Dear reader, let's talk about NewsBytes today
For a media company, you and I both know that we are excruciatingly introvert. It is always about others - what Apple is doing wrong, how much funds did OYO raise, who constitutes intellectual mafia, and so on and so forth. But not today. Today, we will talk about us - what have we been doing right (or wrong, depends on your prism), how much funds did we raise, and how we are not the quintessential intellectuals of media. Let's begin, shall we?
Old wine in a new bottle: New design, same concept
Like every good story, this one also begins with Steve Jobs. As he said, "Design is not what it looks like, but how it works." After much deliberation, supposed intelligence, arguments and a few night-outs, we have changed the whole design of our website. It is cleaner, loads much faster, is more utilitarian, but the core fight (principle?) remains the same - infobesity is what we are killing. Articles/Timelines are written in the form of cards, with just the right information - no more, no less.
And, a little bit about the technology behind it
In the interest of a few geeks, here's our full disclosure about the technology used: 1) An inhouse developed AI engine for Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Generation (NLG), on top of Tensorflow and Stanford CoreNLP 2) Battle tested LAMP and Django platform on AWS IAAS, behind powerful CDN of Akamai 3) An array of other analytics, caching and queueing platforms
Oh yeah, we also raised funds, by the way
And, while we are at it, NewsBytes raised Pre-Series A funding last month. We have raised $1 million from MM Inno GmbH (Germany), a investment company of Mueller Medien, Powerhouse Ventures (USA), Mumbai Angels among others. Money is what money does, and in this case, it would fuel innovation.
The new logo and the associated thinking
We have also changed the logo, for no apparent reason. But, it has come out right. I won't pretend and tell you that we thought a lot about the logo, that it represents us in design and spirit, that we did a lot of iterations and that it stuck us in the moment of genius. None of that happened, except the iterations. But, go on, be the 'log' and give us your feedback - 'Log(o) ka kaam hai kehna!'
You can give your opinion here
Finally, where do we go from here?
And, like every good story, this one ends with the totem - the totem doesn't stop here, won't stop here. We will keep trying to break more stories, write hard-hitting content (sometimes to please you, sometimes to please ourselves, but never to please any political party), we won't let Right or Left sway us, logic would define us now and forever. There are some other interesting features on the website: You can follow a topic, you can ask questions, you can share the news. We also have an app. Now, over to you, dear reader.
