• by Sara Guaglione , September 14, 2017

Online news start-up Ozy Media new homepage features increased personalization to help readers, viewers and listeners find stories they may have missed. It also debuted its first podcast.

“We fundamentally believe in the iconic power of the homepage to keep [people] coming back for more,” stated Carlos Watson, Ozy co-founder and CEO.

One of the new modules of the site, called “OZY Recommends,” takes OZY.com’s “Good Sh*t” column and organizes it by categories, such as TV & Movies, Books, Music, Travel, Food, Style, and Tech, to make it easier to search for news on specific topics.

The new homepage also features a revamped watch player to highlight Ozy's videos.

Ozy Media is introducing a new, six-part podcast series called "The Thread," which will focus on interlocking events over nearly a century of American history and culture. Ozy senior writer and host of "The Thread," Sean Braswell, kicks off the series with the 1980 assassination of Beatles member John Lennon and connects the event to Russian communist leader Vladimir Lenin.

The first episode will be released Sept. 25.

The company recently premiered a new prime-time show on PBS, "Third Rail with OZY," and added a weekly email offering, The Special Briefing, to focus on one issue each week driving the news cycle.

Created in 2013, Ozy Media says it has 40 million monthly unique users and 2 million subscribers. The company is made up of OZY News, OZY Magazine, OZY TV and OZY Events.

In January, Ozy Media raised $10 million in series C funding, which will go to doubling its staff, as well as expanding its events business and video production.

Ozy brands itself as a next-generation news start-up that covers politics, culture, sports, food and technology.