Flipboard is acquiring Zite from CNN

http://gigaom.com/2014/03/05/flipboard-is-acquiring-zite-from-cnn-forming-broad-ad-and-content-partnership-with-news-giant/

by robdoherty2 • 12 years ago

49 36 12 years ago

gigaom.com

btrautsc3• 12 years ago

in a past life I spent a lot of time concerned about how M&A would unfold in this space... This is interesting as we never had the sense Zite had particularly innovative tech, whereas Flipboard needed a 'horseman' to acquire them.

This may ultimately be more of a licensing/ partnership between CNN & Flipboard... In hindsight I wasted a lot of that time.

pinko• 12 years ago

You're right that Zite has little innovative tech, but--for me--it just works slightly better in a variety of subtle ways that give it an edge over other apps. Sometimes that's all it takes.

statictype• 12 years ago

For whatever it's worth, I use Zite pretty much everyday. It's like my morning paper. I don't use Flipboard at all. It's a nice app for sure, but for some reason, Zite always seemed to give me more interesting things to read.

mercer2• 12 years ago

Same here, so I hope we'll get to keep Zite with Flipbook's look.

Zite has a few serious UI issues, and it's a testament to how good it's actual recommendations are that it's still my most-used consumption source (other than HN).

mikeklaas7• 12 years ago

As Zite's CTO, it's interesting to see how the tech is perceived externally.

For whom did you work in a previous life, out of curiousity?

btrautsc3• 12 years ago

I was part of two failed attempts at personalizing news/ creating communities of topic expertise around news. Both ended in the many tens of thousands of users, and acqui-hire talks (not with either Zite or Flipboard).

My thought on the tech was it was consistently good, the product was simple and easy to use, and worked very well at aggregating subject based articles (I'm sure there was much more behind the scenes that would have scared us at the time)...

we were trying to do not only the smart aggregation, but create hooks into reading communities to encourage an atmosphere like HN - instead of mystical karma points, you would see btrautsc; expert in X, knowledgable in Y, novice in Z and so forth. Like I said, it ultimately died a timely death.

Congratulations on the deal by the way!

newman314• 12 years ago

I prefer Zite over Flipboard. That whole flipping UI thing just never sat right with me.

csixty42• 12 years ago

Zite has been my app of choice when I'm catching up on the news over breakfast. It sounds like Flipboard is going to integrate Zite's personalization algorithms into Flipboard, but I'm skeptical. Hoping for the best.

rjtavares• 12 years ago

A mix of Zite's better personalization options and Flipboard's better design would be perfect.

csixty42• 12 years ago

It would be really cool if they could make it work.

rch• 12 years ago

I installed Flipboard while looking for a replacement for the old Google Currents widget on my Nexus 7. Fb might be better for content, or not, but I still really miss the other widget. Swiping through headlines in Currents was almost fun, and I could preselect for content sources that would be available to read offline.

Ultimately, most of the content that's available is unremarkable, so I tend to be very critical of the overall experience of consuming it. Conversely, a source that makes even modest improvements in efficiency or presentation can instantly become part of my daily routine. The old Currents was far from perfect, but at least it felt like progress.

thecodefoundry• 12 years ago

I'm a huge fan of Zite and use it every single day as my morning paper, lunch reading and late evening reading. I've tried Flipboard in the past but it didn't hold a candle to my needs like Zite did/does. I'm hoping that this doesn't spell the end of the Zite experience.

antr• 12 years ago

Anyone here think's the "Technology" stories in Zite are just HN's RSS feed?

mercer2• 12 years ago

Yes, I've always suspected that.. It's either that or a really good 'personal recommendation engine'.

mikeklaas7• 12 years ago

It's not, but we trained the classifier+collaborative filter, and we're all HN readers, so it's not surprising it picks up HN stories consistently.

bitcuration3• 12 years ago

I just hope flipboard does not mean to shutdown zite. Zite is part of my life now, while I haven't open flipboard more than once or twice a week.

After watched the movie "her", I had thought about zite would be the Samantha in my news consumption world, "who" has tuned up and evolved very much to my taste over years. I could careless about flipboard's fancy layout.

This is the worst news after greader shutdown, wtf. Unfortunately trap.it doesn't quite work out, seriously limited my choice.

hnriot• 12 years ago

This is a real shame. Zite is fabulous and useful whereas flipboard is annoying. I long ago uninstalled flipboard because of the failed real world metaphor. I don't need my software apps trying to ape a dead technology of dead trees. Zite is fabulous, modern and highly usable.

I'm glad for the people involved if this is a good exit for them, but as a user I'm worried that flipboard will ruin things.

mijustin• 12 years ago

I agree - I vastly preferred Zite to anything else. I have Flipboard, Inside, Prismatic installed, but I use Zite 90% of the time.

http://glui.me/?i=j6drkkursw1qwn9/2014-03-05_10.45.58.png/

I found the Zite learning algorithm worked really well for me (as opposed to Prismatic). I always found the content really relevant + enjoyable to read.

caseyf7• 12 years ago

Looks like they are shutting Zite down: http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/cnn-sells-zite-news-app...

jasonkolb• 12 years ago

That just ruined my lunch. Seriously, Zite is awesome, only "recommender" that actually works for me. Prismatic, Flipboard, everything else I've tried--they all suck. Only Zite consistently gives me things I haven't seen that I'm actually interested in.

Welp, time to dust off my recommender algorithms and build something I suppose. If anyone's interested in joining, ping me.

tindrlabs• 12 years ago

Agreed. Zite is so much better. I use Zite 2-3 times a day and have stopped using Flipboard.

36bydesign• 12 years ago

Add me to the choir

mikeklaas7• 12 years ago

I posted this in another thread, but this is my statement on the acquisition: http://blog.zite.com/2014/03/05/zite-is-flipping-out/

Happy to answer any questions.

declan2• 12 years ago

Zite is a strong product, and I wish the team well. (Disclaimer: Mark Johnson is a friend, and deserves some time off.)

This is admittedly self-serving but appropriate for HN: If you're interested in an alternative, I quit my job at CBS yesterday to work on a new SF bay area startup that's aiming to provide personalized news with zero configuration. You can sign up to be notified of the beta at http://recent.io/

bitcuration3• 12 years ago

Bravo!

declan2• 12 years ago

Thanks! It's exciting and kind of scary at the same time. Hope you like it (once it ships!).

soapdog• 12 years ago

I am still using a HP Touchpad webOS tablet mostly because of some apps that I think are just great. Among them the webOS Zite client I think is the most polished client for that service in any platform. The Android client doesn't come near in usability. I just hope it keeps working...

zwieback• 12 years ago

My TouchPad is dual-boot and I think the webOS client was much better but most of the time I just run Zite on Android now.

Anyway, sad to see Zite go. It was so much better than Flipboard.

amaks• 12 years ago

Hopefully they will fix this mess which is Zite on Android.

mimighost• 12 years ago

As a heavy user for both apps, I should say I am glad this is happening.

Though Flipboard and Zite may seem similar to each other from the first sight, underneath I think they take very different approaches.

From a user's perspective, I believe Zite relies more on an algorithmic approach while Flipboard is more hand-tuned. As a result, Flipboard has better article quality, a result from a controlled list of resources. Zite certainly covers wider topic spectrum, but I am bothered all the time when it recommends me something like a newsletter announcement for a product update, which becomes worse when you subscribe to a rare topic.

A better personalized Flipboard, with more channels to choose from, is the best outcome of this acquire.But I will miss the old Zite now and then.

Flipboard is acquiring Zite from CNN

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