This week we present Feedpresso – a smart AI-based news reader for Technology Executives that want to get better informed by spending less time doing that. It uses a special machine learning technology to bring objective and relevant news that actually matter to the user. In this interview Tadas Subonis, the founder of Feedpresso, reveals Feedpresso’s vision and explains why it is a paramount news reader in the market today.

1. What is Feedpresso all about?

   Feedpresso is a smart news app that helps business people cut through the noise and get straight to the news they need. In an age where fake news proliferates and most news comes to us through our peers, Feedpresso helps our users to discover and build a strong stream of high quality content that is missing from their current news feed and it does so in the shortest time possible. 

2. How does it work?

   Feedpresso is a cross-platform application that shows users real news and that learns from their preferences with a focus on business news. Our machine learning technology analyzes a person’s reading history and therefore the more users use Feedpresso the smarter the algorithm becomes and more able it is to show users important news that fits their needs.

3. How is Feedpresso different from its competitors? 

   First of all, it is a highly customizable tool – you can add any content source in the system. Feedpresso offers to combine all of the main, trusted sources with your local sources like magazines, newspapers, and little blogs. For example, your Feedpresso could be a mixture of big UK publishers, Lithuanian news sites and blogs about cooking and typography. Not a combination you can accomplish with most readers- certainly not in an intuitive way.
   

   Secondly, it works in languages besides English. We see it as a high advantage since most global products are mainly in English whereas only roughly half of Europeans speak the language. This market is hugely under-served at the moment. 

   

   Finally, our personalization algorithm doesn’t rely on “popularity” or traction of a story to determine what’s interesting – it’s all done on a per-user basis. All other solutions do some kind of “that’s trending, so it must be interesting” approach. The problem is inherent in the approach that it creates feedback loops. Things that are “popular” become more popular, while not so popular stories don’t get any traction because something else is taking up all the attention. It’s like a fire sucking the oxygen out of the room.
   

   I don’t know who just decided that we should pay so much attention to what other people are reading, but that has been increasingly the dynamic with most newsreaders and on social media. The question I have is this: is that actually helping people to read things that matter to them? I’m not sure it is.

4. What is Feedpresso’s vision?

   Feedpresso’s vision is to become the Netflix of news, hoping that one day we’ll be a platform that hosts a variety of great news sources that users have to pay a monthly premium to get access to.

Thank you, Tadas, for the answers!