Sixty words tell you What, When, Where, Why.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “all-media school” (ID: quanmeipai) , Author: Tencent Media.
The emergence of the Internet allows everyone to understand the world without leaving the house. However, as the amount of information on the Internet continues to increase, more and more young people are becoming tired of long-form news writing. For young people in India today, they can read world news in one stop, because the news aggregation platform Inshorts can condense thousands of words of news articles into small summaries within six crosses. Just swipe with your finger, and massive news will immediately appear on your screen.
In this issue, all media groups (ID: quanmeipai) will take you to explore Inshorts, an Indian news aggregation platform, and let us explore the secrets and crises behind the rise of Inshorts.
15.4 + 4.5: Inshorts behind hundreds of millions of users
Inshorts was founded in 2013 and is currently one of the most popular news applications in India, with 15 million downloads per month, and more than 3 billion page views on Android only. Inshorts users Use the product for about 15.4 days, about 4.5 days a week. At first, Inshorts mainly relied on advertising revenue, but since 2017, it has increased revenue through operations. According to statistics from the World Press and Press and Publication Association (WAN-IFRA), Inshorts’ revenue reached US $ 14 million during 2019-2020.
Inshorts’ initial form is a Facebook interface that provides a summary of Six Cross News. Because this feature is very popular, a few months later, the production team launched an application called “News inShorts”. An application alsoIt was favored by the TLabs incubator project and raised a large amount of start-up funds from all parties, including Binny Bansal, the founder of Indian online shopping giant Flipkart. Bansal said he was a user of News inShorts, and he also believed that News inShorts could redefine news consumption with the help of mobile devices.
Since then, the project has received US $ 3.4 million in Series A financing and US $ 17.5 million in Series B financing. In 2015, “News inShorts” was changed to “Inshorts”, and I tried to touch the world outside the news.
Algorithm + Editor: Build a higher-level news aggregation platform
The first key to Inshorts ’success is to fully match the user ’s reading habits. Deepit Purkayastha, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Inshorts, said in an interview: “We found that many of our peers do not have the habit of reading news, they often want to get a lot of news in a short time, Facebook They are often their first choice, “Purkayastha also pointed out that Facebook is often filled with too many personal opinions, and the real news facts are lacking,” so we want to fill this gap. “
Inshorts is committed to providing mobile and consumable news content, using up to 60 words to introduce the ins and outs of a news. Each news will be made into a card, including news pictures, headlines and abstracts. Swipe to quickly browse information and personalize editing and management of your own news card. “Compared to the news list, this card-like news will bring more clicks,” Purkayastha explained. At present, Inshorts uses an artificial intelligence algorithm called Rapid60. By studying the 1 million news summaries compiled by the editors in the previous five years, it has been able to successfully compress the news. Can summarize more than one hundred thousand news.
For artificial intelligence-driven news products, how to circumvent the information cocoon room is an important challenge. Users may continue to read their favorite news without being able to get out of the “echo room”, so InshortsAlso tried to find a balance between the algorithm and the news editor.
On the one hand, the algorithm predicts the user ’s interest by observing the time the user stays on each news. At the same time, the editors will also assign scores to the news based on a thousand scale. 1000 points, then this news will be sent to all users. Purkayastha said: “We hope that readers can see news related to their own interests, and at the same time they can pay attention to news that is completely unrelated to themselves but extremely important. In a sense, this kind of correlation is still a controversial concept , The personalized narrative mode of artificial intelligence and machine learning has already controlled the imagination of readers, but for the news industry, especially for news platforms that are providing consumer content to readers, breaking the echo room is extremely important Things. “Facts have proved that the practice of Inshorts is also very effective. 20% of the most read news comes from editors’ picks. These news are ahead of 80% of the content of artificial intelligence matching.
In addition to excellence in content and algorithms, Inshorts has also explored the correct monetization model-gaining revenue through B2B channel advertising. Azar Iqubal, CEO and co-founder of Inshorts, said: “Inshorts is currently working with nearly 300 advertisers, adding approximately 10 new advertisers each month. The client list includes brands such as Vodafone, Oneplus, Netflix, Mercedes and Myntra . “
Inshorts locates ads through a personalized engine, and pushes different ads by analyzing user behavior patterns and news consumption history. The advertisements provided by Inshorts can be divided into six different categories. The most popular category is “Sixty Word Brand Story”. Advertisers can share the advertisement story and the embedded pictures or videos together in the form of sixty words. For users of Inshorts. In addition, Inshorts also launched two highly engaged advertising models, Digital Magazine and Fact Card. Digital magazines often aggregate various forms of interactions such as videos, dynamic images, and voting. Helped Netflix’s “Umbrella Academy” (Umbrella Academy) to get more than three times the user participation of text ads; the fact card is to integrate some interesting stories about a brand or an industry, it is also very easy to social media widePan sharing. Compared with traditional advertising, advertisers can get higher user engagement on Inshorts.
