Inside Breaking News

A blog from the team behind BreakingNews.com and @breakingnews. For more, follow @breaking, learn about us and contact us here.

[breakingblog]

Breaking News Sends You Straight To The Source on Facebook’s Notify

We’re excited to debut as one of Facebook’s launch partners for Notify, a new app that “delivers relevant and timely notifications that matter to you from the sources you love.”

But there’s one thing that’s very different about Breaking News (a NBC News startup): when you open a notification from Breaking News in Notify, you’ll be sent directly to the news organization that originally broke the story.

That’s because we boil down breaking stories from thousands of sources around the globe. The end result is faster, less frequent alerts that take you straight to the original source.

Faster is better

We’re offering three alert “stations” in Notify to start: major news, local news and the 2016 U.S. elections.

The elections are just one of thousands of stories and topics you can follow in the Breaking News app. But Notify users will likely notice our speed above everything else: Breaking News is the fastest source of breaking news alerts, and Notify gives us a larger stage on the most valuable real estate of all — phone and tablet lock screens — to showcase our strengths.

Saving time

We’re focused on “time saved” instead of “time spent.” By delivering relevant content straight to users and linking them directly to the source — and avoiding all those duplicate alerts — Breaking News is a valuable utility that saves users time.

By extension, the more people Breaking News can reach with notifications, the more time we can save. Notify shares this philosophy, and it’s paid dividends for us so far, connecting more people with the Breaking News brand, app and site over the long term.

Always learning

Breaking News is built for push. From followed stories to proximity alerts, the Breaking News app offers highly-personalized alerts for people around the world. But we’re always hungry to learn more.

Notify lets us spin up experimental channels quickly and measure the results. For example, we took a different approach to offering local breaking news alerts in Notify, and we’re curious to see what happens. These learnings will help us improve our own core products as well as better understand the growing opportunity behind distributing our push notifications to new experiences and screens.

More traffic for our partners

If you’re one of the 400+ news partners that tips Breaking News, we’ve added one more reason why you should keep those tips coming. In addition to traffic from BreakingNews.com, the app and social accounts, we’ll be giving you a direct boost from Notify whenever we publish your story.

You can download the Notify app here, and please let us know your thoughts on the Breaking News stations. (Post by @corybe).

[breakingblog]

Get Breaking News on Slack and email

Breaking News is bringing our lightning-fast alerts to two new messaging platforms, one that's up-and-coming and the other an old mainstay.

If your company uses Slack, the popular messaging app, you can now pipe our "major story" alerts into any #channel you choose. We're big fans of Slack at Breaking News, and we're one of the dozen or so "Add to Slack" launch partners debuting today.

We've heard from several companies that have wired our tweets and RSS feed into Slack, but our native Slack integration operates even faster: our alerts appear in Slack almost instantly after we publish them. You'll receive an average of one or two a day.

To connect Breaking News with Slack, head over to our apps page and look for the “Add to Slack” button.  You'll be impressing your co-workers in no time.

If you're not on Slack, we're also launching our major story alerts on email. We've been testing them for several weeks -- giving them hypersonic properties -- and we think you'll be surprised at the speed they're delivered. In fact, we can confidently call them the fastest email alerts in news.

It's very simple to sign up: just head over to BreakingNews.com, type in your email address and make sure to opt into the confirmation email.  

Both our Slack and email alerts link the original source directly (when available). That means faster, more comprehensive coverage for our users and more instant reach and referrals for our tipping partners.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions.

[breakingblog]

The NBC-owned app is adding alerts for emerging stories.

[breakingblog]

We’re happy to share that Breaking News is a finalist for an Online Journalism Award in technical innovation.  It’s for proximity alerts, a first-of-its-kind feature that notifies you when a big story breaks near your location, wherever you go.

“This year, judges were swayed less by bells and whistles that didn’t add to the content, and instead zeroed in on high-quality journalism that was able to take flight on digital platforms,” said Joshua Hatch, ONA Board member and Online Journalism Awards Committee Chair. Awards will be handed out in late September.

[breakingblog]

Know faster with emerging story alerts

We believe in news alerts that are faster, smarter and more relevant to your life and work.  Today, we're launching a new kind of alert for those of you who enjoy being the first to know.

