All posts by Dianne

Taptu: A New Home for Your Google Reader Feeds

Posted by on March 15, 2013

Hi Taptu fans:

No doubt you’ve read that Google has announced that it will be shutting down Google Reader on 1 July 2013. At Taptu, we wanted to assure you that we will continue to support RSS feeds and if you are looking for a new home for your Google Reader feeds, look no further than Taptu! Once you imported your feeds to Taptu, they will continue to work even after Google Reader shut down their service. Some other Google Reader apps rely on the Google Reader API to work. We don’t.

At Taptu, you can download your Google Reader feeds onto our news reader very easily – up to 100 in one go. Here’s what you do:

In iPhone:
1) Tap on the Add Streams button on the home page to take you to the StreamStore.
2) In the StreamStore, tap on the G Reader button. If you are not already signed into G Reader from Taptu, you will be prompted to authorize Taptu to access your G Reader feeds.
3) Once you’ve given Taptu access, a list of your G Reader feeds will appear with an add sign next to them. Add up to 100 of your G Reader feeds by tapping the add sign. When you are done, hit the Streams button. This will take you back to the Home page where you Google Reader feeds await you.

In Android:
1) In the home screen, tap on the + button, which takes you to the StreamStore
2) In the StreamStore, tap on “rss”
3) If you are not already signed into G Reader from Taptu, you will be prompted to authorize Taptu to access your G Reader feeds. Press the log in button and enter your Google user details. Accept the requested permissions.
4) Once you’ve given Taptu access, a list of your G Reader feeds will appear. Tap on feeds to add them to Taptu.

Comments: 0

Mediafed Launches Qrius Using Taptu as News Reader Across the Web, Mobile, and Tablets

Posted by on January 31, 2013

Hi Taptu fans,

We’ve got big news to share. Today, our parent company, Mediafed, is launching a new service called Qrius that will let you follow your favourite news sources across your smartphone, tablet, and desktop.

You’ll find the Q button on some of the biggest news sites out there, such as IDG UK’s PC Advisor and MacWorld in the UK, Le Figaro in France, Bild in Germany and Apple Insider and Motley Fool in the US, to name a few.

Once you click on the Q, it will take you to Taptu where you can sign in via Facebook, Twitter or Google +. Your news feed will appear as a stream on your Taptu app, which can be accessed from smartphones, tablets and the Web. In the coming weeks, we’ll be welcoming a number of global media partners, so keep a look out for the Q button! We hope it makes it as easy to add a newsfeed as clicking the follow button to follow a Twitter stream or Facebook page. Of course, you can still put feeds on Taptu by going directly to the app and adding them.

If you do try the service and need help, please ping us. We also welcome any comments you might have once you try it. For more information on the launch, please see the separate press release that we’ve also posted. Thanks and happy reading!

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Mediafed Unveils Qrius, A Powerful Way for Media Brands To Build Audience and Revenue Across Any Digital Platform

Posted by on January 31, 2013

200 million users strong, Mediafed launches Qrius to socialize and mobilize news while maximizing revenue for publishers

 

CAMBRIDGE, England & LONDON (January 31, 2013) – Today Mediafed, the global leader in digital publishing monetization, is launching Qrius, a contemporary spin on RSS feeds for the social and mobile generation.

Qrius joins the Twitter and the Facebook “follow” buttons on major media websites, giving publishers an easy way to earn advertising revenues and distribute content across devices.

With over 200 million users and a five-year history of profitably monetizing feeds for over 2,000 premium publishers worldwide, Mediafed, through the launch of Qrius, is delivering what big media publishers have asked for: A way to build both audiences and revenue in the cross-device digital age.

Publishers around the world including IDG UK, Le Figaro, Reuters China, Bild and India Today have already jumped on board with Qrius to monetize their RSS feeds across mobile phones, tablets and the desktop Web.

