We’ve been proud to work with so many talented and dedicated writers over the past 6+ months. Together we’ve published nearly 16,000 abstracts, covered more than 100 sources, and provided a service that’s proven valuable to hundreds of thousands of people.
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we’ve run out of money, and can no longer afford to pursue our vision of adapting great long-form content for a short-form world, at least not as a stand-alone company. As recently as yesterday morning, we thought we had the funding in place to continue our work together. But as it turns out, we don’t.
I’m sorry to share that we are ceasing publication of Brijit, at least for the time being, and possibly for good. Beginning today, I’ll be blogging here, and will keep you up to date on our status. I’m still working hard to find a home for Brijit and our community of smart readers, listeners, watchers, and writers. In the meantime, I hope you’ll stick with us on this blog.
Writer payments for all May abstracts published through the 15th will be made next week. As always, we appreciate the good work. And please don’t hesitate to reach out to me via email or comments here on the blog.
Brijit 
I love Brijit. I love it for the reading. I love it for the writing. I even loved the simple layout and design. How can we help get it running again?
Thanks, Christopher. You can start by pointing all your friends to this blog and asking them leave comments showing their support. The more people we have behind us, the more compelling the story we have to tell in our effort to find Brijit a home and get it relaunched. And I’ll be keeping you posted on our progress in this space.
Best,
Jeremy
Brijit has been such a huge part of my mornings since its inception. I will point as many people as I can your way.
Thanks, Libby. We can use all the help we can get.
-Jeremy
Well, that sucks. It was/is a neat concept, I guess it just didn’t catch on fast enough. I figured it would really take off and be a slightly higher-brow version of Digg, and although that didn’t happen, it might have if it had been around longer.
Mostly though, I’ll remember Brijit for the enormous HDTV I bought out of my earnings. Godspeed.
Also, *honk*
Oh no…. must be that time of the year. This makes 2 of my favorite sites to go down in the last few weeks (Lucky Oliver was the other). If there’s anything that can be done, please let people know.
I enjoyed reading Brijit and I enjoyed the handful of writing I did for Brijit… perhaps it can live on in some other incarnation… ?
Hope you’ll get the site back up…I had an assignment to review it for the Charleston Advisor.
Boo, that’s too bad! I just discovered this site, and I really liked it! Great way to start the day with all the best articles…
Hope you’ll find a way to get the funding you need!
Sorry to hear this… I’ve enjoyed being involved with Brijit as a writer and reader. Hopefully something can be salvaged, as the nub of an idea is still a viable one.
There will never be anything like Brijit. The staff was so sweet and yet professional. The concept of reading the news in less than 100 words was a brilliant idea. Who ever thought of this concept and how it was done was a genius. I will be one of the biggest supporters to stand by Brijit and wait for their comeback. I cannot say this about any other company for online news. Brijit was the best in everything and this is really sad news.
::honk:: sorry to hear the news.
i enjoyed writing abstracts (when i could!) and enjoyed the idea of brijit. here’s hoping you find a money tree.
Wow, Cheryl. You made my day.
Thanks,
Jeremy
I’ll miss Brijit – thanks for all the ‘fun’ and great journalism. I enjoyed submitting several posts and liked the challenge of saying something in 100 words or less.
Tom
Just got into you last week… what can we do to get the gears turning again? Have you explored any funding opts? Peace and hairgrease but I know you’ll be back.
Andy
Brijit is a fantastic idea, and with the amount of information on the Internet often overwhelming, a necessary one. Having a staff of professional editors screen both the articles and the summaries also made it more trustworthy than rival, more open-source oriented sites. Hope you guys can find a way to secure the funding you need to continue.
I’m sorry to hear this. I enjoyed writing for Brijit, and I enjoyed the content that was provided. I wish there was something that could be done to keep it going- the bounties for writing the articles almost seemed too good to be true. I searched the site over and over to find out where the money was coming from, in May when the list of articles to be abstracted started shrinking, I became quite worried.
I raved about this site to my friends, and really loved the idea. I hope that print publications could see the merit of this idea and support it- I respect that Brijit was objective, and there was no advertisements for the publications aside from a short review- but if only the print publications could throw money behind it. Because after all this idea opened up the world of print publications to the user-generated/web 2.0 concept, and I think that was a great idea that could and should somehow live on.
Well, either way- I was proud to be associated with Brijit and I’m equally proud to see my work on the website. Kudos for a good job and I look forward to seeing you back one day.
[…] long-form article summarization service Brijit decided to close its doors today. It would appear that their business model (paying people to summarize long-form news articles) was […]
Well this is sad.
I have 7 brijit RSS feeds I rely on every day.
Thanks for the service while it lasted. I hope something pans out to resurrect brijit.
Also, can I make a suggestion? You should send the message that appears when on the brijit.com homepage out on all of your rss feeds. You probably have thousands of readers who never see the homepage.
