Now seen as a largely successful deal — Bleacher Report frequently tops category giant ESPN when it comes to social media interactions — at the time there were plenty of skeptics. Jacobs sees an opportunity to re-run the same Bleacher Report playbook in the entertainment category. And it's also hired a slew of professional writers and video producers from companies such as Variety, YouTube and yes, Bleacher Report. "In a way, we'd already done the heaviest lifting a media company has to do, which is to build scale," said CEO Craig Palmer. "For the first six to eight years, we just scaled and scaled and scaled and scaled thanks to our users.

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Persons: –, Jon Miller, Walker Jacobs, Mike Freeman, Howard Beck, Jacobs, Jimmy Wales, Craig Palmer, it's, comScore, who's, Harry Potter, we'd, Walker, What's, Palmer Organizations: News Corp, AOL, Turner, ESPN, New York Times, Wikia, Variety, YouTube, TPG, Marvel, Star Wars, Netflix, nab, Gillette