“We expect our integration of Qrius to help drive additional revenue from our syndicated content,” says Juan Ramón Rodríguez, Director Comercial of El Economista. “We chose to integrate Qrius because of its reach on desktop and mobile through news reader Taptu, and because Mediafed has delivered real revenue to publishers like us through its extensive advertiser base.”

“Qrius is the future of RSS – now publishers will actually make money off content syndication, especially in the critical mobile arena, while consumers will have an easy, convenient way to follow their favorite news sites.” said Mediafed and Taptu CEO, Ashley Harrison. “We believe this solution satisfies both publishers and consumers needs and has the potential to capture a massive global market and make Qrius the new syndication button on every major online media outlet.”

For consumers, Qrius is a new way to easily follow all of their favorite news in just a few clicks, letting them read across their mobile devices and the desktop Web. Qrius feeds are currently streamed on mobile and desktop via Taptu, which is available on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Samsung Bada and the desktop Web. Sending a news source through Qrius is as simple as clicking the follow button for Twitter or Facebook.

How Qrius Works:

  • Click the Qrius icon on any of your favorite news sites
  • Sign into Qrius using your existing Facebook, Twitter or Google+ login
  • In just a click, send your favorite content to Taptu to instantly begin reading your Qrius news on any device

Mediafed monetizes news feeds to 200 million consumers from over 2,000 premium publishers in over 55 countries around the globe. Working with over 1,200 blue-chip advertisers monetizing content for publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian and Le Monde, the company commands industry leading advertising rates today. Since its acquisition of Taptu, the award-winning social news-reading app, Mediafed’s mobile presence has quickly shot from 54 million in September to over 76 million to date.

Publishers interested in working with Qrius can learn more here: http://www.qrius.me

For more information on Mediafed, visit: http://www.mediafed.com  

Try Taptu HTML5 today:

http://taptu.com

For iOS:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/taptu/id392240746?mt=8

For Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.taptu.streams&feature

About Mediafed:

Founded in 2007, Mediafed works with leading global advertisers and publishers on a high-value CPM model to turn RSS feeds into profits. In addition, Mediafed provides an industry leading, ABC Electronic ratified, RSS metrics platform to provide publishers with detailed, granular information and data along with 24/7 support and syndication services to maximise content reach. Mediafed has a base of 200 million users and growing thanks to partnerships with some of the world’s best-known publishers including the New York Times, Le Monde, Reuters, Axel Springer, Hachette Filipacchi, IDG, El Mundo, La Gardere and WSJ China. Mediafed was named one of Europe’s top ten fastest growing digital media companies at the 2011 Media Momentum Awards and is ranked 26th in the 2012 Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100, which lists the UK’s top private companies with fastest-growing sales over their last three years.

 

Media Contacts:

 

US

VSCpr for Taptu
Christina Shatzen

[email protected]

404.510.9718

 

UK

Dianne See Morrison

Director of Communications, Mediafed

[email protected]

07988 539 921

Comments: 0

RSS Ad Giant Mediafed Acquires Mobile News Reader Taptu

Posted by on September 20, 2012

Taptu fans:

It’s been an incredible journey. In November 2010, we rebooted, taking the mobile search technology we’d built and repositioning Taptu from a mobile search engine to a mobile news reader. Nearly two years and a million users later, we are very excited to announce that RSS ad giant Mediafed has acquired us.

The award-winning London, UK-based company has built a profitable business helping over 1200 premium publishers worldwide generate revenues from their RSS feeds and currently serves 125 million desktop users monthly and counting. Mediafed is buying Taptu to grow its mobile business, where it serves over 50 million users a month.

Mediafed plans to continue the investment in Taptu. Indeed, we’re busy creating localized versions in Chinese, Portuguese and Russian to add to our most recent translations for French, German, Spanish, and Japanese. We’ll also continue to add on new features.

