The Reading Room

Treehugger

Treehugger was recently bought by the Discovery Channel for a rumoured $10m. Just shows what can happen when you put a bunch of clever students together.

Treehugger began as an MBA class project five years ago and says it now generates enough revenue from sponsorship and advertising to pay all its staffers and writers. It has developed a highly engaged community and has added popular services like TreeHugger.tv, and a user-generated blog, Hugg.

It is brilliant because it believes that a green lifestyle does not have to mean sacrifice, and its positive, upbeat feel has attracted over 1.8m unique users a month. Treehugger is an example of where a blog can follow a path which a profit generating publication could never risk taking. By being allowed to be risky it has now proven that there is a consistent market for upbeat green ideas rather than headline generating armageddon stories.

Consistently ranked among the top 20 blogs on Technorati, Treehugger has 10 staff but also boasts 40 writers from a wide variety of backgrounds in more than 10 countries around the world, who generate more than 30 new posts a day across eight categories, ranging from fashion and beauty, travel and nature, to science and technology. Such posts as “How to live in a 12 foot cube” and “Bathroom mirror shows water consumption” always rather healthily jolt me out of how I normally think about the world. A joy.

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