November 2012
1 post
News.me + Digg
Since we started working on Digg in June of this year (if you’re asking yourself “wtf?” you can catch up here), we have been focused on helping people find and share the most-talked about stories on the web. Starting tomorrow morning, you’ll find the best stories from Digg at the bottom of your Daily Digest in a new section called The Daily Digg (other than that and the logo, nothing else is...
October 2012
1 post
What's Next for News.me
As of this afternoon, News.me for iPhone and News.me for iPad are no longer available in the App Store. We will continue to support the apps for existing users that have already downloaded them. The News.me email will continue to be both supported and available to users, new and current. If you’re not familiar with the News.me applications, a bit of background: News.me analyzes the links shared by...
July 2012
1 post
June 2012
1 post
Human (Editor) Wanted!
For the last year, News.me has been focused on using smart networks and smart algorithms to deliver the must-read news from the social web. But if you’ve been paying close attention, you’ll have noticed that we’re starting to invest in a third piece of the news puzzle: smart humans.
We’re collecting 10 million links per day across 40 million shares (!). If at this point...
May 2012
4 posts
3 tags
Developing Stories: Paperboy
A few weeks ago, we launched a new feature in our iPhone app called Paperboy. Its purpose is simple yet incredibly useful – whenever you leave home, News.me will download the latest news, so it’s ready for you whenever you want to read. Our team is based in New York City, so it’s super helpful for us when we hop on the subway. I wanted to take a few minutes to share the basics of how...
What You Need to Know, Every Morning: The New...
The web is full of great stuff — the problem isn’t finding more, it’s finding less. At News.me we’re focused on providing a news service that delivers you less, but keeps you more informed than ever. That’s why today we’re rolling out our most significant overhaul to the News.me daily email to date.
If you haven’t yet, sign up to get your own News.me Daily...
3 tags
Developing Stories: Custom Label iOS Library
Hello out there news fans!
At a recent Brooklyn iOS Dev Meetup, I talked about our use of Core Text in the News.me iPhone app. In building out the app, I created a subclass of UILabel that takes advantage of Core Text for more robust formatting, such as kerning, mixed fonts, & line height. I thought this might be helpful to other developers out there, so we open-sourced it, and it’s now...
You may have missed...
News.me for Email turned 1-year-old last month. What started as a “companion product” has grown into one of the most engaging products we’ve ever worked on. Every morning more than 30% of our users open the email, with another 30% clicking through to read one or more story.
As the News.me user base grows, our data set is starting to look “really interesting,”...
April 2012
5 posts
7 tags
Getting the News — Mohamed Nanabhay
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Chris Dixon, Zach Seward, and danah boyd, here.)
For this week’s interview we decided to look for a...
Introducing Paper Boy: Automatically Download Your...
I’ll think we’ve all been there: you get into a subway car, and just as the doors are closing, you realize that you’ve forgotten to take your phone out, pull to refresh, and wait 10 seconds to download the latest news articles to read offline. You curse under your breath and switch back to Angry Birds.
Today we’re pleased to introduce a new feature called Paper Boy. Simply...
5 tags
Getting the News — Martin Nisenholtz
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Chris Dixon, Zach Seward, and danah boyd, here.)
This week we sat down with Martin Nisenholtz,...
7 tags
Getting the News — danah boyd
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Chris Dixon, Zach Seward, and Megan Garber, here.)
Scheduling a half hour with danah boyd, Ph.D. is...
News.me for iPhone: Now with more awesome!
It’s been just about a month since we launched News.me for iPhone. I’m pleased to share that we have been (happily) overwhelmed by the response!
People are finding all sorts of useful places and moments to dip into the best news from Twitter and Facebook. For many of our users, it’s the first thing they check when they wake up in the morning, and the last thing they read before...
March 2012
9 posts
Getting the News: 20 Weeks Later
This is our 20th post in the “Getting the News” series. For the past 20 weeks we’ve brought you perspectives on journalism from 18 incredible writers, thinkers, and innovators: entrepreneurs, journalists, designers, authors, and computer scientists. This week, we thought we’d take a look back. We started this series as an attempt to understand the changing media landscape...
Why are 37% of all articles Awesome?
It’s been an insane three and a half weeks since we launched News.me for iPhone. One of the features that we are most excited about is News.me Reactions.
Here’s how we described it:
News.me Reactions: the right type of sharing.
We wanted to find a form of expression that was at once more meaningful than a generic “Like,” but less work than a free-text comment. We also had a peculiar...
