Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by ohstopitu on Monday December 12, 2016 @09:13AM
(#13158102)
I have more questions now...
1. Why was this app created?
2. How expensive is it to run this app? (no seriously, even at scale, I can't see this getting more expensive than a few thousand $ a month - which at NBC's level should not be too much of an issue?)
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by angry-hacker on Monday December 12, 2016 @09:26AM
(#13158174)
They can't monetize it and because they want people to read their paper instead (watch ads), they shut it down. At least that's what I make of this reading those tweets.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by jimbokun on Monday December 12, 2016 @11:38AM
(#13159364)
I doubt the hosting was the big cost, probably paying the journalists to pick the stories, write a quick summary, and get the alerts out as fast as possible. (Not a user of the app, but didn't seem like an automated AI type of thing.)
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by jonknee on Monday December 12, 2016 @12:11PM
(#13159683)
You are correct. It's not cheap to have 24 hour breaking news coverage globally. They did a great job on weeding out hoaxes too, it was a pretty remarkable service.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by thinnerlizzy on Monday December 12, 2016 @01:13PM
(#13160272)
I believe the @breakingnews Twitter account existed well before the app. I imagine NBC News committed to the brand based on its Twitter following before it evolved into an app.
I don't see why editorial responsibilites couldn't be a little more decentralized to lower costs. Give a number of editors Breaking News-level access in their CMS and check a box when a story fits the criteria. But NBC isn't in it for the public good. The app probably simply didn't generate enough revenue to justify the costs.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by stevefeinstein on Monday December 12, 2016 @11:30AM
(#13159283)
This was always the first app to send me an alert when news happened often by a long time. I always wondered why they didn't charge for that, it's the kind of thing I'd happily pay what I no longer spend on a newspaper for to get. Though I must admit, the last time I routinely bought a newspaper it was $0.35 a copy. and $0.75 on Sunday. $2.85 a week, and no coupons, or ads which in a newspaper were part of the value so I'd easily pay $1 a week.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by NasEscobar on Monday December 12, 2016 @01:06PM
(#13160204)
I'm sad to hear about this. The Breaking News app became one of the most used apps on my phone. The push alerts for emerging stories were always sent out before any of the other major news apps. This service will be missed.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by james_pm on Monday December 12, 2016 @11:02AM
(#13158992)
Closest thing I've found is https://twitter.com/BNONews which is run by the original founder of @BreakingNews on Twitter, which was sold and later became the app and NBC service.
Curation is what I am after. Breaking News had (presumably) a large team monitoring vast numbers of Twitter accounts and other news feeds to bring them together into a single place where you got a nice feed of important stories without being overwhelmed with all the noise of thousands of individual tweets.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by alistproducer2 on Sunday December 11, 2016 @11:11PM
(#13155472)
Am I missing something? Why would they build an app to consume a twitter feed? I guess that's what someone who actually knew what the heck they were doing said when they asked why they were spending a bunch of money on the app. It's amazing how much money can be wasted at a corporation because it's other people's money.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by ghettoCoder on Monday December 12, 2016 @09:28AM
(#13158191)
If they're anything like the place I work at it comes down to mindshare. Yes, it's just consuming a Twitter feed and maybe some other proprietary datasource but some exec "needed" an app because then our logo (icon) is on the phone's screen. It's visible and quick for people to access the news feeds instead of going elsewhere.
Sadly, most of the decisions we question are driven by marketing.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by thinnerlizzy on Monday December 12, 2016 @12:57PM
(#13160126)
Having been pretty close to many mobile apps that came out of NBC in the early boom days, I can confirm that this was the case for many/most of the apps I ever touched. Most of them were pretty bad, just RSS driven web pages in a native wrapper. Getting the brand onto users' devices was the primary goal, experience be damned. I can't speak to Breaking News, that was a different team.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by jonknee on Monday December 12, 2016 @12:17PM
(#13159739)
You should have checked out the app, it's pretty great. You get push alerts on the topics you want and [optionally] where you are located. You can also use it to report breaking news and as a result they had a nice jump on a lot of stories like Earthquakes and the like.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by vrdabomb5717 on Sunday December 11, 2016 @11:19PM
(#13155505)
Hmm, it's unfortunate that this is being shut down. If you're looking for alternatives, I've been using the New York Times app, CNN, and Buzzfeed News. You need to deal with some annoying notifications (for example, CNN sent me a "Hero of the Year" notification today), but it's better than nothing.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by Pigo on Monday December 12, 2016 @10:09AM
(#13158533)
I'm already aware of the content of ever MSM feed, no matter the platform. At least 50% is complete opinion pieces questioning every choice and sentence spoke by the POTUS-elect, at least one article giving false hope that the election could still be over-turned, an article about how hot Ryan Reynolds or Ryan Gosling is, an article that is just a video (or recap) of SNL mocking said POTUS elect, an extremely vague article about why the Obama's where so amazing, and one buried article about something new and interesting that most people should be aware of.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by Pigo on Monday December 12, 2016 @01:47PM
(#13160632)
Well, check out basically any news source besides Fox, which I don't care for either, and tell me how I'm wrong. I'm not a Trump supporter, but MSM has become identical to Facebook news feed. It's popular opinions dressed up as news. I don't feel like it's informing me of much.