Sixty-word brand promotion information on the Inshorts platform
Media + language: News aggregation platform faces many challenges
Despite being well received by the market, Inshorts entering the new era also faces many challenges, such as how to coordinate its relationship with the media and advertising markets.
With the continuous increase in the number of users of news aggregation platforms such as Inshorts, the platform will give a small deposit to many large media organizations so that the content of the media can be shared and managed on the news aggregation platform.
However, when the payment terms change, more and more media organizations choose to withdraw from news aggregation platforms. For example, Malayala Manorama, India ’s largest Hindi media agency, withdrew from news aggregation platform DailyHunt as early as 2017. Chitti Pantulu, editor of NewsPlus, another Indian news aggregator platform, said: “Many aggregator platforms have highlighted their number of users to increase valuations and attract investment to further increase the number of users. However, the growth rate of the advertising market cannot be consistent, so this has caused A vicious circle. “Pantulu said that many media organizations do content distribution in the hope that they can obtain profits from advertising or other forms of income distribution. Sajith Pai, the head of startup investment company BlumeVentures, said: “Currently, user acquisition costs are indeed very high. Although the number of users and advertisers is still growing, the growth rate is not fast enough.”
In fact, the advertising industry is growing slowly, but more and more news aggregation platforms are appearing and competing for a limited market share. The news aggregation industry in India is already in flames.
India ’s mainstream news aggregation platforms include Inshorts, Dailyhunt, NewsPlus, InstaNews, Filpboard
Local language is another challenge. There are 22 official regional languages in India, and the users of these regional languages are also increasing. However, advertisers are not paying attention to this point. “Even when the short video is coming, the advertisers are not in English and Indian. A new step is taken on the basis of the local language, “introduced Boby Paul, general manager of marketing at Malayala Manorama. Vivek Durai has always been concerned about private capital. He said that the stories on the news aggregation platform are all localized content. The platform is also trying to try other businesses such as video, social networking, e-commerce, and financial services. “After all, advertising revenue has not increased. , The big names in the field also realize that scale is not that important. “
On the Inshorts platform, only English and Hindi services are still available
In addition, users’ consumption patterns have also undergone tremendous changes, moving towards video consumption. New video applications such as Sharechat are also heating up competition for attention and advertising.
In 2020, where is Inshorts?
Inshorts recently launched a new product “Public”, which is a location-based, video-first, hyper-localized social platform, whether it is a special reporter, news organization or advertiser can publish messages on this platform. Without any celebrity endorsement or publicity, Public can also generate more than 50,000 downloads, known as “a self-sufficient public relations tool.” Public has witnessed a million videos of different styles per month from users across India. Inshorts is also actively using machine learning, artificial intelligence and image processing technologies to review this product.
Inshorts will also conduct a survey of the brand to obtain real-time user feedback when the brand ’s advertisement is launched. Inshorts also proposed the use of new interactive methods to disseminate news, such as graphic cards, etc. The company also cooperated with Ipsos (Ipsos global well-known market research company) to explore user opinions. “Our survey usually receives 400,000 responses a day, and we also realize that this is a huge resource and we plan to make full use of it this year,” explained Purkayastha.
In the story of Inshorts, there is not only the confrontation and integration of intelligent technology and news business, but also the conflict and coexistence of internationalization and localization. Eshwar, a reporter from Indian business website OfficeChai, said that Inshorts makes news consumption easier, and Let the media people receive feedback from readers who have never read the news before, “Inshorts did enter new markets effectively.” Inshorts seems to be a microcosm, witnessing the rise, upgrade and struggle of the Indian news aggregation platform, and constantly seeking new breakthroughs in the midst of difficulties.