Every day we discover stories that are just beginning to gain traction.  This is often a local story that starts small, but our editors believe -- through eyewitness reports and our own experience -- that it has the potential to become a big story.  Or at the very least, attract a lot of media attention.

We call these "emerging stories." Beginning today when you update your Breaking News app (iOS and Android), you can opt-in to receiving emerging story alerts at a frequency of 1-3 a day.  If it's a story you're interested in following, you can slide the notification in your iOS device and sign up for subsequent alerts as the story develops:

Emerging stories shouldn’t be confused with trending topics or velocity alerts. At this early stage of a story, they're not trending anywhere. They're not big enough to trigger a big story alert -- some ultimately do -- but we know there's an audience who will want the early heads-up (like the many journalists who use the Breaking News app.) 

Earlier today we published an emerging alert at 11:31 a.m. ET (below) about a shooting in Chattanooga.  By itself, this is a rather local story, but our editors were hearing unconfirmed chatter that the shooting may have been connected to a military facility.  

As we know now, it turned out to be a major story, and our emerging alert preceded other national news coverage -- both online and on TV -- by as much as 30 minutes.

Emerging alerts are the fourth type of notification available in the Breaking News app.  We already offer alerts for big stories, topics you're following and stories that break near your location (which we call proximity alerts).  Last month alone, we sent just short of 50 million push notifications to Breaking News users -- another new record as we continue to grow.

We hope you like our latest addition, and please let us know if you have any questions.

- @corybe

[breakingblog]

News alerts for your computer, too

Our lightning-fast push notifications are no longer just for phones and tablets. If you have a Mac, you can now get our big story alerts on your computer, too.

Just visit BreakingNews.com in Safari and you’ll see a prompt to opt-in to the alerts.  Then you’re all set.  You don’t have to be in Safari to receive them; they’ll pop up on your desktop (left), and you can see any you may have missed in your notification center (right):

We average about 2 alerts/day -- just the big stories linking the original sources.  Since our alerts are so fast, you’ll be the first to know in your office when news breaks. As always, please let us know if you have any questions.

[breakingblog]

We just released a big update to the Breaking News Android app with one of our favorite features: instant-play live video.

When a live event is underway, just tap and watch.  No ads.  It just plays instantly.  After all, the fastest way to get the news is to watch it happen live, and you shouldn’t have to sit through a 30-second commercial to get there.

We’re sourcing these streams from NBC News, and over the past few months we’ve watched live video of presidential announcements, rocket launches, courtroom verdicts, manhunts and even a record-setting Yosemite climb. We’re averaging about a half-dozen streams a day. While you watch, you can scroll through real-time updates underneath the video, or you can tilt your device to watch it full screen.  If there’s more than one live stream at a time, tap between them to change the channel. One of the best features is notifications.  If you’re following a topic -- say, SpaceX -- and you’ve turned on alerts, you’ll get notified whenever there’s a live stream about it.  In the case of SpaceX, you’ll get pinged right before a launch, so you can watch it happen live. No more tuning into a live stream when it’s almost over. We’re also beginning to give our Breaking News users a heads-up of upcoming live events by posting editor’s notes throughout the day.   You can download our Android app here, and the Breaking News iOS app also supports live video.  As always, let us know if you have any questions, concerns or ideas.

- @corybe

[breakingblog]

We just noticed we surpassed a big milestone and set a new record. We now offer more than 50,000 topics and stories you can follow in the Breaking News app.   We made a topic cloud showing some of the most popular (above), from cybersecurity to the 2015 Women’s World Cup.  Just tap the follow button next to a topic in the app, and you can choose to receive a notification the instant there’s breaking news about it.  Or tap the “following” tab and search for more.  

We also noticed that Breaking News sent nearly 50 million notifications to our iOS and Android users last month -- another new record.   Our thanks for all of your support, and please don’t hesitate to ping us with any concerns or questions. (@corybe)

[breakingblog]

In an industry that works hard to optimize Facebook referrals, it might seem a little crazy for us to send referrals to everyone else -- especially now that we surpassed 2 million likes on the Breaking News Facebook page. Nearly all of our Facebook posts link directly to the original stories on news organizations’ sites, and those clicks are beginning to add up.  In fact, we've sent 421,000 referrals to news stories we've posted on Facebook in the last 30 days alone.  Over the same period, those stories had a cumulative reach of over 19 million.