Finally, we’d like to thank you, our Taptu users, for taking us to where we are today. We have appreciated your comments, suggestions, exhortations, and yes, criticism — all of which has helped us make Taptu better and better. We hope you will continue to use Taptu. Please keep your feedback coming and keep a look out for the exciting new features coming your way. For more information on the acquisition, please see our press release down below.

Thank you and keep reading!
The Taptu Team

_______________________________

Mediafed Acquires Taptu

Mediafed to combine its 125 million users with Taptu’s award-winning mobile apps and content discovery platform to create a digital publishing powerhouse

CAMBRIDGE, England, LONDON & DENVER – (September 20, 2012) – Today, Mediafed – the global leader in RSS news feed monetization – is announcing it is acquiring award-winning mobile search and technology company, Taptu, known for its consumer apps and news aggregation platform, to pioneer the leading mass-scale mobile and social news experience worldwide. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Mediafed’s acquisition of Taptu brings together two powerful services. Mediafed has built a profitable and fast-growth platform for monetizing RSS, while Taptu’s critically acclaimed mobile news reader allows consumers to ‘DJ their news’ by mixing and mashing sources and topics into contextual streams for an extremely tailored news reading and sharing experience. Taptu is available on phones and tablets in over 100 countries, across iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Samsung and mobile Web platforms. Taptu’s technology is supported by numerous accolades including The Meffy Award for Best Content Discovery & Personalization, 148Apps’ Best App Ever Award for Best News App on the Android Platform and was named one of the best ways to read books, magazines and newspapers by The Wall Street Journal in August 2012.

“Our acquisition of Taptu will create the first global platform to monetize RSS across all digital devices,” said Ashley Harrison, Chief Executive Officer of Mediafed. “This is the future of publishing and we are elated to gain the incredible Taptu product, technology, team and committed user base in this quest.”

Mediafed is the first company to build a significant business around RSS, and monetizes news feeds to 125 million consumers from over 1,200 premium publishers around the globe. The company commands industry leading advertising rates today, and firmly believes Taptu will accelerate growth in the mobile consumer market and bring a profitable advertising ecosystem to mobile publishing. Already owning an impressive community of users on the desktop, Mediafed more than doubled its mobile user base in the past three months from 20 million to 50 million visitors, and the platform is already generating revenue in 55 countries worldwide.

“Since re-launching Taptu two years ago with a fresh product and new direction for the company, the team has created an incredible service using Taptu’s powerful search technology, and built a loyal customer base who enjoy DJ-ing their news every day,” said existing VC investor, DFJ Esprit Partner, Krishna Visvanathan. “We look forward to building on Taptu’s success through Mediafed’s incredible monetization engine and its rich stable of premium publisher relationships,” said Nicolas Autret, existing investor and Senior Associate at Sofinnova Partners.

“We are thrilled to become a part of the Mediafed family and feel we have found the perfect partnership to take the lead in digital publishing,” said Taptu CEO, Mitch Lazar. “Mediafed has developed a powerhouse in content monetization that together with Taptu’s team and platform will provide a compelling opportunity for advertisers, publishers and our customers.”

Taptu users will still be able to enjoy Taptu’s mobile and Web apps, as product innovation and new features continue to be implemented down the road. Beyond a successful consumer app, Taptu’s mobile publishing platform, Tapform, powers the content for international publications The Guardian Environment and Dutch media outlet, De Pers.

Mediafed has built strong publisher relationships as well, working with over 1,200 premium publications worldwide such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El Mundo and Sueddeutsche to name a few.

- End -

Notes to Editors:

Check out Mediafed:

About Mediafed:
Founded in 2007, Mediafed works with leading global advertisers and publishers on a high-value CPM model to turn RSS feeds into profits. In addition, Mediafed provides an industry leading, ABC Electronic ratified, RSS metrics platform to provide publishers with detailed, granular information and data along with 24/7 support and syndication services to maximise content reach. Mediafed has a base of 125 million users and growing thanks to partnerships with some of the world’s best-known publishers including the New York Times, Le Monde, Reuters, Axel Springer, Hachette Filipacchi, IDG, El Mundo, La Gardere and WSJ China. Mediafed was named one of Europe’s top ten fastest growing digital media companies at the 2011 Media Momentum Awards and is ranked 26th in the 2012 Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100, which lists the UK’s top private companies with fastest-growing sales over their last three years.

