Graham Holdings, which sold Washington Post to Jeff Bezos of Amazon for $250 million in 2013, has used the defibrillator to bring back to life the social news aggregator Trove.
The revived news app was first launched in 2011 and primarily relied on Facebook to personalize its news offering. It became popular and had 20 million news consumers in its first 12 months. However, the userbase started to dwindle when Facebook tweaked its algorithm.
The new Trove is available as an app for the iPhone and iPad but readers can also sign up to access it on the Web.
"It's a social news app bringing you the best stories picked by people who share your interests. With Trove, I follow topics (we call them troves), and I instantly get news about things I care about. For example, I told Trove that I want to read about 'Star Wars' and 'Technology' and 'The Who,' and it makes sure that I see the best articles that I need to know about. Trove streams in news from 15,000 sources, making it easy to follow lots of topics," wrote Trove chief strategist and head of product, Rob Malda.
One can sign up for Trove by creating an account or using an existing Facebook or Twitter account. Users will then be asked to follow at least two Troves by picking from a list of topics and curators. Trove may also suggest items that users like on Facebook as it still uses the social media network to deliver personalized news feed.
"We partner with 80+ respected partners like The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, Reuters, and SB Nation to bring you high-quality news for your curating pleasure. We also gather great content from across the web through over 30,000 public RSS feeds," the frequently asked questions section of the site read.
Users can create their own Troves and curate news guided by personalities and publications they trust.
News aggregation for Trove combines computer algorithms and the personal picks of curators. "The Trove engineering team has spent years tuning machines to read, understand, and personalize the news, but that's only the beginning: with Trove, people always come first. The stories that lead off troves are picked by "curators" who are passionate about a topic," Malda added.
Some names that cannot be missed on its initial list of curators are Codeacademy co-founder Zach Sims, The Washington Post senior correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran, former Bravo Top Chef participant Spike Mendelsohn, Bloomberg BGOV head of research Robert Litan, and technology entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa.
"Trove brings me the news I need to read, picked by people who share my interests. It gets smarter the more of us there are, so stop reading this and get started," said Malda.