Some of the most popular referral-drivers include an ABC story about the NC shark attack, a BBC story on the new royal baby, an AP story on Manny Pacquiao's injury and Vanity Fair's cover story on Caitlyn Jenner.

This is just one more reason to be a Breaking News publishing partner.  As we grow across social and mobile platforms, so does the traffic to news organizations who tip us first to original breaking stories. (Post by @corybe)

[breakingblog]

Welcome 3 to the Breaking News team

You may have noticed some new names in the “editors on duty” bar at the top of the app.  We’re excited to announce three new additions to our growing editorial team in New York and Seattle: Rebecca Bratek (@rebeccabratek) joins us after recently graduating from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, where she focused on urban reporting and was on the school's social media team. In 2014 she interned with the LA Times in Washington, where she was a general assignment reporter covering Capitol Hill, the White House and federal agencies. She enjoys the “torture” of watching Buffalo sports teams and likes to go to Mets games -- for the food. 

Jimmy Lovaas (@jimmylovaas) is joining us full-time after freelancing for Breaking News, Reuters and other various outlets in the Seattle area. Jimmy is bringing us his eclectic skill set: Before going to journalism school, he had been a flight attendant, bouncer and photographer. 

Shelley Ng (@shelleyng08) joined our team from the New York Daily News, where she worked as a homepage editor. Prior to that she helped build the web presence at PIX11 in New York, where she wrote hard news, managed social media and coordinated Emmy-nominated web-extra content. She’s a passionate soccer fan with deep interest in club teams from Argentina, England, Italy and Spain. On most weekends, you can find her at Yankee Stadium watching New York City FC.  

[breakingblog]

See earthquakes near you (even on your Apple Watch)

When the ground shakes, you want to know what happened. The Breaking News app has always been lightning-fast to report significant earthquakes, and now we're expanding our coverage to surface smaller shakers to people who are physically near the epicenter.

Several hundred magnitude 2.5+ earthquakes occur weekly around the globe (the BreakingNews.com map above shows the last 7 days). Drawing from USGS in real time, we automatically pinpoint earthquake updates to Breaking News users who are nearby, displaying the magnitude and epicenter.

For example, if you live in the Oklahoma City area, you can now see the latest quakes near you in the Breaking News app. Just tap "nearby" to see breaking stories near you, either in a stream or on a map. If you have an Apple Watch, you'll see nearby earthquakes in our new Watch app, too.

For larger quakes, we send a notification -- called a proximity alert -- to everyone in the impacted area. This is especially useful if you’re traveling and unfamiliar with the local news sources or language.

USGS runs a few minutes behind the quake itself, and that's why the Breaking News team monitors social media to instantly identify significant quakes in populated areas. For example, when a M 4.0 quake shook the San Francisco Bay Area last month, we published news of the quake several minutes before USGS posted the data.

For those earthquake geeks out there, you can follow "earthquakes" in the Breaking News app to see all of the latest M 2.5+ quakes across the globe (and you can choose to get alerts for the larger ones).  On BreakingNews.com, you can map the latest quakes by visiting the earthquakes topic page and clicking the map icon. Also: stay tuned for a refresh of our Apple Watch app.

- @corybe

[breakingblog]

5 reasons why you should join the Breaking News product team

(We’re looking for an iOS developer and Android developer to join our growing mobile team, and Breaking News’ John Jacecko explains in this blog post why working with us -- a startup owned by a big media company -- is a little different than the standard tech company.)

(Our downtown Seattle office with a sweeping view of Puget Sound.)

When someone looking for a new gig reads a job description, they’re typically presented with the “what” of the position: what are the company basics, what does the job entail, what skills are important, etc. As a programmer working on Breaking News iOS app for three years, I’d like to offer some of the “why” I think being a Breaking News developer is a great thing:

We have the freedom to implement new features without being micromanaged.  Show that you can do the work, and you’ll be able to grab a chunk of the project and own it. Of course, we programmers will discuss and debate significant project changes, but no one will be peeking over your shoulder and telling you where to put your braces.

The team is always coming up with new ideas (btw, anyone can contribute to the pool of new ideas), so there’s no shortage of things to work on.

We do get hot and heavy on occasion, but the norm is a friendly, low-stress environment populated with smart, funny people. Think good work-life balance.

