Yahoo has announced a number of new digital properties during its CES 2014 keynote, ones aimed to simplify and beautify content consumption.
The first announcement was called Yahoo News Digest, an app that curates news from various sources and sends them to users in twice-daily round-ups, or "digests." If it reminds you of Summly, that's because News Digest is Summly reborn.
The idea, CEO Marissa Mayer said, is to eliminate "tl:dr," or "too long; don't read."
On a larger level, it fits into what Mayer spent much of the keynote discussing; Yahoo's desire to make daily habits like reading the news inspiring and entertaining.
News bytes
With News Digest, users get a splashy picture followed by summaries of stories culled from around the Web. Click on a story and users see a brief summary, followed by a unique set of "atoms" pertinent to the piece.
A story about a conflict in the Middle East may include a map of where the event took place, for example, whereas a story about finance may show a graph.
Stories are categorized by subjects like World and Politics, and when a user is done with a digest, they run into a "Done" message to provide a "moment of completion," as Nick D'Aloisio. D'Aloisio founded Summly, which was sold to Yahoo in March.
Users can keep track of when their next digest is due thanks to a countdown ticker.
The app is available in the Apple App Store now.
Digital Magazines
Yahoo also launched two Digital Magazines - one literally launched during the course of the keynote.
Yahoo! Food and Yahoo! Tech are two new digital properties centered on ... can you guess. Yahoo! Tech is headed by David Pogue, known for his Time and New York Times work.
Pogue made an energetic pitch on the keynote stage, saying the new property will speak "human" to its readers.
