Personalized news aggregation app for smartphones, tablets and the web
News360 was a personalized news aggregation app for smartphones, tablets and the web. It attempted to learn a user's interests by analyzing their interaction with news stories on the app and using semantic analysis and natural language processing to create an Interest Graph and construct a unique feed of relevant content for each user.[1] The app claims an audience of more than 4 million users.[2]
Initially released for iPhone in late 2010, News360 was eventually available for all major mobile platforms, with versions for the iPad,[3] iPhone,[4] Android,[5] Windows 8,[6] Windows Phone,[7] BlackBerry[8] and the web.[9]
In August 2019, News360 was acquired by PressReader.[10]
As of August 2022, News360 ceased operations.
History
News360 was founded in July, 2010. In October 2010, the first News360 Windows Phone 7 app was released. In November 2010, the first News360 iPhone app was released,[11] followed by an iPad version in March 2011.[12] In May, 2011 the company released News360 for Android tablets,[13] and in July - for Android phones.[14] News360 2.0 was released in November, 2011,[15] adding an ability to create custom feeds. The next version, News360 3.0, was launched in July, 2012,[16] introducing the News360 personalization engine and the "Home" feed, which merges all of the user's interests, custom feeds and sources into a single feed that uses behavioral analysis to get better at selecting the most relevant content the more the user uses the app. The release was generally well-received, with a New York Times reviewer saying "For a great news experience, the free app News360 has to be one of the better news-aggregating [apps] I’ve seen on any platform".[17] In September, 2012 News360 announced the Publisher Partnership Program together with 30 brands, including the Chicago Tribune, CNBC, Fox Sports, Business Insider, Gigaom and others.[18]
In March 2019, News360 announced the launch of Audio Briefings and an ad-free version as features available in a paid subscription plan called News360 Premium.[19]
Technology
News360 uses a semantic analysis engine, developed in-house by the company, to analyze content aggregated from over 100,000 sources around the web. After performing named-entity recognition, classification, and cluster analysis, News360 uses a complex formula to rank stories, taking in the influence of the source, author, text quality and complexity, size and velocity of the story cluster and many other metrics.[20] The system then takes the clustered and ranked set of stories and identifies a personalized selection for each user, based on their interest graph.[21] The Interest Graph is initially constructed by collecting, with permission, user data from Facebook, Twitter or Evernote.[22] As the user uses News360, additional data is collected from their behavior - as they read stories and give feedback, the interest graph becomes more and more accurate and attuned to their real interests, making the personalization more effective.[5]
In 2016, News360 launched NativeAI, an audience analytics tool for publishers and content marketers.[23] NativeAI tracks over a million unique audience interests based on reader behavior on publishers' websites and provides publishers with a cloud-based analytics & content monetization service.[24] The content monetization works through sponsored content[24] while the analytics uses machine learning to give insights on audience engagement.[25]
