The Daily Beast and Instrument Partner to Launch "Read This. Skip That."-Inspired iOS News App

NEW YORK & PORTLAND, Ore., July 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- News and culture website The Daily Beast partners with independent digital creative agency Instrument for the launch of The Beast's entirely new iOS app. Now available in the App Store on iTunes, the app is built for The Daily Beast's mobile readers, now the majority of its 17M+ monthly audience. 

The all-new iOS app brings The Daily Beast's "Read This. Skip That." mantra to life with an incredibly simple interface that serves up every story with just two options—read or skip. Like an email inbox—or even Tinder for news—this addictive interface allows users to quickly get the stories they want and swipe away the rest. There's no navigation, no categories, no nonsense, just a simple, beautiful feed that helps readers get the journalism they want and get on with their day. "User-centered product innovation is at the heart of who we are as a company," says Mike Dyer, Managing Director and Chief Digital Officer of The Daily Beast. "Building a 'Read This. Skip That.'-inspired iOS app our readers will love required the seamless blend of great front-end design and deep technological innovation. That's exactly why we partnered with Instrument."

In addition to radical simplicity, Instrument focused its efforts on the app's learning capabilities. While other news apps try to optimize their feeds for the "average" user, Instrument built the exact opposite approach, focusing on each individual. As a result, as users read and skip, the app's in-house "Nudge Engine" learns which behaviors, authors and topics each user likes or dislikes and gives them a nudge toward certain content…in The Daily Beast's irreverent, intelligent tone, of course. For example, if you read only political news, a Nudge might say "All Politics and no Entertainment makes Jack a dull boy. So give this story by Kevin Fallon a read." Other nudges include inviting users to follow breaking stories and The Daily Beast authors on Twitter ("Josh Rogin is pretty awesome with a 140 character limit, too."). The Nudge is a simple way to help readers by not wasting their time with "more more more."

The Daily Beast app resolves with a stat dashboard that shows users how and what news they're reading and skipping. They can see what categories they read the most as well as how they rank among The Daily Beast readers worldwide. It's a way for readers to know what they've read over time, to see patterns, which can be more valuable than just flipping through a paper or clicking and closing tabs on a browser.

Instrument Partner and Creative Director JD Hooge: "The Daily Beast and Instrument was a solid partnership from the start. Their team had the courage to let us "make the complex simple" which we strive to do on every project. Because of their trust and vision, we delivered an app that stands apart and is actually fun to use."

Download The Daily Beast app in the Apple App Store now.

As of press time, Apple has chosen to feature the app in their "Best New Apps" section—a first for Instrument and The Daily Beast. The iPad version of the app will be released in August.

About The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast delivers award-winning original reporting and sharp opinion from big personalities in the arenas of politics, pop-culture, world news and more. Fiercely independent and infused with irreverent intelligence, The Daily Beast now reaches more than 17 million readers per month. The Daily Beast is based in New York and is an operating business of IAC (NASDAQ: IACI).

About Instrument
Instrument is an independent digital creative agency in Portland, Oregon. We are a multidisciplinary team of strategists, designers, producers, storytellers, animators, creative coders and filmmakers. We combine design thinking and technical craft to make experiences for web, mobile and the physical world. For more information visit weareinstrument.com.

Press Contacts:
The Daily Beast / IAC Corporate Communications
Isabelle Weisman
[email protected]
(212) 314-7361

Instrument
Cecilia Doan
[email protected]
(503) 928-3188 / @ccdoan

SOURCE The Daily Beast

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