Try Taptu HTML5 today:
http://taptu.com

For iOS:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/taptu/id392240746?mt=8

For Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.taptu.streams&feature

About Taptu:
Founded in 2006, Taptu is an award-winning social media and mobile technology company based in Cambridge, England, and Denver, Colorado. Taptu builds innovative platforms, tools and applications that enable highly personalized creation, curation, recommendation, search, discovery, management, consumption and sharing of content across all personal screen-based devices. Wapedia, Taptu’s popular mobile Wikipedia with over 4 million downloads, is also available for download at the Apple App Store and on the Android Market.

About DFJ Esprit
DFJ Esprit is a leading cross-stage venture capital firm that invests from seed to late stage in European technology and media companies. Members of the DFJ Esprit team have experience of investing in over 200 companies and generating strong returns for investors through building valuable companies alongside the founders and management teams. DFJ Esprit is the exclusive European partner for Silicon Valley-based VC, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which has $7 billion under management and offices in over 30 cities around the world.
www.dfjesprit.com

Media Contacts:

US

VSCpr for Taptu
Christina Shatzen
[email protected]
404.510.9718

UK

Hotwire on behalf of DFJ Esprit
Abigail Daniels
[email protected]
+44 (0)20 7608 8364

Dianne See Morrison
Director of Communications, Mediafed
[email protected]
07988 539 921

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Taptu Magic Brings Even More Relevance to Your Reading

Posted by on June 21, 2012

Hello Taptu fans:

Over the past few weeks, we’ve had a number of updates to Taptu that have improved your ability to control what you read, including giving you the ability to create search streams, to sync your reading across devices, and to read and manage your streams on the Web.

Today, we’re very excited to announce our latest improvement, designed to bring you even more of the articles that are relevant to you.
Starting with our Android app, we’re unveiling Taptu Magic, an improvement to our search algorithm. Based on different signals, such as an article read, shared and bookmarked, our algorithm delivers similar stories that are even more relevant to you. For example, say you have Taptu’s sports stream and you’re a big basketball fan but not so interested in baseball. Taptu will understand from past reading that you prefer basketball news and serve that up instead of baseball news.

Taptu Magic is built into all of our curated streams. You can also turn it on any stream that you curate yourself. We hope you enjoy this new improvement to Taptu. As always you can give us feedback, comments, suggestions, or critiques at @Taptu on Twitter, our Facebook page, or on our Get Satisfaction page. Thanks!

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Taptu Allows You to Share Your Favorite News Streams Via Facebook, Twitter and the Web With New HTML5 App

Posted by on May 31, 2012
Screen shot 2012-05-31 at 14.26.59

Taptu connects phones, tablets and the Web with the first seamless social news reading experience

CAMBRIDGE, England & DENVER-May 28, 2012- Taptu, the social media and mobile search technology company known for “DJ-ing the news,” is taking its popular news reader to the Web with a new HTML5 app. The new platform makes Taptu the most widely available reader app, letting users create and share personalized streams of news from their phone, tablet or computer.

The company’s new HTML5 website makes it the first truly cross-platform news reading experience, allowing anyone to access Taptu’s beautiful news and social media streams from any desktop browser, and synching customized streams across the native iOS or Android apps. By building their Web experience in HTML5 Taptu is pushing the envelope of browser based apps, and will soon be releasing a mobile web version of their app capable of bringing the Taptu experience to any WebKit browser.

“Taptu’s main advantage has always been our powerful search and aggregation technology that allows us to take any topic, source or keyword search and create a beautiful news reading experience around it,” said Mitch Lazar, CEO of Taptu. “Today we are taking a huge step towards making Taptu a universal tool for both discovering and sharing all your personal interests.”

