Top 10 RSS and news reading apps

Latest news about RSS and news reading apps

2023. News app Artifact can now summarize stories using AI, including in fun styles



Artifact, the personalized news aggregator, has announced a new feature that utilizes AI to provide news article summaries at the tap of a button. This tool allows readers to quickly grasp the key points of an article before diving into the full text. In addition, users can select a preferred style for the summary, such as "explain like I'm five" or using only emojis. To access the feature, users can tap the "Aa" button above an individual news article and select the "Summarize" option. Artifact is utilizing OpenAI's API to generate the text summaries.


2023. Samsung launches News app with custom feeds



Samsung has launched a new app called "Samsung News" that grants users access to daily news from a variety of publications. The app will replace Samsung's current "Samsung Free" app and features customized news feeds, as well as morning and evening briefings on the day's top news. Samsung News provides access to news content from numerous news outlets, including Axios, CNN, Fortune, Huffington Post, Newsweek, Reuters, Sports Illustrated, USA Today, and others. You can browse news within the app via categorized feeds or a "Following" tab that you can customize according to your preferences. Additionally, Samsung News provides twice-daily briefings - compiled by a team of news editors - that aggregate the day's top headlines in one convenient location. The app also features an option to listen to podcasts.

2023. Flipboard launches its notes feature on iOS and Android



Flipboard has announced that it’s bringing its notes feature to its iOS and Android apps, two months after it launched the feature on the web. The launch made Flipboard the latest contender in the battle to relocate some of the online conversations taking place on Twitter onto its own platform instead. The notes feature offers an easy way to share ideas or start conversations, the company says. Flipboard’s curators can now publish original content into their magazine in order to engage with their readers in a conversation. You can also use a note to welcome new followers, or share your thoughts and ideas with them.


2022. Google News redesigned with a cleaner look, more customization options



Google has redesigned its new service. The new Google News has a simplified, two-column design, with most of the navigation residing on top of the page, and it's a big improvement. There's a big focus on customization and personalization. Google's choice of "top stories" and "picks for you" sit on top of the page; scroll down, and you'll get a more detailed breakdown of the topics you follow, which you can change by clicking on the "customize" button. Google also made local news easier to find; the section now resides in the top menu, among the other news categories.


2021. Matter raises $7 million Series A to build a better news reading app



Matter, which aims to build a better reading app for today’s internet, is launching out of private beta testing and announcing the close of its $7 million Series A. The app enters a space where technologies for saving articles to read later, like Instapaper and Pocket, have lagged behind how people are now consuming online reading — through newsletters, personalized recommendations in other apps or through suggestions from peers on social platforms, for example. Like other “read it later” apps, like those offered by Pocket or Instapaper, Matter users can install a Chrome extension to build their reading list in the app, or they can make a recommendation directly in the mobile app itself. Users’ reading lists are private by default, but you can choose which articles from the list you want to post publicly to the Matter community.


2021. News aggregator SmartNews raises $230 million



SmartNews, a news aggregation website and app that’s grown in popularity despite hefty competition from built-in aggregators like Apple News, has closed on $230 million in Series F funding. Founded in 2012 in Japan, the company launched to the U.S. in 2014 and expanded its local news footprint early last year. While the app’s content team includes former journalists, machine learning is used to pick which articles are shown to readers to personalize their experience. However, one of the app’s key differentiators is how it works to pop users’ “filter bubbles” through its “News From All Sides” feature, which allows its users to access news from across a range of political perspectives.


2021. Microsoft launches a personalized news service, Microsoft Start



Microsoft has introduced its own personalized news reading experience called Microsoft Start, available as both a website and mobile app, in addition to being integrated with other Microsoft products, including Windows 10 and 11 and its Microsoft Edge web browser. The feed will combine content from news publishers, but in a way that’s tailored to users’ individual interests, the company says — a customization system that could help Microsoft better compete with the news reading experiences offered by rivals like Apple or Google, as well as popular third-party apps like Flipboard or SmartNews.


2020. Facebook News launches to all in US with addition of local news and video



Facebook News, the social network’s dedicated section devoted to journalism, is today launching for all users in the US. The new product uses journalists to program Facebook News in addition to algorithms to better personalize story selection. Users can react and share articles, but not comment. Users are also able to hide articles, topics and publishers they don’t want to see, which can become problematic in terms of broadening someone’s exposure to the “other side.” The product represents Facebook’s much-debated new effort in wooing publishers to its platform with the promise of increased distribution.