I was shocked to see the announcement up on the site yesterday. I visited Brijit 2-3 times a day. Bottom line is that out of the gazillions of sites out there, there are only around 5 (and Brijit is one of them) where I’m guaranteed to be given quick and easy access to more than 5 articles that I’ll find interesting.
I only just discovered brijit on recommendation from a friend a few days ago, but I’m really going to miss it if it doesn’t come back. I’ll be watching this blog, and hoping. Good luck in getting your feet back under you!
[…] post on Brijit’s blog by CEO and Editor In Chief Jeremy Brosowsky explained further. “As recently as yesterday […]
Sorry to hear it, I always have enjoyed your site and your efforts!
I will visit you here, and share you where I can
That is too bad. I liked your service, and I hope you’ll be able to pull something together soon.
I’m hoping for a quick return. Good luck.
I was very surprised to hear the sad news today. I have no doubts that Brijit will be back.
I thought that Brijit was an awesome idea. It helped me discover free online sources I never read before.
I’m in grad school for library science. My professor mentioned Brijit in class and it instantly upped his credibility for me, in terms of understanding what was going on online.
Honestly, I never thought that this would happen. I really hope that some sort of miracle happens and you are able to get funding somehow to bring the site back up.
I’m so sorry to hear about the funding. I’ve enjoyed the summaries and hope Brijit will make a comeback.
Condolences, Jeremy.
The site is brilliant and I really enjoyed reading it on a regular basis. I’m the guy who dropped a cover letter off in person at your office to see if I could help you market the site. Even though I never heard from you (and can see now that you probably weren’t in a position to hire anyone) I still told everyone who would listen about Brijit.
I hope you can get some funding so I can keep using and evangalizing a great concept.
I’m so sorry to hear about Brijit shutting down. I loved Brijit, and truly hope the money can be found to get it up and running again. I never did this for any articles I read, but Brijit gets a three out of three from me!
This site was a pleasure to read and work with, and has expanded my horizons significantly, especially in regard to the variety of engaging media sources that exist. I would be a complete stranger to user-generated content if not for an introduction by Brijit, and it inspired me to teach myself too many new skills to count so that I could be an active member of this expanding community. Thank you all for your hard work, and I sincerely hope that you can find a way to continue.
Now that I think a bit more about it, the only piece of worthwhile information I ever got from reading Megan McArdle was her plug for Brijit.
I had fun writing for Brijit; it exercised my brain and made me think hard about what was really important. I hope you come back online soon.
Oh, no! Brijit was a lot of fun–so timely and witty and different. I hope this turns out to be just a quick break and that we see you again very soon.
I really loved this site. I visit it all the time on my mobile!!!!
I found your site through WIRED magazine- ughhh! Just when I thought that I found what I was looking for- its gone…there’s gotta be someone with some extra cash around!!!Come on rich people- pitch in! 🙂
What sad news! It can’t be forever—the web needs a site like this. Bryan, Aaron, and the rest of the staff are top-notch, and I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity to write for Brijit and for how it expanded my horizons. I discovered compelling media sources I would never have stumbled upon before. I even have a “stable” of op-ed writers whom I admire, not to mention a few whose articles I now know I never want to read). My gods, this post is abstract-length!
I even made a little dirge for you on my (italian) blog ;). We’ll miss you, hope it turns out all right.
[…] PS: HONK! […]
As both a Brijit contributor and a fan, yesterday was a sad day. Fingers crossed on finding the service a soft landing, but however things turn out, best wishes to everyone at Brijit HQ moving forward.
*honk*
What a loss! Brijit was great fun for readers and writers alike, and Jeremy and company were so passionate about delivering the day’s best news stories in 100 words or less. I enjoyed writing for Brijit, and it was such a treat to have all those summaries and links to interesting articles all together on one site. I hope Brijit finds a way to live on.
Darn, I loved Brijit — it was like Digg, but for adults.
Let us know how we can help relaunch the site, thanks!
RIP concision 😦
OH no!! This is a terrible news. I really love Brijit.
I am very sorry to hear about such a worthy and well-considered service closing down. I would be prepared to pay to use such a service — up to $100/year — and hope you can find another business model.
I’m so sorry to hear that Brijit has shut down!
How can readers help??
Come back soon!!
Just learned about Brijit…was sorry to hear that it isn’t live. I’d love to be on a list if you get it up & running again. Good luck!
That’s too bad and, I hope, temporary. Is it true that your archives of summaries are still available? I was unable to access them. If they continued to come up in Google searches, it would be your best advertisement.
HONK! HONK!
I also just learn about brijit… a real pity, as I love the idea, it’s seem that the economics are just not there… yet…
Thanks for the good articles you send us and good luck in the future!
I miss you Brijit!
Brijit why oh why i sure do with you were back. ps. i am honking. the closest thing to you is http://sendinyourpoetry.blogspot.com/ but it’s just not the same. please come back soon.
I’ve never used Brijit, but I think if it were still running, it really would become part of my daily life. Please come back so I can at least experience Brijit!