Elite Daily outlines plans for expansion as the site 'matures'

Elite Daily started out three years ago in the college bedroom of its founders, who wanted to build a site for their generation: the coveted millennial market.

There’s no question of their success in getting the 'Elite Daily' name out on social channels – the page can be hard to avoid on Facebook for some demographics.

As of last summer, Elite Daily's traffic is reportedly 70 per cent social, with around 50 per cent from Facebook alone.

Its acquisition by the Daily Mail in January showed legacy media, with an eye on Elite Daily’s young audience, was paying attention.

But the site has made its name posting fluff stories like the recent "4 reasons to date a short guy", often grounded in stereotypes, and comments calling out sexist articles on the site are still being posted today.

Managing editor Greg Dybec said Elite Daily was "maturing with its audience" however, and outlined the startup’s plans to match its growing userbase with an expansion on all fronts, including new breaking news and original reporting sections.

"We’re really just getting a staff now of a lot of new editors, writers, journalists, some overseas journalists,” explained Dybec speaking at the Digital Media Europe conference in London yesterday.

He described the site's mix of content as an "interesting dynamic", and explained that having a diverse range of stories closely coexisting on the site is appealing to the millennial audience – which makes up about 70 per cent of Elite Daily's users.

"Those aren't necessarily posts that I would read or I would consume as a 25 year-old male,” said Dybec. "But there are people that do consume that and that really do enjoy that content so I think for us as we evolve and we expand it's really just adding more of everything that we haven't done."

He said this style of content was also a legacy of the site's early days when it was trying to break into the market, and written by college guys in their bedrooms.

Three years down the line, the site is publishing stories written by "influencers" – Chelsea Clinton is one of the latest well-known bylines. One Elite Daily documentary received a New York Emmy awards nomination

And as Elite Daily is growing up, its editor-in-chief Kaitlyn Cawley is keeping an eye on it – as Dybec claims the majority of the site's audience is women (around 70 per cent), despite past accusations of misogyny.

"At the moment we're a site for women more than men," he said.

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