

Summly hits top 10 in app store - taniraja
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20181537

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Most probably because of all of the press and Apple store feature. The
feedback I've read has been mixed. It's definitely got more use than their
first app but I'm not sure it fits into my usage pattern.

I think the app looks great and has some nice imagery. It's rather unintuitive
though. To read something you have to download the stories like it's
Instapaper, when the categories were preinstalled in the app.

It's also confusing how to navigate, you have to swipe up to load the webpage
or you can also double tap that just loads more of the story, swipe down to
get back, swipe right to go to the next story and if you tap on any part of
the story (Say to copy) it opens spiralling social sharing icon.

The problem for me is that Flipboard and Twitter are the only ways I really
choose to consume mainstream news, barring HackerNews or Reddit. This app
isn't social and has set about 10 categories, you're supposed to be able to
generate others but when I typed in 'Startups' nothing happened. I think the
reason they pivoted from summarising any text into articles is because you can
cut an article down much easier. They're broken down with an introductory
line, summary and summary paragraph.

For example: If you wanted to summarise this comment you could take the first
line and the first two lines from the paragraph before this and that would be
just. If Flipboard bought them and used it in their iPhone app so that before
you click to read more of an article it's summarised it instead of just
leaving a quote I'd be quite happy.

~~~
mmayberry
Odd group of investors . Yoko One, Stephen Fry, Ka-Shing, Kutcher.

I like the idea of summarizing the web/content and it looks like the app is
just the first step towards something bigger.

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Their original app allowed you to paste the link of an article or any text and
they'd summarise it. It didn't really work and this is trying to find a use
for it. I'l be interested to see where they take it.

From a company angle they seem to be outsourcing a lot of development based on
their about page. I'm not sure how scalable this is for a startup. If this
second iteration doesn't work will they be able to pivot?

