Yahoo Buys UK Teen's Smartphone News App

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.'"

So.... they plan on killing the app then?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Summly application will be closed down and integrated with Yahoo’s existing range of mobile applications.

Sounds like they're going to take what was probably a nice, small app with streamlined code, and bloat the everloving piss out of it by integrating it into the godawful nightmare that is anything that Yahoo touches. Seriously, who even USES yahoo any more? I honestly have not heard a single person I know utter their name in at least 5 years.

Well, whoever has this app now, you probably want to look for a replacement, because I'd bet money on the 'integrated' version being a horrendously slow, ad-filled behemoth of an app that eats most of your memory.

Re:Summary Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Summly Fail

[K. S. Kyosuke]

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.

Re:Summary Fail

[JeanCroix]

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.

Re:Um, so...

[Garridan]

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

Re:Summary Fail

[Hal_Porter]

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.