They're not going to get much traction with the Fake News narrative if they don't enact some real change on their part. If I'm wrong and there's a news source out there that isn't comprised of this, I'd appreciate you guys pointing me to it.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by bb101 on Monday December 12, 2016 @01:45PM
(#13160606)
Quite an ironic decision by NBC. At the same time the consumption of news from mainstream outlets is falling, they decide to shutter a service which was gaining in popularity instead of working out ways to monetize it.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by brandables on Monday December 12, 2016 @11:08AM
(#13159049)
Thanks for checking us out!
Virwire prioritizes news based on what people are consuming and not on editorial agenda.
Bias is subjective to say the least, but do you want the media telling you what you should read?
By filtering articles via social signals Virwire exposes all sides of the 'story' and trusts readers to sort out the bs. We believe 'people' are smarter than we give them credit for.
Re:NBC will shut down the Breaking News app
by joshstrange on Monday December 12, 2016 @11:21AM
(#13159193)
> Virwire exposes all sides of the 'story' and trusts readers to sort out the bs. We believe 'people' are smarter than we give them credit for.
Well HN isn't really a place for jokes and that sure is one if I've ever seen one. People don't care to sort out the BS, they share/read/click on things that reinforce their existing viewpoints and/or bias. It's like putting healthy food and candy on a table and letting lose kids into the room and saying "I'm sure they will pick the nutritionally sound and healthy options".
1. Why was this app created?
2. How expensive is it to run this app? (no seriously, even at scale, I can't see this getting more expensive than a few thousand $ a month - which at NBC's level should not be too much of an issue?)
^ more views, more money and probably more profits.
I don't see why editorial responsibilites couldn't be a little more decentralized to lower costs. Give a number of editors Breaking News-level access in their CMS and check a box when a story fits the criteria. But NBC isn't in it for the public good. The app probably simply didn't generate enough revenue to justify the costs.
You aren't accounting for staff time. All software is a living organism, they can't just lay off the developers and expect it to keep working.
"Stay tuned for more later, including details on how you can hire the best mobile/social talent in the business."
(presumably their own mobile app development talent...)
Curation is what I am after. Breaking News had (presumably) a large team monitoring vast numbers of Twitter accounts and other news feeds to bring them together into a single place where you got a nice feed of important stories without being overwhelmed with all the noise of thousands of individual tweets.
Sadly, most of the decisions we question are driven by marketing.
They're not going to get much traction with the Fake News narrative if they don't enact some real change on their part. If I'm wrong and there's a news source out there that isn't comprised of this, I'd appreciate you guys pointing me to it.
Breaking and trending news curation continues to elude much of the the MSM, we created Virwire to solve critical automation and bias issues.
Virwire prioritizes news based on what people are consuming and not on editorial agenda.
Bias is subjective to say the least, but do you want the media telling you what you should read?
By filtering articles via social signals Virwire exposes all sides of the 'story' and trusts readers to sort out the bs. We believe 'people' are smarter than we give them credit for.
Well HN isn't really a place for jokes and that sure is one if I've ever seen one. People don't care to sort out the BS, they share/read/click on things that reinforce their existing viewpoints and/or bias. It's like putting healthy food and candy on a table and letting lose kids into the room and saying "I'm sure they will pick the nutritionally sound and healthy options".
We literally have a wealth of evidence to contest this. For example: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/fake-news-survey
They've also been using their clickbait revenues to do some great long-form journalism, like https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertsamaha/a-matter-of-time.
You're really not selling me on your ability to solve bias issues.