, and on the site, of a company led by a highly connected political veteran with access to the office of the PM began to crumble a little when we noticed on Elgar Welch’s LinkedIn profile that the involvement with the PM’s office had been as an “adviser” and for just a few months.
Then we began to wonder why there was so little information – and, unusually, no image in his LinkedIn profile, so we became a bit more curious.
A bit more searching led us to articles about the previous incarnation of Streem, and one of the articles from eight years ago that we link to making the point that it’s never good practice to misdirect the press, as that journalist appeared to believe had been the case back then.
We were also initially impressed by what appeared at first glance to be a high powered board. Until we noticed that the board and advisers and been lumped together, again in a somewhat misleading way. The actual board – the people who will be involved and have the legal responsibilities that come with being directors – is much smaller. As far as we can tell, just two people in addition to the founders.
So yes, by that point we were feeling a little cynical. So, as is our job, we chose to put the facts that had been left out from the press release alongside the information sent out in press release.
Which is a bit of a shame because the product itself may well be great. And more competition in the media monitoring market is no bad thing.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Imagine being an adviser for a short period of time in 2013… there couldn’t have been an election in that time? Weak response. Dirt digging.
The negative/ cynical comment from DisclosureNeeded wouldn’t have anything to do with them obviously being from Streem would it? #conflict