# Topix

> Topix began by automatically organizing local news for thousands of American communities, then found that town forums held readers far longer than headlines did. The Palo Alto company turned that lesson in attention into an advertising business, later replacing local discussion with data-tested entertainment quizzes and visual stories. Publishers Clearing House acquired it in 2019.

- **Founded:** 2004
- **Headquarters:** Palo Alto, United States
- **Founders:** Rich Skrenta (Co-founder and founding CEO), Chris Tolles (Co-founder; CEO from 2007), Bryn Dole (Co-founder), Bob Truel (Co-founder), Tom Markson (Co-founder), Mike Markson (Co-founder)
- **Products:** Local news aggregation, Topix forums and local editing, Publisher forum and news tools, Entertainment verticals and visual stories
- **Notable:** Built more than 150,000 topic and location pages by March 2004, according to a contemporary account., Approached 100 million cumulative comments in March 2010, with about 125,000 comments a day reported then., Reported 2.8 billion monthly page views and more than 18 million monthly unique visitors at the time of its 2019 acquisition.

## Products & services

- **Local news aggregation** — Automatically crawled news sources and organized stories into pages by place and topic.
- **Topix forums and local editing** — Town and topic discussions, user comments and volunteer editing layered over local news; the local forums closed in December 2018.
- **Publisher forum and news tools** — Embedded forums, related-news widgets and a classifieds platform for newspaper partners, with advertising revenue sharing.
- **Entertainment verticals and visual stories** — Quizzes, slideshows and original entertainment stories across brands including Stars, Offbeat, Sideline, Blackbeat, Parenthood and Pawsome.

## Achievements

- Built more than 150,000 topic and location pages by March 2004, according to a contemporary account.
- Approached 100 million cumulative comments in March 2010, with about 125,000 comments a day reported then.
- Reported 2.8 billion monthly page views and more than 18 million monthly unique visitors at the time of its 2019 acquisition.
- Reported 383% growth across the three years before its 2019 acquisition.

## Latest updates

- **2018-05** — Topix published revenue and visitor figures for its top visual stories and said 2018 revenue to date was three times the prior year.
- **2018-12** — Topix shut its local news forums and directed local readers toward Patch.
- **2019-09** — Publishers Clearing House announced its acquisition of Topix; the sale price was not disclosed.

## Links

- Website: http://www.topix.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/topix
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Topix
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/Topix/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/topix
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-29