Thursday, 18 June 2015
BuzzFeed has been building its dedicated News app over the last few months, publicly documenting the journey to building what it thinks will be the future of news on mobile.
BuzzFeed News, which is available today for iOS devices, is simple, but elegant. When you first open it, you might be reminded of Circa’s no-fluff news.
BuzzFeed news is positioned as a way to get a “quick catch up” of the latest news, with the app’s start screen showing a bullet list of the most important news of the day.
If you scroll further you’ll get the top news of the day from the company, presented by topic with facts, tweets and background interweaved with the story. Tap on a story and you’re simply taken to the pageon BuzzFeed’s main site within a Web view.
The company has been touting “tasteful” push notifications with the new app and it offers alerts based on your interests. You can opt-in to “major breaking news” (it’s unclear what that actually means yet) or topics like World, U.S. News, politics, LGBT and more.
In the current release, you’re also able to opt-in to specific story alerts for the FIFA Corruption Scandal to keep up with the latest developments.
The new app is a good way for BuzzFeed to help organize its news and make it easier to find, as well as a way to make it more authoritative as a source for reliable news.
I’d never really considered visiting the site to get news in the past, but if BuzzFeed News is able to offer timely and useful push notifications alongside good summaries of the latest, it could be a solid alternative to the New York Times’ NYT Now app.
➤ BuzzFeed News [iOS App Store]