Breaking News is wired for working remotely. With distributed git repos, Slack, Skype and VPN, you can get your work done wherever you happen to be.

A loose and fast startup environment, but with the perks, benefits and stability of working for a big company. We get all the basics like insurance and 401(k) matching, but there are also things like megabundle cable/ISP packages for almost nothing per month, free tickets each year to Universal Studios, discounted company stock purchase plan, and more. The company benefits website is packed with perks to investigate.

Hopefully these five items help paint a clearer picture of what it would be like to land a developer spot at Breaking News.

- John Jacecko (To apply, visit the NBCUniversal careers page for the open Android developer and iOS developer roles.  We’d make that site better, too, if we could.)

[breakingblog]

Breaking News for Apple Watch is designed to save you time

You'll have to wait until April 24th (or later) to get your hands on the Watch, but Breaking News is ready a few days early.  We just released an update to our iOS app with a Watch experience, and we're excited to show it you.

Out of the gate, everything we publish already looks great on your wrist.  Our short, straightforward updates are easy to read with just a glance.  As our users have come to expect, Breaking News’ coverage is lightning-fast, drawing from thousands of sources around the world.

Just what matters and nothing more

If your Watch is telling you, it better be important.  As always, our notifications are completely customizable.  We send fewer, faster alerts for major stories, and you can also choose to be notified whenever there's a significant update with any topic or story you're following.  You can also get an alert whenever a big story breaks near your location -- a "proximity alert" -- wherever you go around the world.

If you choose to tap into the Breaking News Watch app, we show you just five updates that matter.  They're a mix of the most recent important stories, updates in the topics you're following and any news that's breaking nearby.  Swipe through them in seconds and you're up to date.  As we've written before, our goal isn’t “time spent” but time saved.

Discover what's breaking near you

From proximity alerts to nearby news, location makes the Breaking News Watch app come alive.  Every month, we publish approximately 10,000 local stories that only appear to people who are physically nearby.  We also send over 100 proximity alerts a month, notifying Breaking News users around the world of earthquakes, evacuations, severe storms, blackouts, health warnings, escaped convicts, major police actions and other urgent stories happening near their location.

(Earlier this week, we sent a proximity alert to people in Goldsboro, NC after a shooting on the Wayne County Community College campus.)

The faster you find out what’s happening, the more likely you can avoid disruption, minimize anxiety and alert other people who need to know.

Just tap to tip

The world is a big place, and we often don't know what's breaking near you.  So we created an experimental new feature in the Watch.

Let's say you hear a big explosion, and you check Breaking News on your Watch.  You scroll through the five stories, but there's no news about it.  That's when you'll see a big button that says, "See news near you?  Tap to alert us."

With a simple tap – and nothing more -- you tip our editors to look for news near your location (it's completely anonymous even to us).  We'll use our search tools to see if any news organizations, agencies or eyewitnesses are reporting any breaking news nearby.  The more tips we receive in any given area, the more we'll search.

When we find a story, we'll publish it to people who are nearby, appearing on your Watch.  If it's a big story, we'll send out a proximity alert, triggering a notification.  All from just a simple tap. (See more about the feature in a story from The Verge).

If you get the new Watch, please tell us what you think of the Breaking News experience.  We'll be watching your feedback and making quick improvements.  It's a bold new world on your wrist, and we can't wait for you to try it.

(Note: We initially confused Goldsboro with Greensburg, NC. The map has been fixed.)

[breakingblog]

Surfacing live video from social apps

At first it was Tweets, Instagram photos and YouTube clips. Now live streams are also appearing from the scene of breaking stories, thanks to the increasing popularity of live video apps like Periscope, Meerkat and Stringwire.

At Breaking News, our speciality is surfacing and vetting breaking stories fast, regardless of format. While we already stream live video from Stringwire and NBC News, we've started surfacing breaking news streams from Periscope and Meerkat.

It started with the New York building collapse and the Oklahoma tornadoes last week, and today we linked two live streams -- one from Meerkat and the other from Periscope -- outside the shooting scene at a medical office in Fresno, California.

 A big challenge is discovering these streams the moment they begin, and you can help us.  If you see a live stream of a breaking story, retweet it with the #breaking hashtag and it will ping our editorial team in our publishing tool. This also works for our whitelisted news partners if one of your reporters is streaming from the scene.

