TikTok isn’t the only brand-new media app with a Chinese background that’s making waves in the U.S. News Break, a news app founded by China’s media veteran Jeff Zheng, with groups in Beijing, Shanghai, Seattle and Mountain View, has ranked No. 1 among all totally free iPhone news apps on the U.S. App Store several times considering that January 2019, according to third-party information Sensor Tower supplied to TechCrunch.
Positioned as a news aggregator concentrated on local reporting, the platform surged to be the third-most downloaded U.S. iOS app throughout the board in mid-March this year amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
The fledgling news app revealed this week a considerable boost as it onboards Harry Shum as its board chairman. Shum is the former president of Microsoft AI and Research study Group and played a crucial function in establishing the Microsoft Research Asia laboratory, which has trained a raft of China’s leading AI talents, including the creator of self-governing driving unicorn Momenta.
Previous Microsoft executive Harry Shum joins News Break, a regional news aggregator founded in the U.S. by a Chinese media veteran (Image source: News Break)
News Break is staffed with other storied overseas Chinese tech employers. Jeff Zheng, the founding president, headed up Yahoo Labs in Beijing, where he managed algorithm enhancements in search, media, advertising and mobile. In 2011, he left Yahoo to release Yidian Zixun, the Beijing-based start-up seen early on as the main rival of Toutiao, the hit news app that made ByteDance a family name in China prior to Douyin emerged. Together with other algorithm-driven news apps, the duo altered the habits of hundreds of millions in China from consuming human-curated news to machine-recommended material with very little human oversight.
News Break is Zheng’s effort to reproduce Yidian Zixun’s success in foreign markets with his co-founder Ren Xuyang, a previous Baidu executive. Established in Silicon Valley in 2015, News Break now boasts 23 million monthly users with a growing network of more than 10,000 material providers. Sensing unit Tower approximated the app has more than 50 million installs globally throughout iOS and Android devices, amongst which more than 99%are from the U.S.
Screenshots of the News Break app (Source: News Break)
The kind of tailored reading experience originated by Toutiao is now a default function across media apps in the U.S., stated (in Chinese) Vincent Wu, primary running officer of News Break, at an event in Silicon Valley. To stand out from the crowd, the business provides local news and happenings for readers, for Wu observed that America’s traditional media focus overwhelmingly on national affairs and star gossip, “news that’s irrelevant to my daily.”
” Only high-quality, hyper-relevant local news can offer valuable info to readers,” he included.
ByteDance has attempted exporting the Toutiao model through TopBuzz, but the abroad edition never ever attained mainstream success and is supposedly looking for a buyer.
Other huge names associated with News Break variety from Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang who joined as the chief consultant in addition to Wu, HuffPost’s former operations head.
Particle Media, the Delaware-registered operating entity of News Break, has raised over $20 million to date from financiers consisting of IDG Capital, ZhenFund and Ding Lei, the founder of Chinese online media and gaming giant NetEase.
Upgraded on May 28, 2020 with app download data.
TechCrunch.