5 tags
Getting the News — Jake Dobkin
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Chris Dixon, Zach Seward, and Megan Garber, here.)
This week we sat down with Jake Dobkin,...
2 tags
Getting the News — Zeke Miller
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Chris Dixon, Zach Seward, and Megan Garber, here.)
BuzzFeed has been making waves lately. The...
Ah, Push It. The Push Music Behind 19 Startups.
Lately we’ve found ourselves pushing a lot of code here at News.me, which of course, means we’ve been listening to a lot of push music. For those “normals” reading this blog post (how did you find us and what do you want???), push music is a song or video played at the moment when new code is pushed to production. It’s a moment of celebration that is usually accompanied by...
Introducing Your Social Editor-In-Chief: News.me...
Front page editors at major publishers like the New York Times and the New Yorker are masters at laying out content on their homepages, and the recommendations implicit in that layout are incredibly valuable. But more and more, we’re learning that recommendations from our friends can be just as useful.
So one afternoon* we decided to see what these homepages would look like if our friends...
6 tags
Getting the News — Hilary Mason
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Chris Dixon, Zach Seward, and Megan Garber, here.)
This week we sat down with Hilary Mason, chief...
News.me for iPhone Now Featured on the App Store!
News.me for iPhone launched yesterday, and we couldn’t be happier with the response so far. We’re particularly pleased to report that, last night, Apple selected News.me as one of its Featured Apps on the iPhone App Store! If you haven’t yet, go download it now!
Here’s what some others are saying, but we’re eager to hear your first impressions. Let us know in the...
Introducing News.me for iPhone!
We’re pleased to introduce News.me for iPhone, now available for free in the App Store!
News.me for iPhone delivers the must-read news from your friends on Twitter and Facebook.
Reading the news has always lent itself to a social experience: from the breakfast table to the water cooler to the classroom. But on the social web we’re no longer just “readers” — we are all...
February 2012
5 posts
2 tags
Getting the News — Evan Williams
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Chris Dixon, Zach Seward, and Megan Garber, here.)
This week we bring you Evan Williams, co-founder...
2 tags
Getting the News — Chris Dixon
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Zach Seward, Anil Dash, and Megan Garber, here.)
This week we spoke to Chris Dixon, co-founder of...
2 tags
Getting the News — Alan Murray
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Zach Seward, Anil Dash, and Megan Garber, here.)
This week we talked to Alan Murray, deputy...
2 tags
Getting the News — Evan McMorris-Santoro
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Zach Seward, Anil Dash, and Megan Garber, here.)
This week, we wanted to give you a slice of life...
3 tags
Getting the News — Patricia Sauthoff
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Zach Seward, Anil Dash, and Megan Garber, here.)
This week we interviewed Patricia Sauthoff, editor...
January 2012
4 posts
2 tags
Getting the News — Zach Seward
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Anil Dash, Khoi Vinh, and Megan Garber, here.)
This week we reached out to Zach Seward, editor of...
Summify Users: We're here for you. You're Safe.
Sign up for the News.me Daily Digest
Yesterday, our friends at Summify announced that they have been acquired by Twitter, that they “will be disabling new account registrations immediately and…removing some features” and that they plan to offer “a more streamlined service as we transition our efforts to working at Twitter.”
First of all, congratulations to both...
3 tags
Getting the News — David Shen
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Anil Dash, Khoi Vinh, and Megan Garber, here.)
This week we’re very happy to feature David Shen....
2 tags
Getting the News — Megan Garber
(This post is part of News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts, from writers and thinkers like Anil Dash, Khoi Vinh, and Gordon Crovitz, here.)
To kick off 2012, we interviewed Megan Garber,...
December 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Getting the News — Gordon Crovitz
(This post is the seventh in News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts here.) This week we talked to Gordon Crovitz — former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, co-founder of Press+, and an...
1 tag
Getting the News — Ken Fisher
(This post is the sixth in News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts here.)
Today we’re featuring Ken Fisher, founder and editor-in-chief of Ars Technica, one of the web’s leading tech...
1 tag
Getting the News — Anil Dash
(This post is the fifth in News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts here.)
This week, we interviewed Anil Dash, founder of Expert Labs, co-founder of Activate, and publisher of...
November 2011
7 posts
1 tag
Getting the News — Jeff Sonderman
(This post is the fourth in News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts here.)
This week, our interviewee is Jeff Sonderman, Digital Media Fellow at the Poynter Institute. Jeff blogs and...
1 tag
Getting the News — Anthony De Rosa
(This post is the third in News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts here.) This week, our interviewee is Anthony De Rosa, social media editor for Reuters and founder of the extremely...
