Exploring news through words.
Company
Reverb Technologies, formerly known as Wordnik
Role
Product Manager, Reverb smartreader
Scope
Apple App Store, Canada + U.S. markets
―
Have you ever watched a TED talk and thought, “That should be a company!” Years ago, wordsmith Erin McKean delivered a TED talk on her vision around the lexicography and meaning of words. This particular talk struck a chord with an investor in the audience, who encouraged her to build a company around her idea. The company is called Wordnik, which I joined in time to launch Reverb, a platform to help readers discover meaningful stories, based on tools crafted to parse terms at every level— from the single word on up.
a platform to help readers discover meaningful stories using tools crafted to parse terms at every level— from the single word on up.
As Product Manager, I set vision, roadmap, launched beta, and redesigned U.S. debut for Reverb's namesake app, a smartreader that taps Wordnik's word graph for personalized news recommendations.
Given the ability to extract key concepts from online content, the ability to model concepts by concept and topic, and the option to connect with world news and social news, deliver a news discovery experience that delights users and helps them learn a bit along the way. Build an application that enables readers to discover news that matters from the world, their social networks, or their own interests with minimal setup. Enable serendipitous discovery.
Opportunity to filter story feeds
Given the ability to extract key concepts from online content, the ability to model concepts by concept and topic, and the option to connect with world news and social news, there was opportunity deliver a news discovery experience that delights users and helps them learn a bit along the way.
Challenge
Build an application that enables readers to discover news that matters from the world, their social networks, or their own interests with minimal setup. Enable serendipitous discovery.
Reader Solutions:
1. Use Words to Navigate
Given the company's roots as wordniks, it’s not surprising that the Reverb app opens with a gorgeous Word Wall interface. We believe that words make for exquisite navigation. The opening Word Wall view gives a descriptive overview of the news landscape and makes it easier to dive deeper with a single tap.
2. Modes for different moods
Sort and prioritize articles into three separate content streams that help you effortlessly discover more of what you want to read and less of what you don’t. Stream for personalized interests and stories. Explore a stream that collects articles shared through social network connections, and a stream that keeps you on top of breaking news from respected news sources from around the world. Secondary options to chart a specific path include the ability to retrace your steps or the ability to name your course.
3. Get to the root of the idea
Who collects the most interesting words? Whose collection descriptively demonstrates a growing understanding of their interests? We held a collection competition in-house that led to some important insights that influenced our redesign.
Reader Outcomes
Engagement with suggested reads:
2 orders of magnitude higher than competitors
perhaps because Reverb is based on lexical relevance, rather than demographics.
Extended sessions:
readers spend 5-8 times longer in the app
than competitors, hopefully discovering relevant and absorbing recommendations.
Reception
“This super-smart news reader is built on the world’s largest dictionary”
“Wordnik and Reverb for Publishers are still operating. But the reader app feels like the product Reverb has been building up to all along. It gives consumers more direct access to the power of the Word Graph by analyzing stories across the Web and distilling them into concepts relevant to the user’s interests.”
“Reverb’s recommendations — both through our app and on the web — really resonate with readers, and are very valuable to publishers! It’s very exciting to build something that both delights consumers and makes money for publishers.”
“Reverb’s namesake product is a news discovery mobile application that recommends stories based on contextual clues in the words of the article.”