May 23, 2019 FIRST online, independent web journal of economics and finance, is eight years old. This is already a success, given the current troubled times, but it is even more so to have passed the seventh year, which national superstition considers fatal, not only without damage and without crises but after 12 months to frame.
The year from May 2018 to May 2019 was perhaps the luckiest year for FIRSTonline since it was born. For three reasons. Firstly why visits have increased, which in February reached the monthly peak of 2 million and 705.253 aggregate visits (i.e. collected on all the platforms that convey our editorial content) and 2 million and 151.836 directly on the site. This means that on average we have totaled 70 visits a day, which have become 100 in aggregate terms and which give us a glimpse of the goal of 3 million monthly contacts.
If they had told us when we were born, none of us would have believed it. But the growth of the audience, at least for a site that doesn't deal with frivolity and gossip but with demanding subjects such as economics and finance, is always the reflection of the authority and quality of the information that readers acknowledge.
The second reason why FIRSTonline will remember the past year with joy is that three parallel warheads have been launched in recent months: FIRST Art, First&Food e FIRST Tutorials, curated by exemplary professionals who work according to the original FIRSTonline model, based on independence, reliability and creative imagination. These are three vertical sites, which invest the world and the art market, Italian Food and the agri-food excellences of Made in Italy and which - with Tutorial - aim to simplify the life of readers and citizens via the web. to practical everyday problems. Now the commitment of our entire publishing group is to help the three sites grow, both in terms of visits and in terms of authority, also quantitatively strengthening their information offer.
The last, but not the least, reason to celebrate an XNUMXth birthday is that too the 2018 financial year closed with a profit, with a small but significant profit and no debts: which in the difficult world of information and above all of Italian online information is a rarity.
The reasons for satisfaction for a group that is growing without ever taking longer steps than the leg but in a healthy way allow us to foresee editorial development objectives for the next few years but also to keep an eye on two unknown factors which are not lacking in concern but which are external to us and on which we cannot influence. The first concerns Italy's economic and financial situation which the uncertainty sown by politics does not fail to fuel day after day. Making all the necessary exorcisms, the looming financial crisis of the type of that of 2011 does not allow anyone to sleep peacefully and induces caution in any company thinking about its future.
But the second unknown that weighs on those who make information online is due both to the quicksand of the jungle of the network - in which the correctness of the news must contend with the virus of fake news - and to the technological turbulence and the oligarchic excessive power of the oligopolistic giants of the Internet who decide, without any rules and without any transparency, the future of thousands and thousands of sites, arbitrarily regulating not only advertising flows but also the dynamics of visits based on ever more mysterious algorithms. Since information is the basis of democracy it would be time for a political class worthy of the name to address these problems and take charge of establishing impartial rules of the game and Authority capable of defending those who only want to do independent and quality journalism at the service of readers.
Until now FIRSTonline has been a happy oasis in the magnum sea of web information but we are not an island and the influence of the surrounding context will always be stronger on all of us.