Another challenge, as we learned today, is the unpredictable nature of live video.  In one stream from the Fresno shooting, we could overhear a scanner as it detailed the police's movements through the building, looking for the suspect and extracting people hiding inside. Because of the risk -- albeit very small -- we removed the link to the stream.

This is just the beginning: we're exploring several more ways to identify, monitor and publish live breaking news video in real time. If you have any ideas for us -- like what we should do with the Breaking News Periscope and Meerkat accounts (with lots of followers) -- please drop us a note.

-Cory (@corybe)

[breakingblog]

Breaking News coming to Apple Watch

Apple Watch will launch on April 24th. Watch for us on your wrist.

[breakingblog]

Covering the blizzard around you

As a large storm envelops the Northeast, we're taking a novel approach to covering a big story that spans a wide geographic area.  In a first for a news organization, we're targeting breaking coverage by location in the Breaking News app.  

Nearby feed: Tap the "nearby" tab in the app and you'll see stories and photos near your location.  We're piping a higher volume of coverage into nearby, and many of these localized updates do not appear in the main feed. Tap the range-finder icon to adjust the radius from 1 mile up to 100 miles to adjust for your particular geography.

Proximity alerts: We're also sending a higher volume of "proximity alerts" -- push notifications targeted to people in cities and states -- when there's a major storm update that applies to their geography.  For example, a big update in Boston will be sent as a notification to people in the Boston area.

The end result is breaking news coverage that's tailored for your location, appearing in real time.  Just get the Breaking News app and ensure you've opted in to sharing your location and push notifications.

For our iOS users, you'll also notice a much higher volume of live raw video -- with no ads -- in the app.  We're streaming press conferences, live snow cams and the Weather Channel's radar loop. We'll also be watching our partner Stringwire for live eyewitness streams. Stay safe everyone.

- Cory (@corybe)

(If you don't live in the Northeast and don't care about the storm, you can always just "mute" the story and it will disappear.)

[breakingblog]

Instant live video comes to the Breaking News app

For an app named Breaking News, it's always seemed a little strange that we haven't streamed live video of breaking news.  Sure, we link to streams on other sites, but they're often very cumbersome to play.

A few months ago, we challenged ourselves at Breaking News to invent the quickest and easiest way to watch live video in a news app.

(Breaking News' Stephanie Clary keeps a close watch on the world in our new Seattle headquarters, complete with monitor wall.)

Like many of you, we're an impatient bunch.  When news breaks, you shouldn't have to register or log in to watch live video.  It should play with a single tap, even when switching between streams.  Load super-fast.  Oh, and no pre-roll ads.   That alone is pretty cool. But what if we also tied it to Breaking News' topic alerts?  So if you've set an alert for "space," whenever there's a rocket launch, you'll receive a push notification to watch it live?  And what if we created a split screen, so you can watch live video while scrolling the Breaking News updates below?  Then just tip the device to the side to watch it full-screen? So that's what we made in the new Breaking News iOS app, now available in the latest update (Android coming soon).  It remains free with no registration required.

Drawing from NBC News sources and Stringwire's eyewitness streams, the Breaking News app now offers live raw video of several news events a day from around the globe.  From major stories to press conferences and protests -- just recently we streamed the Paris attacks and march -- you can watch news happen before your eyes, wherever you are.

After all, there's no faster way to find out what's happening than watch it live.

These live streams appear at the top of the home screen when they're available.  When there's more than one, they stack up.  Tap to play any of them, and you can switch between them with a single tap -- almost like changing a channel.  While it's playing, you watch new updates appear underneath it or scroll down for more news. The alerts make live video come to life.  If you've set an alert for "cybersecurity," for example, you'll not only receive significant news alerts about the topic, but occasional live video events, too.  No more tuning into a live stream when it's almost over.  (If you're a brave news junkie, you can alert "live video" if you want to get notified of every live event we stream.)

(A live stream from Stringwire, a mobile app that enables anyone to broadcast live video.  When it's from the scene of a major story, we'll stream it on Breaking News.)

Live video appears on Breaking News intermittently throughout the day, some days more than others.  When we don't have direct access to a stream, we'll link it the old-fashioned way in the news feed.  But we're already working on ways to stream more live video in the weeks and months to come.   We hope you find it as awesome as we do.  As always, please tell us what you think!

- @corybe