Qutoutiao paid people to read. Its users earned loyalty points for opening articles, watching videos, and bringing friends to the app, and the points turned into small amounts of cash. The scheme worked fast. The Shanghai app launched in June 2016 and soon had about 62 million monthly users, each spending about 55 minutes a day in it. Barely two years after launch, the company sold shares in New York.

Points for Every Page

Qutoutiao means something like "fun headlines." Founder Eric Tan built a news aggregator that picked stories for each user with a recommendation engine. The rivals were Jinritoutiao and Tencent's Kuaibao. Qutoutiao's edge was its loyalty program, which turned reading and referrals into rewards. The company earned its money from ads shown between the articles. Tencent was a strategic investor, and an affiliate of JD.com bought shares in the IPO.

The Points Ran Out

Qutoutiao priced its IPO at $7 per American share in September 2018 and listed on Nasdaq as QTT. Paying for attention proved expensive. As China's ad market cooled and regulators tightened rules on online content, user growth stalled and losses mounted. The share price collapsed. In April 2023 the company's shares were removed from Nasdaq. It still files annual reports with the SEC.

Cover: Untitled (Portrait of a Man Reading a Newspaper and Wearing a Top Hat), Unknown Maker. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a man reading the newspaper.