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Yahoo Buys UK Teen's Smartphone News App

Posted by samzenpus on from the sounds-familiar dept.

judgecorp writes "Seventeen year old Nick D'Aloisio has sold his smartphone app Summly to Yahoo for an undisclosed sum. The app — created when he was 15 — aggregates news stories by topic and condenses them for time-strapped readers. D'Aloisio and his team will go to work at Yahoo when the deal closes. From the article: 'Summly was founded by 17-year old Nick D’Aloisio when he was just 15 from his home in London. The service works by sorting news stories by topic and condensing them into bite-sized chunks for time-conscious readers. The Summly application will be closed down and integrated with Yahoo’s existing range of mobile applications. D’Aloisio and the Summly team will be joining Yahoo as part of the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2013.'"

11 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Summary Fail by OverlordQ · · Score: 4, Informative

    Way to restate the same thing about 5 times to make it looks like there's any real content.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    1. Re:Summary Fail by Kenja · · Score: 5, Informative

      And nowhere does it explain how Yahoo has any money... very suspicious.

      --

      "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    2. Re:Summary Fail by nanoflower · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's not necessarily for crack-addled monkeys alone. If the algorithm does a good job then it allows someone to quickly scan through the summaries and decide what is worth reading and what isn't. That's what we all want out of the Slashdot summaries but often don't get.

    3. Re:Summary Fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      It also doesn't say how much Yahoo paid. They probably offered the teenager some Funyons and an official Marissa Mayer signed poster.

    4. Re:Summary Fail by JeanCroix · · Score: 3, Funny

      I propose we define the Crack-Addled Monkey ("CAM") as a unit of measure for attention spans. Those of us older than 40 could probably measure in the hundreds or thousands of CAMs, even reading entire books (on paper, no less) in a single sitting. Whereas those who need their bite-sized news stories further condensed into sub-tweet sized nuggets would measure in the milliCAM range.

    5. Re:Summary Fail by Hal_Porter · · Score: 4, Funny

      Sounds like you have Attention Surplus Disorder. The cure is irregular sleeping hours and meal times.

      Eat more junk food (try to get at least 50% of your calories from Red Bull, Mountain Dew and Cheetos)

      Spend more time on the Internet. Try to avoid slashdot stories unless they the summary is by samzenpus. Don't read the articles, just the summaries. Try to replace your time spent reading books on reddit.

      If you read this far you have a serious and possibly fatal case.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  2. Cue a dozen patent trolls by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Starting law suits over this.
    Cue half a dozen news publishers sueing over aggregating their stories.

    Sigh.

  3. Summly Fail by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Funny

    Way to restate the same thing about 5 times to make it looks like there's any real content.

    That's obviously because you're not reading it with Summly, which would shorten in into just three lines.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  4. They wanted the name? by Culture20 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Summly application will be closed down

    So they just wanted the name and the programmer, but not the app?

  5. Um, so... by TheSkepticalOptimist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    He reinvented Slashdot? I don't know because I didn't RTFA which is apparently what this app is all about.

    --
    I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
    1. Re:Um, so... by Garridan · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, he reinvented Slashdot editors. There seems to be room for improvement...