Making the News Personal

The staff at News360 wanted to go global with a news service that could be personalized to user preferences and delivered to different mobile and desktop platforms. Since launch, they’ve had more than 2.5 million users on multiple continents download their app, which runs on , , and other and tablet devices, and is supported by powerful Windows Azure cloud services. 2 3 Partner Profile Sifting global sources for News360 is a startup software company based in Moscow with offices in Sunnyvale, California. personalized news delivery For More Information: www.news360.com

The founders of News360 had a simple but challenging goal in mind: Semantic Analysis to Simplify News Delivery Create an application that can help users sift through information The basics of how the application would function were clear. First, overload to get the news of the day that interests them the most. content would be gathered from news sites across the Internet, and Roman Karachinsky, a voracious consumer of online information, then users’ interests would be analyzed and deduced from their was well aware of the problem. preferences and behavior on social sites such as and . Using the semantic analysis technology that Karachinsky “My colleagues and I want to be informed citizens and to know and his colleagues had developed, News360 would deliver custom what’s going on around the world and in our industry,” says content based on a user’s preferences. Karachinsky, Chief Executive Officer of News360. “But we’re awash in online content, and it’s getting harder and more time consuming “But to make the application a success,” adds Karachinsky, “we by the day to find the content that each person is most interested in. needed a powerful, scalable platform that could deliver a great user I was spending an hour and half daily trying to read all of the news experience on popular mobile devices and PCs, and could handle sources that I followed. If I went on vacation, it got backed up to the volume of user traffic and information we hoped to achieve.” hundreds or thousands of unread articles. It was simply too much The News360 team was experienced in Windows development, work.” and chose an end-to-end Windows environment for the New360 Karachinsky and his colleagues had great expertise that they could application. The application is available on Windows 8 and bring to the challenge. In a prior project, they had developed Windows Phone, and uses Windows Azure as the cloud platform to sophisticated algorithms and other technologies to perform news support the application and its users across multiple countries. The and reputation analyses—a valuable commodity for businesses application, which is also available on iOS and Android devices, has concerned about their online presence and reputations. more than 2.5 million users. “From a business perspective, Windows Azure has played an important “We turned our attention to how this could be used to help people Windows Azure played an important role for us because it’s cost-effective and scales easily to handle find the news they want on their personal devices,” says Karachinsky. Analyzing 250,000 Sources—In Real Time demand,” says Shavkat Aynurin, Chief Technology Officer of News360. A big part of the application’s success stems from the sophisticated business role for News360 because it is He notes that the company does not have to deal with hardware technology that lies beneath it. acquisition and setup, wait for service, or find ways to get rid of excess “We were closely cost-effective and can scale easily to handle hardware. “And the fact that Microsoft offers numerous hosting involved in Windows The solution includes a proprietary linguistic analysis engine that spikes in demand. locations around the world is important for our business plan. It helps 8 from the beginning looks at more than 250,000 source articles every day in real time. It us provide better application performance for users in specific regions.” because it is such also culls information from more than 1 million different companies, people, and locations, and looks at the locality and topics that every Supported by a Comprehensive Platform News360 received development and design assistance through the a good fit for an article covers. It collects articles into story clusters and then gathers Microsoft BizSpark One program, which provides software, support, The other key to the success of News360 is the comprehensive application like ours, visuals to accompany stories. visibility, and community to small and startup software companies, and Windows platform used to build and support it. which is designed another program that helped News360 create the Windows Phone Users start their preferences by choosing among a few dozen high- version of its application. The company partnered with Microsoft for the Windows 8 launch, and around an easy-to- level topics, such as “politics,” “food,” “fashion,” or “travel.” This initial the application has been a leading title in the Windows 8 Marketplace use touch-based selection then generates a personalized feed made up of these and “We rely on Windows to help us deliver a great service to our users, and the Windows Phone Store. interface. Windows 8 other topics. both in our infrastructure and in our apps,” says Karachinsky. “Microsoft has been a great partner for us, and the continual enhancements to its “We were closely involved in Windows 8 from the beginning because it features like charms “In terms of how we use sematic analysis, we have come a long way products will only serve to make ours stronger.” is such a good platform for an application like ours, which is designed and tiles are a natural since our initial efforts,” says Karachinsky. “We currently have more around an easy-to-use touch-based interface,” Karachinsky says. fit for News360. It’s than 1 million ‘concepts’ that we identify under broad categories such as humor or politics. The real power behind News360 is our Software and Services highly appealing to “Windows 8 features like charms and live tiles are a natural fit for personalization engine, which drives a real-time news feed for News360,” he adds. “It’s highly appealing to users.” users.” individuals based on their patterns of behavior and their specific Microsoft Cloud Services SQL Azure preferences. The more they read, the better News360 gets at To reach its geographically broad audience, News360 benefits from Roman Karachinsky, understanding what is relevant and interesting to the specific user. It Windows Phone Microsoft SQL Server Chief Executive Officer, the multiple data centers that Microsoft provides around the world becomes really smart about what you want to see.” News360 through Windows Azure. The data centers play an important part in the Windows 8 Microsoft .NET Framework News360 growth strategy. Windows Azure Traffic Manager

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