2020. Microsoft starts testing a new news reading experience in Windows 10



Microsoft announced its latest Windows 10 preview build with new news consumption experience. The Microsoft News Bar aggregates news from the 4,500 publishers in the Microsoft News network and then displays those as a semi-persistent bar on any side of your screen. Windows 10 has long featured the Microsoft News app, which is more of a full-featured news reading experience (though I admit I always forget it even exists). The idea behind the News Bar is to give you a news ticker that is either always visible or that you can hide away at will. In order to make sure you don’t forget it, you can choose to have it pop back up in either two or eight hours — or never, if you’re seriously tired of the news right now.


2020. Feedly adds AI-based news research assistant



Feedly introduced Leo - AI research assistant for reading news. With Leo, instead of spending hours going through hundreds of articles every day, you can free your mind, focus on what matters, and save time. Leo allows you to prioritize topics, trends, and keywords of choice; deduplicate repetitive news; mute irrelevant information; summarize articles, and so much more. You can ask Leo to read all the articles and prioritize the most insightful ones in the new Priority Tab. Articles prioritized by Leo have a green priority label, which gives you a clear understanding of why the article was prioritized. You can then take further actions such as Refine Priority, Pause or Remove that priority. When you save an article to a board, Leo considers that action a positive signal that reinforces Leo’s learning. When Leo is wrong, you can use the “Less Like This” down arrow button to correct Leo and refine future recommendations.


2020. News reading app SmartNews raises $92M



SmartNews has closed $92 million round of funding at a valuation of $1.2 billion. News aggregation apps seemed to everywhere a few years ago, and while they haven’t exactly disappeared, they didn’t turn into unicorns, with many of them acquired or shut down. But SmartNews has a few unique advantages. For one thing, it uses machine learning rather than human curation to “thoughtfully generate a news discovery experience” that’s personalized to each user. Secondly, many news aggregators treat the publishers creating the content that they rely on “like a commodity,” whereas SmartNews treats them as “true partners.” For example, it’s working with select publishers like Business Insider, Bloomberg, BuzzFeed and Reuters on a program called SmartView First, where articles are presented in a custom format that gives publishers more revenue opportunities and better analytics.


2019. Tonic launched a personalized news reader that respects user privacy



Canopy has developed a personalization engine that works without requiring users to log in or even provide an email and launched the news reader app, Tonic. The new app is designed to be completely private, while also learning what you like over time, in order to offer a customized experience. But unlike other personalization engines, all the raw interaction and behavioral data stays on your own device. Another big differentiator is that Tonic puts you in control over your own personalization settings. This is not typical. If you’ve ever used an app powered by personalization technology, there’s probably been a point where you were recommended a song, video, or a news article, for example, that seemed to be entirely wrong and not representative of something you’d actually like. But you may have been at a loss as to why it was recommended, because most apps don’t detail this sort of information.


2019. Apple shuts down Texture following launch of Apple News+



As expected, subscription-based magazine service Texture has shut down following the launch of Apple News+. Apple acquired Texture last year to serve as the foundation of ‌Apple News‌+ and later announced that Texture would cease working after May 28. On cue, the app no longer functions as of today and points users towards ‌Apple News‌+. Unfortunately, while Apple's notice in the Texture app says "don't worry, you can continue to read your favorite magazines" on ‌Apple News‌+, the service is only available on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac. Texture supported multiple platforms, including iOS, macOS, Android, and previously Windows.


2018. Microsoft launched AI-based news reading app Hummingbird



Microsoft launched a new AI news app for Android called Hummingbird. It allows to register an account with your hotmail or Linkedin email address. The benefits of logging in with an account is Microsoft being able to serve you news item that are populated with articles that they think you’ll be interested in. Just like other AI-powered services, the more you use it, the better it will understand you and your preferences. When you tap on an article, it will open in the original site but you will still see the Hummingbird title bar if you go to the reading mode so you can easily go back to the app’s main page. There are options to mute specific genres of news sources, so you can keep your feed centered around your interests, such as tech reviews or books. If there is something you are really keen about, there are social media sharing options, natch.


2018. Microsoft News launches on Android and iOS as rebranded MSN app



Microsoft is launching rebranded Microsoft News apps for both iOS and Android, alongside using its news engine to power news across a variety of Microsoft products. While the MSN name is going away on Android and iOS, the site itself will remain branded as MSN.com, a portal for news that the software maker launched back in 1995. Microsoft is combining curated news from more than 1,000 “premium publishers” and 3,000 brands with human editors and artificial intelligence. Microsoft’s AI scans more than 100,000 pieces of content every day, and processes it to determine its topic, popularity, and freshness. The newly designed Microsoft News app includes a dark mode, better integration with iOS and Android widgets, continuous reading, and breaking news alerts.


