Newsstand has always been one of those Google products that I never paid much attention to. At times I thought it may be handy to use, but continued to find my news elsewhere. Now Google are applying their machine learning to Newsstand, just as they are to so many of their other products alongside a complete redesign of the app and web interface.
Newsstand now uses Google’s machine learning to search through Newsstand’s catalogue and find not just relevant but also timely stories for the user based on their interests. There is also recommendations you can expand upon and if a recommendation is not of interest to you you can provide feedback in the form of for example “Hide stories from the Australian” or thumbs down it to “Recommend fewer stories like this”. As with Google’s other machine learning products, it seems to be one that will improve the more you use it.
Scrolling through your feed you can see not just the stories but multimedia content that can autoplay videos, contain podcast controls and display high resolution images. The new update, Newsstand 4.0, is rolling out over the next couple of days to Android, iOS and also the web in their new web app which looks amazing and is easy to navigate. It’s navigation is very similar to the web apps for Google Play Music and the Play Store.
Head on over and check out the new web app and/or the Android app and maybe Newsstand will become your next go-to news service.
I have a scroll through there every once in a while but I still use Feedly for my news feeds. I do quite like Newsstand but I also like a simple view.
I use newsstand for magazines and papers I pay for and Feedly for more casual reading.