SmartNews app has raised $28 Million in the latest round of investment. This investment welcomed the app to the unicorn club as it is now valued at $1.1 Billion. Such AI and machine learning-based news apps are gaining much popularity on the web. If you have ever through to develop a news app or news discovery app like SmartNews, look at these 7 exclusive features.
7 Features of SmartNews
1. Convenient news viewing
SmartNews mobile news app enables users to read and watch location-based news. A user in the US would get news relevant to the people living there. As many people don’t have much time to read every news article in detail, the users can easily browse just the headlines to stay updated on happenings around the world. If a headline grabs their attention, they can also read the entire news article in depth. To make the news consumption more interesting and appealing, the articles include images, videos, and gifs.
2. Breaking news
A lot of events and incidents of political and historical importance happen all around the world. It is a known fact that some news is more important than others. People should be aware of such vital information. This is why this e-newspaper app has a feature of showing breaking news at the top of other news. Notifications of breaking and the latest news are sent to users via push notifications. There is also a feature of displaying these notifications on the lock screen of a user’s smartphone device. This can be changed in settings. This feature enhances user-experience, so you may include this when you create a news app.
3. Smart view
Most news apps require internet for functioning. The articles can only be viewed when the device is online but that’s not the case with SmartNews app. Users can consume news offline or slow internet connection, on the go. This feature called ‘Smart View’ was built into the news API for Japanese users riding the Tokyo subway. In Smart View, the web view is stripped down reducing data usage. Also, Smart Mode is the readability mode for optimal news reading experience. The users can easily scroll category tabs horizontally as well as vertically. Do take care of the user interface when you build a news app.
4. Discover and add channels
This feature might sound general at first but it is the most unique feature of this newsfeed app. The users can search the name of news channels and publishers that they wish to follow. After searching, they can use the Add Channel feature to add the news channels that publish articles that the user finds appealing. This way the user can customize their feed. SmartNews has associated with over 300 tier news channels and newspapers like Billboard, The Washington Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and Business Insider. Such features can take your news app development a notch higher, and it is advised to consider these in your news app.
5. Personalized settings
This app competes with the Apple news app as it has this powerful functionality of personalized settings. Users can schedule their morning, afternoon, evening and night notifications according to their suitable timings. They decide the font size of the article along with data saving options. Users can also choose the edition of the app: Japanese, American, or International and orientation: portrait, landscape, or automatic.
6. For publishers
Becoming one of the best news apps don’t happen overnight. This app provides great and useful features for the news publishers as well. The Channel Plus or Add Channel feature I discussed earlier help these publishers gain more traffic of viewers and generate more revenue. The advertisements in the articles generate revenue for the publishers. Apps like Feedly, Inoreader, and Flipboard take a small commission of this. While SmartNews is a news subscription app that doesn’t take a penny of this revenue. Moreover, SmartNews also provides access to SmartNews Insights to partner publishers. This is an online dashboard service providing analysis of traffic, social sharing, and key metrics for their content. When you plan to make a news app, you must see that even the publishers are benefitted from the news app development.
7. For you
This is the latest addition to the collection of features in this app which is sort of a Feedly alternative. This is a new section in the Top category which is designed to automatically deliver articles that are related to the user’s interest. Though unlike Feedly app, SmartNews emphasizes on discovery moreover personalization. Readers are suggested articles that will show them both sides (liberal and conservative) on a topic that they’re interested in.
From 7 Unique Features of A News Aggregator App that is now valued at $1.1 Billion