2018. Google News gets AI-redesign



Google introduced a revamped version of Google News that now merges with Google Play Newsstand. The A.I.-powered, redesigned service combines elements found in Google’s digital magazine app, Newsstand, as well as YouTube, and introduces new features like “newscasts” and “full coverage” to help people get a summary or a more holistic view of a news story. The updated version will present a briefing at the top of the page with the five stories you need to know about right now, as well as more stories selected just for you. The feature uses A.I. technology to read the news on the web, to assemble the key things you need to know about, including also local news and events in your area. And the more you use this personalized version of Google News, the better it will get, thanks to the “reinforcement learning” technology under the hood.


2017. News reading app Feedly gets filters


RSS reader Feedly added Filters, that automatically remove stories from your feeds, based on rules that you define. Filters exist on top of your feeds, shielding you from time-wasting memes and helping to surface what’s important. You can create a Mute Filter while reading. Let’s say you open a story and decide you don’t want to see any more stories like it. Use your mouse to select a keyword or phrase and click “Mute this phrase” from the menu. Filters is available only in paid versions that starts at $5/month.


2017. Feedly adds team boards, notes and annotations



News reading service Feedly has introduced Boards, a feature that makes it easier to organize the stories you want to save for yourself, or share with others on a team. This feature is ideal for business users and co-workers who want to track stories about clients, projects or other interests. You can add story to a board of your choosing or save it to multiple boards. The Teams product is where Boards can become even more useful. When you save a story to shared board, you can mark it up with added context. For example, you can highlight key parts of an article and annotate the article with your expanded thoughts or ideas. Plus, you can notify fellow teammates using integrated Slack and email mentions. Boards, Notes, and Highlights will also work on any device including the web and mobile, via the Feedly app. Basic accounts can only create up to 3 private Boards. For unlimited boards, you’ll need to upgrade to Pro ($5/mo.) or Teams ($18/mo. per user).


2016. Instapaper premium goes free for all users



News reading app Instapaper, or to be more exact its Premium version, is now free for all users. Instapaper was acquired by Pinterest in August but the app would live on as a separate entity and continue to get updates from the Instapaper team at Pinterest. Now, under a larger umbrella with more resources, Instapaper could easily be running more as a user acquisition and stickiness play without absolutely having to monetize. Instapaper was one of the original “save it for later” readers that built up a mentality around being able to hold onto longer forms of content without simply skipping over it and missing it. It became an early popular application on the iPhone, holding high rankings in the App Store in the news category. But there’s been a lot of increasing competition from other companies like Pocket, making it tricky.


2016. Pinterest buys news-reading app Instapaper



Pinterest has acquired the original read later service, Instapaper. Both Instapaper and Pinterest are essentially bookmarking services, but Instapaper tends to be about text, and Pinterest is all about images. For now, the company line is that nothing will change.  Pinterest is ostensibly buying Instapaper because it wants some of its technology (its text parser is pretty great) and the people who built that tech. But it seems very unlikely that Pinterest actually wants the Instapaper service itself. Sure, Pinterest says it will keep Instapaper running. Keeping a service running and keeping a service improving are two very different things, though.


2015. News reader Flipboard launches new ads targeting based on user interests



Flipboard adds better targeting to its advertising partners in the form of the advertising based on the interest graphs it has built for its users. For example, an advertiser that chooses to advertise with coffee topics may also have their ads shown with craft beer topics. The reason behind that, is that many of the same people who read stories about coffee also care about stories about craft beer. The goal for this kind of ad product was to essentially recreate the advertising experience that is seen in magazines — with high-quality ads being placed against content that might not be directly relevant, but is nonetheless related. That more or less fits in line with Flipboard’s overall mission of emulating the magazine experience on a mobile device.


2015. Feedly news reader adds Shared Collections for business users


Feedly’s business model smartly targets those who take in a lot of information from a variety of sources on a regular basis. That includes business professionals tracking industry news, among others. The new feature Shared Collections, only available to Pro subscribers, lets you create collections of reading sources which can be shared publicly or privately. Effectively, it’s a simple way to take a group of sources you’re already subscribed to and actively reading within Feedly, and click a button to make them available to others. It allows users to share the collection of blogs, publications, YouTube channels and alerts. A “Pro” version of Feedly’s service, which includes a powerful search feature and integrations with third-party tools like Evernote, Pocket, OneNote, LinkedIn, Dropbox and more, is available for $3.75 per month, billed annually.


2015. LinkedIn redesigns its news app Pulse



LinkedIn launched a redesigned version of its news app Pulse for iOS and Android, taking a more curated approach to surfacing news stories — a major departure from the app's previous approach to news delivery. The previous version of Pulse had a more RSS-like model, with a nearly endless stream of stories from all the publishers you followed. The new Pulse features a cleaner design, which is more in line with LinkedIn's other apps. The home page of the app now displays a feed of personalized stories based on data from your LinkedIn profile. The app uses information like your job title, industry, company and connections to surface stories it thinks will be most relevant to you. The publishers you followed on the previous version of the app will be taken into account in Pulse's recommendations.


