Technology
Thu Jan 22,2015 0:00 am
News App SmartNews Tops 1 Million Users in US, Algorithms Will Now Help You Find What’s Trending Locally Too
SmartNews
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, January 22, 2015 – SmartNews (smartnews.com), the awardwinning news-discovery app from Japan, announced it has already attracted over one million monthly active users in the U.S. and is releasing new local channels for a dozen major metropolitan areas.
Just three months after launching quietly in the U.S., SmartNews is holding the #1 spot in the U.S. App Store and Google Play for the News category. SmartNews uses the power of data science to help users cut through the digital clutter to find the most interesting and important stories globally, nationally, and now in their own local communities.
“It’s easy to see what’s trending on social media; what’s hard is cutting through all that noise to learn what really matters here and now,” said Rich Jaroslovsky, SmartNews’s Vice President for Content. “The magic of SmartNews is an algorithm that combines a sense of what’s important with a sense of what’s just plain interesting, and even fun. Now we’re bringing that magic to local news, too,” said Jaroslovsky, who was the first Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal Online and later Executive Editor of Bloomberg News.
From the start, SmartNews has let users read the best and skip the rest on subjects including technology, entertainment, business, world, sports and lifestyle. Powerful machinelearning algorithms evaluate tens of millions of articles, social signals and other cues every day to determine the stories worth reading now. Reflecting Japanese minimalism, articles are clean and easy to read quickly on mobile devices, even when there’s no online connection.
The new local channels will deliver top trending news from metro newspapers, broadcast outlets and online sources in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Miami, Atlanta, Seattle and Boston – with more cities soon to follow.
In recent weeks, SmartNews has also launched featured channels with national and worldwide publishers including TIME, USA Today, Fast Company, MSNBC, Upworthy, Perez Hilton, Today.com, Entrepreneur, Opposing Views, The Daily Dot and Reuters. These channels were added to a rapidly growing roster that already included NBC News, Huffington Post, the Associated Press, CNET, TechCrunch, Quartz, the Los Angeles Times, Re/code and The Atlantic, among others.
In Japan, where SmartNews launched in December 2012, it has attracted millions of users and multiple “App of the Year” awards. Forbes Japan recently featured SmartNews as Top 3 startup, and the company last year raised $36 million in Series B funding, with significant investments from international investment firm Atomico and socialmedia company GREE to fuel its international expansion.
###
About SmartNews
With offices in Tokyo, San Francisco and New York, SmartNews is dedicated to delivering quality information from the world to the people who need it. Founded in December 2012 by Kaisei Hamamoto and Dr. Ken Suzuki, SmartNews uses proprietary machinelearning algorithms to evaluate tens of millions of articles, social signals and other cues each day to discover and deliver the stories that matter now.
SmartNews has won numerous “App of The Year” and “Best News App” awards and is available in the App Store for iPhones and iPads, and Google Play for Android devices.
For more information or to download the app, visit: www.smartnews.com
Press Contact:
Vincent Chang
Senior Manager, Communications
press@smartnews.com
Just three months after launching quietly in the U.S., SmartNews is holding the #1 spot in the U.S. App Store and Google Play for the News category. SmartNews uses the power of data science to help users cut through the digital clutter to find the most interesting and important stories globally, nationally, and now in their own local communities.
“It’s easy to see what’s trending on social media; what’s hard is cutting through all that noise to learn what really matters here and now,” said Rich Jaroslovsky, SmartNews’s Vice President for Content. “The magic of SmartNews is an algorithm that combines a sense of what’s important with a sense of what’s just plain interesting, and even fun. Now we’re bringing that magic to local news, too,” said Jaroslovsky, who was the first Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal Online and later Executive Editor of Bloomberg News.
From the start, SmartNews has let users read the best and skip the rest on subjects including technology, entertainment, business, world, sports and lifestyle. Powerful machinelearning algorithms evaluate tens of millions of articles, social signals and other cues every day to determine the stories worth reading now. Reflecting Japanese minimalism, articles are clean and easy to read quickly on mobile devices, even when there’s no online connection.
The new local channels will deliver top trending news from metro newspapers, broadcast outlets and online sources in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Miami, Atlanta, Seattle and Boston – with more cities soon to follow.
In recent weeks, SmartNews has also launched featured channels with national and worldwide publishers including TIME, USA Today, Fast Company, MSNBC, Upworthy, Perez Hilton, Today.com, Entrepreneur, Opposing Views, The Daily Dot and Reuters. These channels were added to a rapidly growing roster that already included NBC News, Huffington Post, the Associated Press, CNET, TechCrunch, Quartz, the Los Angeles Times, Re/code and The Atlantic, among others.
In Japan, where SmartNews launched in December 2012, it has attracted millions of users and multiple “App of the Year” awards. Forbes Japan recently featured SmartNews as Top 3 startup, and the company last year raised $36 million in Series B funding, with significant investments from international investment firm Atomico and socialmedia company GREE to fuel its international expansion.
###
About SmartNews
With offices in Tokyo, San Francisco and New York, SmartNews is dedicated to delivering quality information from the world to the people who need it. Founded in December 2012 by Kaisei Hamamoto and Dr. Ken Suzuki, SmartNews uses proprietary machinelearning algorithms to evaluate tens of millions of articles, social signals and other cues each day to discover and deliver the stories that matter now.
SmartNews has won numerous “App of The Year” and “Best News App” awards and is available in the App Store for iPhones and iPads, and Google Play for Android devices.
For more information or to download the app, visit: www.smartnews.com
Press Contact:
Vincent Chang
Senior Manager, Communications
press@smartnews.com
.jpeg)
