Zite was my thing. From the moment my client James Berg, managing partner at Essence Restaurant Group, introduced me to Zite I was immediately hooked. Over the last two years, I would browse Zite for hours at a time on my iPad from anywhere and everywhere—at the gym, on the couch, before going to sleep, etc. Newsreader tools like Zite are awesome for anyone looking for an RSS-type feed, presented in a visually beautiful layout (like me).

The Awesomeness of Zite

Through Zite, I was able to read up on a ton of different subjects, like sustainability, current events, design, technology, email innovation, sports, and so on. Zite was my main source of reading material… until it was bought out by Flipboard, who shut it down in early December. Zite users everywhere were disappointed, to say the least.

Why Flipboard Wasn’t Cutting It

Don’t get me wrong, Flipboard is a beautiful news aggregator with a magazine-type layout, but it’s also very clunky with an overwhelming amount of visuals and content to sift through. One of the things Zite users appreciated most about the platform was its clean look and usability. Since Flipboard wasn’t doing that for me, I searched and searched for replacement apps for Zite. I tried about six or seven different platforms (including Apple News, which didn’t quite fill the gap either), and had no luck… until last Thursday when I came across a recommendation for News360.

Hello, News360!

For former Zite users, or for anyone who’s interested in consuming a breadth of information, I highly recommend News360. Created by Roman Karachinsky, News360 is generating excitement everywhere. In the words of Robert Scoble (Futurist for Rackspace, our email provider), “News360 is changing the content delivery game.”

How It Works

News360 uses AI technology to learn the interests of each of its 6 million Android and iOS users and then creates a unique stream of stories tailored to those interests. The more an individual uses News360, the smarter it gets—picking up on the habits and behaviors of the user to provide the most relevant content possible (Karachinsky, 2015).

News360 uses this same technology to most accurately reach a consumer brand’s target audience with their unique, curated content. According to Roman, “By working together with News360, their branded journalism is distributed, clearly marked as content promoted by the brand, only to people who are actively interested in it, and where it has the most opportunity to generate a positive brand experience.”

The result? Five- to ten-times more engagement with the target audience, as compared to other content distribution services. Pretty neat!

Take News360 Wherever You Go

Like Zite, News360 is sleek, easy to use, and even has a better social sharing platform than Zite. News360 allows you to save content and read while offline, perfect for digesting your news on-the-go. 

Like anything else, News360 isn’t perfect—the feed doesn’t respond as quickly as I’d like when scrolling through article headlines, and sometimes I have to reconnect to the server—but overall, it’s a great improvement. Everyone has their own preference, but I’ve found that News360 is the only replacement that allows me to carry on with my life “normally,” post-Zite (dramatic, I know).

What are your favorite newsreader apps? Do you prefer to receive your news this way, or do you use another medium? Share your recommendations with us on our Facebook and Twitter!

Sources
Roman Karachinsky via LinkedIn (2015)