Windows Blog - Wednesday, June 20, 2018 at 9:00 AM
Meet Microsoft News: A new way to stay informed across the Web, Windows 10, iOS
and Android
Our mission for more than two decades has been to keep you informed in an
easily accessible, comprehensive and trustworthy way. Today, we share the next
step in our evolution.
Microsoft has been in the news business for more than 23 years. When we
launched MSN in 1995, the news industry was just beginning to provide content
online. The period that followed was one of dramatic change and reinvention,
forcing news organizations to re-think their programming and business
strategies. We changed, too, from a feature of Windows 95 to a network of web
and app experiences that now reaches nearly half a billion people in more than
140 countries and 28 languages. As we’ve evolved, our central mission has
remained the same: to keep our audience informed in an easily accessible,
comprehensive and trustworthy way.
Today, we’re excited to share the next step in our evolution – Microsoft News.
Microsoft News Editors at Mexico City Editorial Hub
What is Microsoft News?
Microsoft News is the new name for our news engine that powers familiar sites
like MSN.com<http://www.msn.com>, and our newly redesigned Microsoft News app
for iOS and Android<http://aka.ms/getnewsapp_blog>. Microsoft News also powers
news on Microsoft Edge, the News app in Windows 10, Skype, Xbox and
Outlook.com<http://Outlook.com>.
Microsoft News represents the ways we keep people informed across the web,
phone and PC, using our long-tested approach of curating news via publishing
partnerships, human editors, and AI. We work with more than a thousand premium
publishers and more than 3,000 brands in all major global markets – like USA
Today, The New York Times, FOX News, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le
Monde, Die Welt, El País, BBC News, Kyodo News, and many more – to aggregate
the best news, videos, photos and other content and deliver it, for free, to
people all over the world.
MSN, powered by Microsoft News
Microsoft News makes it easy for you to personalize your news experience,
including prioritizing your favorite topics on MSN.com<http://MSN.com> or
selecting interests to follow in your news feed on the Microsoft Edge Start
page and our apps on Windows 10, iOS and Android, so you can quickly get to the
information you want most when and where you want it. We also enable our many
publishing partners to connect with new audiences and earn money for their
content at a time when that is crucial to the survival of the industry – so
they can continue to invest in high-quality, credible journalism.
Microsoft News for iOS and Android
You can experience the best of what Microsoft News has to offer in our newly
redesigned Microsoft News app for iOS and
Android,<http://aka.ms/getnewsapp_blog> available today. The app makes it easy
to get news wherever you are, focused on the topics you care about most – like
having your own portable newsroom.
Microsoft News app for Android – dark theme
The app has been completely redesigned into a modern and beautiful experience
tailored to iOS and Android devices. Here are some of our favorite new features:
* New personalization upgrades, including the ability to tailor interests
to follow in your news feed – such as World News, Personal Finance, Fitness and
many more – and to roam interests across devices and local news options for top
cities
* Easy to configure breaking news alerts
* A new dark theme, enabling better night reading
* Simplified access through seamless integration with iOS and Android
widgets
* Continuous reading, for a smooth content experience
Get the app<http://aka.ms/getnewsapp_blog> now.
Supporting the publishing ecosystem and quality journalism
We know we can’t do it alone. We may have decades of news experience under our
belt but there are many institutions that have been at it much, much longer.
These institutions have defined what we think of as quality journalism through
years of essential reporting.
We believe that a free, well-funded press is a critical part of our social
fabric and are proud to partner with the world’s best news brands, offering a
business model that gives people access, at no-cost, to trustworthy news and
provides a sustainable source of revenue for publishers. In just the past four
years we’ve delivered more than $600 million back to our publishers, enabling
them to focus on what they do best: quality journalism.
“Microsoft has been a great partner over the last several years, working
closely with our newsroom and collaborating as they consider new features and
services. We appreciate partners like Microsoft who value trusted reporting and
seek ways to elevate and share premium journalism to millions of readers who
are looking for information from a reliable source.”
— Maribel Wadsworth, publisher of USA TODAY and president, USA TODAY NETWORK
“Microsoft is a great partner for us because it offers both impressive reach
and a well-earned reputation as a trusted source of news.”
— Rich Kennedy, SVP of Business Development, Business Insider
“We are very happy that Microsoft is investing further in highlighting valuable
and trusted sources of news. The launch of Microsoft News is another positive
proof point of publisher-platform relationships strengthening and we look
forward to seeing what’s to come.”
— Matt Dornic, VP for Communications and Digital Partnerships, CNN
“Microsoft has been a valued partner in delivering CBSN’s live, 24/7 news
coverage and analysis to an expansive audience that’s hungry for quality news
and information. We look forward to continuing our strong relationship.”
— Christy Tanner, Executive Vice President and General Manager, CBS News Digital
“MSN delivers premium content at scale and high ad viewability that truly
performs for our advertisers.”
— Jeff Lucas, Head of Americas Sales and Global Teams, Oath
“As part of our strategic partnership with Microsoft, Taboola powers content
recommendations across Microsoft’s consumer properties in 55 markets and
localized for 22 languages. We work together to create highly personalized
experiences for consumers, drive engagement, monetization, increase awareness
for Microsoft’s internal promotions and enable audience growth. We have seen in
our three years of partnership that Microsoft audiences are incredibly
valuable. When looking at Microsoft News users discovering content, as opposed
to people coming from social or search, they engage 2-3x more, and in many ways
are ‘super users’.”
— Adam Singolda, Founder and CEO, Taboola
Curated news by editors
Every day, our publishing partners send us more than 100,000 unique pieces of
content. Our AI scans the content as it arrives, processes it to understand
dimensions like freshness, category, topic type, opinion content and potential
popularity and then presents it for our editors. Our algorithms suggest
appropriate photos to pair with content to help bring stories to life. Editors
then curate the top stories throughout the day, across a variety of topics, so
our readers get the latest news from the best sources.
This curation process is global, using editors with local expertise. Today,
there are more than 800 editors working from 50 locations around the world –
including editorial newsrooms serving multiple regions in India, Germany,
France, Mexico, Canada and Spain. Many of our editors have extensive
backgrounds in media and journalism and have worked at a variety of news
organizations including The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Globe and
Mail, Newsday, NBCSports.com<http://NBCSports.com>, Seattle Times, Asahi
Shimbun and Associated Press.
Microsoft News Editors at Delhi Media Center
Diversity, in our newsroom and in the publishers we partner with, is a key
ingredient of the Microsoft News experience. We carefully compose our pages
every day to present multiple sides of a story and consciously curate a wide
variety of opinion pieces so that our readers can explore issues via new and
different perspectives. We believe thoughtful opinion pieces—which we clearly
mark as such—help readers better understand the news. With that goal in mind,
we’re always assessing our network of partners to ensure that we provide the
most diverse, credible and well-rounded content available.
At Microsoft News, we’re constantly refining and improving our experiences to
continue to serve the needs of people and partners around the globe. We hope
you will visit MSN.com<http://www.msn.com>, the Microsoft Edge Start page and
give the new app<http://aka.ms/getnewsapp_blog> a try!
Updated June 20, 2018 11:47 am
http://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/06/20/meet-microsoft-news-a-new-way-to-stay-informed-across-the-web-windows-10-ios-and-android/
David Goldfield
Assistive Technology Specialist
Feel free to visit my Web site
WWW.DavidGoldfield.info<http://WWW.DavidGoldfield.info>
