Yahoo has today unleashed an updated version of its news app for iPhone and iPod touch, which integrates the neat Summly start-up it acquired from a British teenager last month.
In late March the internet giant snapped-up Summly from 17-year-old Brit Nick D’Aloisio, for a reported fee of £20 million, and immediately closed down the app.
The app uses a neat algorithm, developed by D’Aloisio, which is able to boil down news articles from the web into 50 word summaries and somehow remain relatively legible.
It was this algorithm rather than the design or UI that Yahoo became enamoured with and inspired it to throw a serious wedge of cash in the young man’s direction.
Keen to promote its expensive acquisition, the company has launched the new Yahoo news app for ‘smaller’ iOS devices.
Users who download the free app can now view ‘Yahoo Summaries,’ which are visual versions of stories, complete with 50 words of text and the opportunity to read more from the full Yahoo News report, as well as share or delete the story from the timeline.
In order to access Yahoo Summaries, users need to toggle the ‘All Stories Visual’ switch to ‘On’ within the app’s settings.
The app also brings a host of easy to access personalisation tools, allowing users to select the stories they’d most like to see displayed within that list.
In its official announcement the company wrote: ‘The new Yahoo! mobile app is also smarter, using Summly’s natural-language algorithms and machine learning to deliver quick story summaries.
“We acquired Summly less than a month ago, and we’re thrilled to introduce this game-changing technology in our first mobile application. And, with the immersive imagery of our virtually endless newsfeed, the new Yahoo! app has both great technology and beautiful design front and center.
“Because searching for great content is also core to the Yahoo! experience, we’ve also improved the search experience with better video and image search.”
The new app is free to download, but only available for iPhone and iPod touch as yet. There’s no word on when an iPad-optimised or Android version will be incoming.
Via Gizmodo
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