2015. Flipboard allows users to add own opinions to their mobile magazines



Mobile news magazine app Flipboard will now enable magazine creators to add more of their own voice to their publications by allowing them to share thoughts and opinions on the news they’re sharing, as well as ask questions, quote text, customize their magazine with links or their own personal photos, and more. Before today, Flipboard users could build their own magazines by pulling in articles from a variety of sources in order to offer unique collections focused on a topic of interest. But unlike their glossy counterparts, this aggregated digital content sometimes lacked an editorial voice. Now, that can change as creators will be able to add text, links, images, and more to their magazines. Flipboard suggests the feature could be used to do things like ask questions, converse with readers, request co-contributors, or make notes about changes to the magazine, for example. It also allows magazine builders to quote sentences that struck them, or share their own sentiment and opinions about the articles included, which could help to provide more context to a story.


2015. Instapaper launches Notes in its mobile news-reader



News reading and sharing app Instapaper has launched a new annotation functionality called Notes. The feature allows users to select a piece of text from an article or other work, and make comments on that text. By default, Notes is set to private so no one can see your annotations. If they so choose, users can share their notes through the Twitter’s textshot feature. Users can also share through other third-party iOS applications, such as Facebook, Evernote and Tumblr, or through a new IFTTT trigger. Finally, if you want to share everything by default, Instapaper added a button that lets you choose to “Share All Notes.”


2015. Japan’s news reading app SmartNews expands globally



Japanese Flipboard alternative, SmartNews has raised $10 million to expand its presence in the U.S. The company’s founders believe that part of the reason for SmartNews’ growth is because of how the app has been built. Many aggregation service will claim to have intelligent algorithms directing what articles get recommended to users; SmartNews claims its are better. The machine learning-based recommendations focus not only on what you click on to read, but where you pause when you are browsing in the app, and what people read and pause near when they like the same things you do, comparing all of this against a massive trove of articles, to deliver to users a clean interface of things they may want to read.


2015. News reading app Instapaper adds speed reading option



Instapaper, the mobile news reader, launched an update to the app that brings a few new key features to the experience. With Instapaper 6.2, users will gain access to a feature called Speed Reader, which highlights a single word at a time for a more focused and efficient reading experience. The update also brings with it faster saving of articles from mobile and Instant Sync, which is a faster and more reliable way of sending articles to your Instapaper app on iOS. Instapaper recently redesigned the whole experience around the app, launching version 6.0 as a freemium model for the first time. Speed Reader will be free to use ten times each month, and then will fall into the premium tier of the service.


2015. Microsoft wants to buy social news reading app Prismatic



Microsoft is rumored to be acquiring Prismatic - an app that recommends news articles to users based on what their connections are reading and liking. Microsoft is one of several large companies that are talking to the startup, with the “most serious interest” otherwise coming from Apple, Yahoo, Google and Facebook. Prismatic has raised $15 million to date, with investors including Accel Partners, Jim Breyer, Yuri Milner and Javelin’s Alex Gurevich. Prismatic news reader, made for iOS, Android and the web, recommends stories you might like based on interests that you specify (e.g., food, iPhone news, China), the interests of your friends, and how you interact with the links it delivers to you — do you click; do you share, save or discard; do you comment.


2015. Flipboard launched web news reader for desktop


Mobile news-reading service Flipboard is finally coming to desktop with its web-version. Flipboard hoped to make its website familiar, but also to build an experience that was true to the web. In the same way it dynamically re-builds stories for optimal layout on smartphones and tablets, Flipboard’s web version takes advantage of the unique design principles and user interaction features on the desktop. Instead of flipping through different articles on mobile touchscreens, Flipboard’s web design is built to enable users to scroll through content that is relevant to them. Layouts change based on the type of content that is displayed, with some of them featuring full-bleed images and other highlighting text. At the same time, the web version takes advantage of all the personalization features the company has built over the years.


2014. Flipboard 3.0 makes topics the center of attention



Flipboard has launched a new version of its social-magazine app, adding smarter curation tools as well as a daily newspaper-style magazine that will be curated by the company’s editorial staff. The app has implemented content analysis and recommendation technology that was developed by Zite (which Flipboard acquired in March), making its universe of 10 million customized magazines easier for users to sift through. Now, when a new user or existing user pulls up the topic picker, each choice reveals other sub-topics that might be of interest. Flipboard used to offer 30 topics, but now it offers a total of 34,000. The mobile app has also undergone a complete redesign to make signing up and choosing topics easier. But the biggest addition to the new version is the creation of a curated daily news-magazine called The Daily Edition, which will be put together by Flipboard staff and is intended to give users a one-stop way of catching up on the top news in a variety of sectors.