Circa News 3

CliffsNotes for news. Follow stories that matter to you.

Rectangle 27441
Get It
Techsave

discussion

most upvotedRectangle 23 Copy 3
Jonathon Triest Ludlow Ventures
A huge update! Almost feels like a whole new product. Make sure to check out the new "Wire" feature. Way to go team!
Rectangle 23 Copy 39Shapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@jtriest Thanks Jonathon!
Rectangle 23 Copy 34Shapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
Incredibly proud of the team and excited about this massive update we've put together. I'm here to answer any questions at all about Circa News 3!
Rectangle 23 Copy 319Shapeshare
Ryan Hoover Product Hunt
Congrats, @mg. I know you and the team did a major backend re-haul to make the new Wire feature possible.

I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on journalism and the news industry at large. In your opinion, how is it changing and what does it look like in 5 years? I know, broad question but mighty curious. :)
Rectangle 23 Copy 316Shapeshare
Erik Torenberg Product Hunt
@rrhoover +1 this question. with all the recent attention going to major investments in Buzzfeed and Vice, where do you see Circa fitting in? How do you compare yourselves to Vox?
Rectangle 23 Copy 33Shapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@eriktorenberg @rrhoover Good questions guys.

Re: news industry in the next 5 years.
This one is really hard to answer. It's changed a monumental amount in the last five years, and for sure a lot in the last two since we started in the space. I think the amount of innovation and disruption in news over the next 5 years will be far more pronounced than ever before. The traditional way of doing things – articles, beats, field reporters, are all about to undergo major transformations. Especially as print dies or becomes a premium product.

Re: Vox
We're a wholly different beast. First and foremost we're mobile-first which is a major difference. All of our writers strongly consider what the reading experience of a story would be on mobile before anything else and that dramatically shifts how and what we cover.

Additionally we're the only company that enables readers to follow the stories they care about and get granular updates as they happen over time. We see this as a significant differentiator vs. all of the rest of the apps and experiences that are out there. It really does feel like magic when you receive your first update to a story you're following.
Rectangle 23 Copy 36Shapeshare
James Lee Startuptabs.com
@mg i had installed circa before and eventually uninstalled. Some stories even though they were related started to appear as new stories. How are you guys handle following thousands of different stories?
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@jleebiz We've got our own process on the back-end that helps us stay clear with what stories we're covering. And sometimes related stories do pop up as new stories, but they're not covering identical subject matter. Such as if you take Ferguson – we may cover the incident, the response, and such things as militarized police in different threads.
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
Derek Shanahan Accounts & Biz Dev at Playerize
Been using the beta and it's such a great improvement. Been really interesting to watch the team iterate through ideas.

@mg Could you explain why the Daily Digest and how it relates to the main feed?
Rectangle 23 Copy 31Shapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@dshan Of course. The Daily Brief is going to be a collection of the stuff that matters most, curated by our editors. The goal is to make sure you're never out of the loop. While the stories are the same as you'd find on the main screen, we call out a single point to make it really easy to not miss it. If you read a story from the main screen, it won't show up in your Brief so as to not confuse you...
Rectangle 23 Copy 31Shapeshare
Derek Shanahan Accounts & Biz Dev at Playerize
@mg Ah, the highlighting a main point is a nice touch. I think I got nervous it was a step in the direction of other 'top ten news stories' approaches, like Yahoo's Digest, which is IMO a misfire. I love the customizability of story following on Circa (in contract to a hand-fed digest model). I also love the lack of emotive, clickbaity headlines, btw.
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@dshan Oh HELL no. We're definitely not going down that path ever. Our goal is to inform, not show you some random list of stories. We want to surface the most meaningful stuff of the day in the hopes that you follow it and stick with it.
Rectangle 23 Copy 31Shapeshare
Derek Shanahan Accounts & Biz Dev at Playerize
@mg I definitely knew you weren't going down that path:) I also know my girlfriend, for instance, isn't habitual, but is a frequent user. This kind of thing is a good way to surface high-value stories for her.

Circa is the only app I use for news. It's so perfect. Killer work.
Rectangle 23 Copy 31Shapeshare
Eric Metelka Product Manager, PowerReviews
I've been fortunate to be beta testing and Wire is my favorite new feature. Huge improvement over the number of taps it would take to move back and forth between tracked stories. Circa is basically THE news app for me. Has replaced other websites and twitter as my news source.

Other cool things:
- "It sounds crazy, but you can almost use Circa completely from notifications." We've seen a trend towards these really lightweight homescreen only interaction apps on PH. Glad Circa is adopting too. Really awesome.
- The Wire completion screen is delightful every time I see it. Love how easy it is to just go back and browse more stories if I want to consumer more.