Reference link:
1.https: //whatsnewinpublishing.com/15m-app-downloads-3b-pageviews-per-month-what-publishers-can-learn-from-the-meteoric-rise-of-indian-news-app -inshorts /
2.https: //www.niemanlab.org/2020/01/in-india-news-aggregator-apps-are-struggling-to-find-a-path-to-sustainability/
3.https: //blog.wan-ifra.org/2020/03/03/how-inshorts-used-ai-to-become-one-of-indias-top-news-apps
Despite being well received by the market, Inshorts entering the new era also faces many challenges, such as how to coordinate its relationship with the media and advertising markets.
With the continuous increase in the number of users of news aggregation platforms such as Inshorts, the platform will give a small deposit to many large media organizations so that the content of the media can be shared and managed on the news aggregation platform.
However, when the payment terms change, more and more media organizations choose to withdraw from news aggregation platforms. For example, Malayala Manorama, India ’s largest Hindi media agency, withdrew from news aggregation platform DailyHunt as early as 2017. Chitti Pantulu, editor of NewsPlus, another Indian news aggregator platform, said: “Many aggregator platforms have highlighted their number of users to increase valuations and attract investment to further increase the number of users. However, the growth rate of the advertising market cannot be consistent, so this has caused A vicious circle. “Pantulu said that many media organizations do content distribution in the hope that they can obtain profits from advertising or other forms of income distribution. Sajith Pai, the head of startup investment company BlumeVentures, said: “Currently, user acquisition costs are indeed very high. Although the number of users and advertisers is still growing, the growth rate is not fast enough.”
In fact, the advertising industry is growing slowly, but more and more news aggregation platforms are appearing and competing for a limited market share. The news aggregation industry in India is already in flames.
India ’s mainstream news aggregation platforms include Inshorts, Dailyhunt, NewsPlus, InstaNews, Filpboard
Local language is another challenge. There are 22 official regional languages in India, and the users of these regional languages are also increasing. However, advertisers are not paying attention to this point. “Even when the short video is coming, the advertisers are not in English and Indian. A new step is taken on the basis of the local language, “introduced Boby Paul, general manager of marketing at Malayala Manorama. Vivek Durai has always been concerned about private capital. He said that the stories on the news aggregation platform are all localized content. The platform is also trying to try other businesses such as video, social networking, e-commerce, and financial services. “After all, advertising revenue has not increased. , The big names in the field also realize that scale is not that important. “
On the Inshorts platform, only English and Hindi services are still available
In addition, users’ consumption patterns have also undergone tremendous changes, moving towards video consumption. New video applications such as Sharechat are also heating up competition for attention and advertising.
In 2020, where is Inshorts?
Inshorts recently launched a new product “Public”, which is a location-based, video-first, hyper-localized social platform, whether it is a special reporter, news organization or advertiser can publish messages on this platform. Without any celebrity endorsement or publicity, Public can also generate more than 50,000 downloads, known as “a self-sufficient public relations tool.” Public has witnessed a million videos of different styles per month from users across India. Inshorts is also actively using machine learning, artificial intelligence and image processing technologies to review this product.
Inshorts will also conduct a survey of the brand to obtain real-time user feedback when the brand ’s advertisement is launched. Inshorts also proposed the use of new interactive methods to disseminate news, such as graphic cards, etc. The company also cooperated with Ipsos (Ipsos global well-known market research company) to explore user opinions. “Our survey usually receives 400,000 responses a day, and we also realize that this is a huge resource and we plan to make full use of it this year,” explained Purkayastha.
In the story of Inshorts, there is not only the confrontation and integration of intelligent technology and news business, but also the conflict and coexistence of internationalization and localization. Eshwar, a reporter from Indian business website OfficeChai, said that Inshorts makes news consumption easier, and Let the media people receive feedback from readers who have never read the news before, “Inshorts did enter new markets effectively.” Inshorts seems to be a microcosm, witnessing the rise, upgrade and struggle of the Indian news aggregation platform, and constantly seeking new breakthroughs in the midst of difficulties.
Reference link:
1.https: //whatsnewinpublishing.com/15m-app-downloads-3b-pageviews-per-month-what-publishers-can-learn-from-the-meteoric-rise-of-indian-news-app -inshorts /
2.https: //www.niemanlab.org/2020/01/in-india-news-aggregator-apps-are-struggling-to-find-a-path-to-sustainability/
3.https: //blog.wan-ifra.org/2020/03/03/how-inshorts-used-ai-to-become-one-of-indias-top-news-apps