TBS Online turns 4: Moving forward with happy digital disruptions

The whole world at your fingertips - that is the reality of this digital world, interconnected through the behemoth that is the internet.

With so much just a click away, an information overload is inevitable - regardless of the medium. But at the same time, there is the fall in the attention span.

Dr Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics who has been researching people's social media attention span said the average attention span on a screen has decreased by 103 seconds between 2004 and 2023, a pretty steep fall.

All of these are challenges to the medium of news. The way forward for TBS Online has thus been constant innovation.

The focus on changing reading habits is indeed a redundant one. Instead, we at TBS are on the move to adapt to the changing reading patterns.

We analyse which articles do well, how much time is spent on each article, and which topics trend the most, alongside a slew of other data, as we make decisions.

The reliance on data-driven journalism is a brand-new adventure of sorts. It is an industry which has largely relied on gut instincts; now we have started complementing expertise with the hard data because the latter stands as irrefutable. 

Social listening, the practice of examining topics people are discussing the most, has also become easier in the age of social media.

That is also something we have begun tapping into.

For this, we recently introduced TBS Online exclusive In The Views column, where we let our team of writers explore their voice, the world around them and turn the magnifying glass on the most discussed topics around the country.

We have also renewed our focus on Shorts and Reels, providing quick, digestible packaging for news for our readers, while introducing different digital products. We have also begun using animations to tell entire stories, another happy disruption.

At the same time, we have introduced TBS Bites, where we break down everyday long stories into one-liner slides. In seconds, you can keep yourself abreast of the headlines across the world.

As a business paper, we also know the importance of our demographic dividend. To harness the potential of our young population, our product, TBS Graduates, has become a pathway to success in different careers. We have experts, students and educators giving out tips and tricks, while we also ensure internship and job opportunities are made easier for our website users.  

We have also decided that the narrative of the East, the so-called third world, is often missing in international discourse. We at The Business Standard have challenged ourselves to break that hegemony as well.

When the Taliban retook Afghanistan, that is exactly what we did. We spoke to the people there and reported back to our readers, providing a view shorn of any bias, intentional or otherwise.

Even while doing all these, it is constantly impressed upon us how the Bangladesh media scene is rife with challenges. There is the Digital Security Act, the threats of defamation and various intimidation tactics that are a part and parcel of a journalist's life the world over. We are no different.

But despite, or rather in spite, of these, we strive forward to inform and educate.

At the end of the day, in our fourth year, all our successes have been down to you, the readers. It is you who have informed us on the way forward, you have told us what you liked and disliked, and you have helped shape this newspaper to become the number one business daily in the country.

We thank you for being with us on our journey and we promise you that the year ahead will be even more exciting.

Keep a look out!

Yashab Osama Rahman is the web editor of The Business Standard.