A Question for @mg: I won't ask how you'll monetize, but is that something coming soon or still a ways off?
Rectangle 23 Copy 31Shapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@eric3000 Love to hear all of this, Eric! Thanks so much.
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
Lyle McKeany co-founder & growth guy
Congrats on the launch, @mg! It's been fun to play with the beta build and see the progression.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on bias in news and how curation within Circa fits into that broader picture. I know this is a bit of a vague question, but I would love to hear your interpretation of it.
Rectangle 23 Copy 31Shapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@lylemckeany It's a great question, Lyle and something we take very seriously.

We consider objectivity to be something very critical to Circa's mission – we want people to be informed, not influenced. As such it's core to everything we do. Because we write 100% of the news that is shown in Circa we know that we are personally responsible for whatever comes across.

Our editors work in a completely collaborative environment – no one person "owns" a story, and every story is peer reviewed. Over time, as stories are updated, any potential bias gets washed out because of this kind of collaboration. It's kind of an incredible process. While there is certainly the likelihood that some people have "perceived bias" around something they don't like, we do our absolute damnedest to remain objective on the news we produce.
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
Jorik Marketing head @meetsoda & @digined. S…
Aarghh. Updated and crashes when opening (iOS 7.0.4.) :(. Can't wait to see it.
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@thisisjorik Jorik, that's definitely not something that should be happening. Shoot us an email to support@cir.ca and we'll have a look!
Rectangle 23 Copy 31Shapeshare
Mario Sundar Startup advisor, early LinkedIn
Nice work, Circa. Dig the new design, onboarding of new users, and actually smart notifications that don't bug you incessantly. Such a treat!
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@mariosundar Thanks Mario! We take our notifications so very seriously and want it to be one of the apps people actually leave them on!
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
Ross Rojek CTO, GoLocalApps
I haven't used Circa before, but downloading today. While I'm not a news junkie, I do like to get updates on either ongoing stories (Ferguson) or breaking news. However I also do like the randomness of odd stories or things I normally wouldn't check (Huffington Post main page or Flipboard). Problem with aggregators like Flipboard is you get the same news several times from different sources.

What are your thoughts on syndication of your content?
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@SacBookReviewer Ross, we solve 100% of the problem you're referring to in your first paragraph. You really set us up for a knock out of the park on that one ;)

Regarding your second statement...just curious what kind of syndication you're referring to? Someone else using Circa's content elsewhere? Just want to be clear here...
Rectangle 23 Copy 31Shapeshare
Ross Rojek CTO, GoLocalApps
@mg Yes that was the question - are you going to be doing syndication (not that we're interested, just curious).

Loaded it and now its stuck on one of the onboarding screens for a couple of minutes with the "loading" marker at the top of the screen. Screen won't respond to any input. Going to shut it down and relaunch.
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
Shaan Puri ceo, Monkey Inferno
super high quality product. you can see the sweat that went into this. good job @mg
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@ShaanVP Thanks! But that's kind of gross. I was pretty sure we cleaned up all the sweat before we shipped it. Shouldn't have passed QA...
Rectangle 23 Copy 31Shapeshare
Brenden Mulligan Founder, LaunchKit & Cluster
Congrats @mg! Looks amazing!
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@mulligan Woo hoo! Thanks man.
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
Alexander Horré Product, Mynewsdesk
@mg I got to say, big congrats on this!

Question: Am I the only person that immediately finds the main news feed hard to scan/read due to the image transparency and color palette design?

Rectangle 23 Copy 32Shapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@alexhorre You're not the only one, but it's a limited set. There are so many things to balance here – readability of text, visual cue of the image, scanability of headlines (and therefore info density) and a few other elements. We went through quite a few iterations before landing on this one. And whereas we're big fans of the new checkmark when you've read a story and would like to preserve that space, we'll be looking into ways to improve this view.
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
Ryan Merket Product
@alexhorre Totally agree with you. It's super hard to skim, but mainly due to the transparency. It's sort of subliminal. If my brain sees content that it can't see/read then it automatically goes into a sort of freak out mode and almost refuses to go on further.
Rectangle 23 Copy 31Shapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@merket I hate freak out brain mode. Rest assured, we're on it and this is by no means the end of designing Circa ;)
Rectangle 23 Copy 32Shapeshare
Eric Metelka Product Manager, PowerReviews
Feature request - in-app browser that uses the iOS system share sheet. Just opened a link in a story and want to add it to Pocket. A couple of clicks to do this currently that could be removed and keep me in-app if the share sheet was added.
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
Armando Osuna Head of Accounts (USA) AppsFlyer
@eric3000 I was just going to post that, I would like this too @mg
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@eric3000 Thanks Eric. We've got it on our list and will get it in there as soon as we can!
Rectangle 23 Copy 31Shapeshare
Danny Espinoza Founder @blushmessenger
Love the update but my eyes aren't digging the lightweight and lighter color titles over the washed out images. Definitely getting fatigued scanning stories. Any way to increase contrast next build?
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare
M
Matt Galligan CEO, Circa
@dannyjespinoza That's definitely something we're working on.
Rectangle 23 Copy 3upvoteShapeshare

Commenting is limited for now but will open to those recommended by the community. Learn more.