Daily Times

SAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo on Tuesday unveiled its latest mobile news application, using both algorithms and user choices to deliver the most relevant updates with a social twist.

Yahoo Newsroom, tailored for mobile devices powered by Android or Apple operating systems, is Yahoo’s latest move to counter Facebook and other internet giants as a key place for news updates. The application uses algorithms in the same manner as Google and Facebook in delivering personalized news, but also enables users to adjust the content and offer their own views.

“In moving to a very community powered approach, we wanted to give the app a distinct identity around news and a place where people are going to come to have conversations around news,” Yahoo vice president Simon Khalaf told AFP in unveiling the application.

Yahoo said that more than 300 million people monthly come to its online venues to share opinions about big news stories. “It is a very common and predictable cycle: read, watch, react and repeat,” Yahoo said. “The all-new Yahoo Newsroom makes it easier to discover content relevant to you, and to participate in conversations around issues you are passionate about.”

The app lets people explore topics, which it refers to as “Vibes,” “and then tailors content to suit subjects selected. “You can now post articles from around the web – with your reactions – directly into specific Vibes to spark a discussion,” Yahoo said in the post.

“With Newsroom, we’ve combined this best-in-class content from Yahoo and around the web with community empowerment.” Release of the mobile apps also comes as Verizon is in the process of buying the core business of Silicon Valley-based Yahoo, and as the company is dealing with the aftermath of a hack of epic proportion.

The hack occurred in late 2014 affecting some 500 million users worldwide, according to Yahoo’s disclosure last month. It was not immediately clear if the disclosure would affect the sale of Yahoo’s core business to telecom group Verizon for $4.8 billion.