"Technology and News: Past, Present and Future" - World News Publishing Focus

"Technology and News: Past,
Present and Future"

…….. the list of
Facebook                        tech driven
                                disruptions
                                  in News
                                seems to be
           YouTube             never ending
 Radio

             NewsAggregators

Facebook                     ……. But there is
                               a blind spot
                                  about
                               form factor
                                  driven
            YouTube           disruptions of
 Radio
                                   news

           NewsAggregators

Technology innovation
           +
Form Factor innovation
           =
  Innovation in News

Examples of Technology innovations
● Smartphones and Apps
● Wireless internet technologies like wifi / 4g / 5g
● GPS technology
● ML and AI driven feeds
● Optic fibers
● Radio waves
● Cable networks, etc.

Examples of form factor innovations
● Books
● Daily newspaper deck
● Magazines
● Email newsletters
● Facebook Posts and Facebook Feed
● Tweets
● Daily Newshour Debate by….

In 2013, what was the technology landscape
● Smartphone boom was happening / about to happen
● 3g was happening but most people were only on 2g
● Very expensive to access data and good quality phones

In 2013, what was the technology landscape
● Most traditional news organisations (both TV &
  Newspapers) didn’t have digital presence
● Those who had a website it was very cluttered
● Facebook and Twitter had set the bar high on form
  factors
● Video consumption was costly
● Existing Aggregators also didn’t innovate on form factors

Discovery of the problem
● Back in 2013 - most peers are passive news readers
● Main source of content consumption: Facebook
● Mode is overwhelming and difficult to consume on the
  smartphones

The existing form of content was
  long and hence difficult to
 consume on the smartphone

Simple product as a solution
● Single Screen Cards with swipe up down to
  change cards
● Each card: Image, Title, 60 words story
● Editorial curation
● AI driven personalization

In 2020, what is the technology landscape
● 400M and growing smartphone users and growing
● Most people have access to cheap 4g data
● Quality of Devices being used has improved tremendously

In 2020, what IS the form factor landscape
● Inshorts has become the benchmark on ease of consumption
  on news
● Most traditional news organisations have news apps But its
  STILL VERY CLUTTERED
● NOT just Facebook and Twitter, even Instagram, Snapchat and
  Tiktok has innovated on form factors even further
● Video consumption is very easy
● Existing Aggregators HAVE STILL NOT innovated on form
  factors

The Power form factor: Users love us

● 86 screens (12 mins) per DAU per day
● 42% DAU / MAU Ratio
● High word of mouth (More than 70% downloads organic)

The Power form factor: Users love us

The Power form factor: Users love us

The Power form factor:
We can launch new brands!

50000+ Organic Downloads in a day

Some other key features

New & Interesting - Graphic Cards,
collections & polls

In digital tech, 25 years is more than just a generation. It is an epoch.
In pre-iPhonic 1992, there was no graphical web browser, no Amazon or Google, and no dot-com bubble… yet
https://www.geekwire.com/2017/twenty-five-years-ago-predicted-future-media-technology-heres/

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19921007&slug=1517134

In digital tech, 25 years is more than just a generation. It is an epoch.
In pre-iPhonic 1992, there was no graphical web browser, no Amazon or Google, and no dot-com bubble… yet
https://www.geekwire.com/2017/twenty-five-years-ago-predicted-future-media-technology-heres/

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19921007&slug=1517134

194 Leading Editors, CEOs, and Digital Leaders

  http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/publications/2018/journalism-
           media-technology-trends-predictions-2018/

Almost half of publishers (44%) say they are more worried about the

power and influence of platforms than this time last year. Only 7% are
less worried. Publishers feel more negatively towards Facebook and
Snapchat that they do about Twitter and Google.

Despite this, publishers also blame themselves for their ongoing
difficulties. The biggest barriers to success, they say, are not tech

platforms but internal factors (36%) such as resistance to change and
inability to innovate.

https://futuretodayinstitute.com/2018-tech-trends-for-news/

Our innovations in AI
● Implicit Personalisation based on your reading patterns
● Explicit Relevancy Signals from the users
● Better Summarization technology in partnership with Carnegie
  Mellon University the worlds best team of NLP researchers
● Largest News only Summarization Data Set of more than 5 lakh
  unique humanly written news summaries
● AI driven moderation of fake and unlawful news

Our innovations in Ambient Interfaces
● Alexa Skill to be launched soon
● Apple Watch features
● Partnered with Ford and other auto dashboard for deeper
  integrations

“37% of smartphone users read news on
                              their smartphones“
                             - Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report

“What is keeping the rest 63% from
reading news on their smartphones ?”