Discover The Long Tail of News with News360

Meg Rayford August 13, 2011 Tweet

The weekend is a great time to get caught up on reading, including any news stories that were missed during the busy work week. News consumers have plenty of newsreader apps to choose from, no matter which device they own.

So, why even mention yet another news app? The News360 version 2.0 was released Wednesday, setting it apart with enhanced personalization features to custom tailor news stories for each individual user. News360′s ability to deliver the long tail of content production to its readers leaves it poised to rival even the most popular platforms.

Russian-based News360 collects news from more than 5,000 sources, sifting through them and presenting each story from a single source. If you want to delve deeper into a particular topic, you can use the app to browse through other publications that have covered it. By aggregating news stories from so many sources, News360 allows you to achieve expert levels of insight on a topic—a 360-degree view of issues, if you will.

What sets News360 apart from competitors such as Flipboard, Zite, AOL’s Editions, and News.Me is its use of semantic analysis to provide you with relevant news. In its first version, News360 leveraged its algorithm to dig up the most important news in categories such as Politics, Business and Tech. Now the News360 algorithm is tackling personalization to bring you your favorite kinds of stories from your favorite publications.

What makes the News360 algorithm so smart? Simply put, it’s social. With your permission, it looks at everything you’re doing on places like Facebook and Twitter to see what kind of content you gravitate towards. News360 learns from your social graph to present news stories that you’ll find interesting.

“News360 only gives you what you can consume at any given time,” said Roman Karachinsky, Chief Business Development Officer. “It doesn’t overwhelm you with a counter saying you have 5,000 unread articles, nor does it simply provide a pre-filtered magazine-style view with no deeper levels of content.”

News360 is available for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry PlayBook, and now as a web app. If you’re looking for an app that can aggregate news stories with a degree of serendipity, yet knows you well enough to bring you content you’ll enjoy, you may want to give News360 a try.