Sharing (your Daily Digest) is Caring
Over the last few weeks, a few of you have noticed that your News.me Daily Digest is available online at http://www.news.me/[your_username]. Some of you have even started sharing that web view with your friends on Twitter and Facebook, encouraging them to explore the news flowing through your Twitter stream.
Today, we’re releasing an update to the web version of the News.me Daily Digest...
1 tag
Editor's Picks — Nov. 18, 2011
Here are some conversation starters for this weekend, curated by me from around the web.
“Obama’s Flunking Economy: The Real Cause,” by Ezra Klein. What happened to the promise of Barack Obama’s presidency? Ezra Klein investigates. New York Review of Books. Nov. 24, 2011.
“The End of Cheap Coffee,” by Zak Stone Climate change and your daily cup. Good, Nov. 16,...
2 tags
Getting the News — Khoi Vinh
(This post is the second in News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here. See all of the posts here.)
This week we’re pleased to feature Khoi Vinh (@khoi), former design director at NYTimes.com, blogger...
1 tag
Getting the News — Robin Sloan
Welcome to News.me’s ongoing series, “Getting the News.”
In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we’re reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. (Read the first post here. See all of the posts here.) This week, our interviewee is Robin Sloan (@robinsloan), media partnerships manager at Twitter and writer. We met...
1 tag
Introducing "Getting the News"
People have been finding, consuming, and talking about news for centuries — but the in the last 10 years we’ve dramatically changed how we interact with it. At News.me, we spend a lot of time thinking and talking about how we can improve the way that people find, consume, and talk about news. These brainstorms tend to move our thinking forward, but over the course of the last few...
October 2011
3 posts
Looking for #7
News.me is only a few months old as a standalone company. When we spun out of bitly in September and started building out the team, we had some hard decisions to make around hiring philosophy. We looked around at products that we admire - from startups like Instagram and Foursquare all the way up to massive companies like Apple, and tried to understand what about their hiring culture led them to...
4 tags
Watching News Break
Here at News.me we’ve been looking at the best ways to get news to our users. One problem that we’ve been thinking about a lot is breaking news. What is breaking news in a world with 24-hour access to information? What kind of information should a breaking news update convey? Yesterday morning, needless to say, gave us an amazing view into the mechanics of breaking news. We all woke up to the...
Making your inbox happy
Today, we’re pleased to announce a complete overhaul of the News.me Daily Digest!
News.me is delivering tools to make your social news discovery experience better. We built an iPad app that leverages what the tablet is good at — deep immersion in gorgeous content — to help you explore your news stream and the streams of those that you follow on Twitter.
We also launched a Daily Digest, to...
September 2011
1 post
News.me is all grown up (and now free)!
We’re pleased to announce that News.me has officially spun out of bitly to run as an independent company under betaworks. Here’s what John Borthwick has to say about the change on his blog:
Over the past year, News.me has been incubated within bitly. Today, we’re pleased to announce that News.me has officially spun out of bitly into an independent company under betaworks. As I...
June 2011
2 posts
News.me: Read Later
Today we’ve added a Read Later bookmarklet to News.me. This will let you bookmark stories to read later in the News.me iPad app or on the News.me website.
We think the “read later” experience is core to the news consumption experience. Many times you’ll see an article that you want to read later, but don’t have the time and want to come back to it. Skimming twitter on the train and find a few...
News.me needs a Senior iOS Engineer
News.me is looking for an experienced iOS engineer to join our team and help define the future of news. Applicants should have knowledge across both frontend and backend iOS frameworks and be prepared to own a project from start to finish, from networking and storage to view hierarchies and animation.
What we are looking for:
1+ years of iOS experience
4+ years of software and/or web...
May 2011
1 post
News.me 1.1 is now available! →
What’s new:
Notification when new users are added to your friend bar
Share text excerpts directly from article view
bit.ly account integration
Reorganized app settings
Fixed an issue logging into Instapaper
Download it from the App Store now.
April 2011
1 post
News.me
News.me launched last week as an iPad app and as an email service. Here is some background on why and how we built News.me:
Why News.me? For a while now at bitly and betaworks, we have been thinking about and working on applications that blend socially curated streams with great immersive reading interfaces.
Specifically we have been exploring and testing ways that the bitly data stack can be...
March 2011
3 posts
Learn more about your Profile
Visit your Profile to see when your friends join News.me.
Follow them to see their Reactions in News.me. Your Reactions are shared with only those people that follow you in News.me.