Circa had a good idea, but they stumbled in modelling the solution. Breaking down the product into its critical components before a single line of code is written is vital.
Circa News tried to reinvent how news is delivered by breaking stories into atomic units instead of traditional articles. This shift required a new way to model the product — one that treated facts, quotes, images, and events as objects that can be reused and updated independently. The actual job of modelling these atomic components before any engineering begins is the critical learning here.
Most PMs jump to solutions based on familiarity or assumptions. Circa’s founders had hindsight on news consumption trends, but the company still faced a failure mode common to many innovators: building without fully understanding the structural challenges of the product. You will see how different modelling approaches affect everything downstream — user engagement, monetization, and sustainable growth.
The old model: news as linear articles
For decades, the basic unit of news was the article — a linear, self-contained story with a headline, body, quotes, facts, and images. This made sense in print newspapers, where page length and daily editions constrained content. Each article was a snapshot in time, static and closed.
Even with digital news, most outlets preserved this structure. Articles are still the primary content format, with updates handled as new articles or corrections. The product is a collection of these articles organized by date, category, or publisher.
This model is familiar but limited. It treats news as immutable blocks rather than evolving narratives. It also duplicates information—quotes or stats repeated across multiple articles with no linkage.
Circa’s innovation: object-oriented news
Circa’s founding editor, David Cohn, introduced the idea of "object-oriented news," borrowing from software engineering principles. Instead of articles as monoliths, Circa treated news as collections of discrete objects:
- Facts: individual statements, statistics, or data points
- Quotes: attributed speech from sources
- Images: photos or graphics
- Events: specific occurrences with time and place
Each object could exist independently and be reused across multiple stories. For example, a quote from a politician might appear in several related stories without duplication. Updates to a fact or correction to a quote would propagate across all stories referencing that object.
This approach aimed to make news an evolving artifact rather than static snapshots. It promised better content management, faster updates, and more personalized story experiences.
Why modelling matters: decomposing Circa’s product
The actual job is to break down Circa’s product into its critical components before any coding starts. What are the objects? What attributes do they have? What operations or behaviors do they support?
The trap is to design the product as a black box and retrofit structure later. Circa’s story shows that even a good idea can falter if the underlying model is not sound.
Objects of a news article
At a minimum, Circa’s news objects include:
- Headline: The title of the story or object
- Fact: Atomic information pieces; attributes include text, source, timestamp, verification status
- Quote: Speaker, text, context, attribution
- Image: URL, caption, photographer, usage rights
- Event: Start time, end time, location, involved parties
- Story: A container object that aggregates facts, quotes, images, and events into a narrative
- User: For personalized experiences, users may follow stories or objects
Each object has operations, for example:
- Create, update, delete: For content management
- Link/unlink: To associate facts or quotes with multiple stories
- Versioning: To track changes over time
- Notify: To alert users following a story or object about updates
Class-object hierarchy
A possible hierarchy might look like:
- NewsObject (abstract base class)
- Fact
- Quote
- Image
- Event
- Story
- Aggregates NewsObjects
- Has metadata like topic, tags, publish date
- User
- Follows stories or objects
- Receives notifications
This hierarchy must support reuse, updates, and version control. It also needs to scale as stories grow or evolve.
The engagement challenge: atomization’s trade-offs
Circa’s model of atomizing news content introduced critical challenges in user engagement.
Atomization reduces time spent per session. Because content is broken into small pieces, users skim or consume less in a single visit. This impacts ad revenue and subscription potential.
Following evolving stories became confusing. Users who subscribed to a story saw it change incrementally. The linear narrative was lost, reducing emotional engagement or the sense of closure.
This is the uncomfortable reality: breaking content into atomic units is a double-edged sword. It improves content management and update speed but can fragment the user experience.
Circa’s founding members acknowledged these trade-offs. They believed atomization was essential for future-proofing news, but the business model did not adapt quickly enough to these user behavior shifts.
Lessons for product leaders
1. Model your product’s core components before building
The trap is to jump into development based on a high-level idea without decomposing the product. Circa’s failure to fully model the implications of atomization before launch hurt their ability to iterate on user engagement and monetization.
Before coding:
- Identify atomic objects and their attributes
- Define object relationships and operations
- Plan for versioning and reuse
- Anticipate user workflows on evolving content
This upfront modelling clarifies technical scope and guides design decisions.
2. Balance innovation with user habits
Circa challenged the article as the basic unit of news. Innovation requires rethinking assumptions, but you must also respect user mental models.
If you fragment content too much, users may lose context or interest. Your product must help users navigate evolving stories meaningfully.
3. Prepare your business model for new usage patterns
Atomization can reduce session length and ad impressions. Circa struggled to find a sustainable monetization model that aligned with their product innovation.
Product and business teams must collaborate early to:
- Understand how product changes affect engagement metrics
- Explore alternative revenue models (subscriptions, sponsorships)
- Test monetization hypotheses alongside product experiments
4. Use object-oriented modelling as a framework, not a silver bullet
Circa’s object-oriented approach is powerful but complex. It requires disciplined content management and strong UX design to deliver value.
Don't assume that breaking things into objects alone solves the problem. You must also:
- Design intuitive interfaces for users to consume evolving content
- Build robust backend systems for content linking and updates
- Educate users about new content paradigms
What should Circa’s next iteration look like?
If Circa were to relaunch today, the next iteration should:
- Introduce richer personalization to surface the most relevant objects and stories
- Improve story narrative construction to preserve linearity within atomic components
- Develop tools for editors to curate evolving stories that balance detail and digestibility
- Experiment with hybrid models—combining atomic facts with traditional article summaries
- Build monetization frameworks aligned to engagement with atomic content (e.g., micropayments, premium briefings)
You are a PM at a startup aiming to build a next-gen news platform inspired by Circa’s object-oriented news concept. Your team asks:
- What are the core objects and their attributes?
- How do you design the object hierarchy to support reuse and updates?
- How will the product balance atomicity with user engagement?
- What metrics will you track to validate the model?
- How will you monetize given the atomized consumption pattern?
Write a short product design document that answers these questions, focusing on modelling before building.
Where to go next
- Learn how to structure complex products: Product Architecture and Modelling
- Explore user engagement strategies for evolving content: Designing for User Retention
- Understand business model innovation: Monetization Frameworks
- Sharpen your product thinking: Product Thinking Fundamentals
PL alumni now work at Flipkart, Razorpay, Swiggy, PhonePe, Amazon, and dozens of other Indian startups.