Users have always had the ability to mix and mash news into custom visual streams using Taptu’s powerful search technology, and the new Web experience will now make it easy to share these streams with anyone. Once they have aggregated their favorite content into personalized streams, users can share with all their friends via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or email in just two clicks.

To create a seamless experience across devices, Taptu utilizes user accounts that synchronize all mixed streams using the Google, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn accounts users already have. Users can create a stream on an iPad and it will automatically appear on their Android or iPhone, as well on the Web version of Taptu. To eliminate redundancy, any content read on one device is instantly marked as read across all platforms.

In addition to the new HTML5 destination and user accounts, Taptu has also recently improved their iOS and Android apps by bringing its popular Search Streams to iOS and the Web. Taking advantage of Taptu’s search heritage, this feature creates a stream around any keyword, and in beta testing on the Android platform users are already creating twice as many custom streams.

Try Taptu HTML5 today:

http://taptu.com

For iOS:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/taptu/id392240746?mt=8

For Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.taptu.streams&feature

 

About Taptu:

Founded in 2006, Taptu is an award-winning social media and mobile technology company based in Cambridge, England, and Denver, Colorado. Taptu builds innovative platforms, tools and applications that enable highly personalized creation, curation, recommendation, search, discovery, management, consumption and sharing of content across all personal screen-based devices. Wapedia, Taptu’s popular mobile Wikipedia with over 4 million downloads, is also available for download at the Apple App Store and on the Android Market.

 

Media Contact:

US

Bob Patterson

VSCpr for Taptu

[email protected]

(415) 302-9806

 

UK

Dianne See Morrison

Director of Communications

Taptu

[email protected]

07988 539 921

 

Comments: 0

RIM Features Taptu for Playbook in Blackbery App World

Posted by on May 29, 2012

Do you own a RIM Playbook? If you do, be sure to check out RIM’s Blackberry App World where Taptu is a featured app. You can do all the things on your Playbook you can on Android Tablets, including:

– Get your favorite news and social media streams in one place. Find news sources easily in our StreamStore, import from Google Reader, or flick through our Topics section.

– Follow your favorite news streams, and “DJ” them to create your own topic stream by mashing your favorites.

– Create your own search streams from any news source or topic stream. For example, if you follow Blackberry, you can create a Blackberry stream from the Technology News stream.

– Share articles via your favorite social media channels, and saving to read articles later either by bookmarking them or saving them to Pocket (formerly ReadItLater).

As always, we’d love to hear from you what you thought of the app or if you need help with it. Contact us on Twitter @Taptu, or our Facebook page, or via email [email protected]

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Ad-Free Plugin for Taptu on Android

Posted by on May 16, 2012

As you may have seen on our Android app, we’ve had to introduce ads as a way to earn a bit of revenue to keep us going and to continue funding new features.

A number of you have told us you would be willing to pay for an ad-free experience.

Today, we’re launching our ad-free plugin for our Android app as an in-app purchase. For a small fee (a mere pittance!) you can now get rid of ads on your home screen of Taptu.

You may still see some ads on the article cards, or if you read the story directly on the web — these ads come from the publisher of the article and we can’t remove them.

We hope those of you who’ve asked for the plugin will let us know how it’s working for you. Thanks for the feedback and using Taptu.

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Introducing Taptu-Guardian Environment App for Android

Posted by on May 14, 2012

Hello Taptu Android fans:

Today, we’re launching the Taptu Guardian Environment App for Android. In January, along side the Guardian, we released the iOS version of the app. Since then, the app has racked up healthy downloads, and its composite rating in the App Store is 4.5 stars out of 5. But one thing we kept getting asked over and over again: where’s the Android version? It’s live today, and can be downloaded from Google Play here.

Like its iOS counterpart, the free app–powered by Guardian content–lets you get all the latest green news, comments and images on your mobile or tablet. The app, of course, is completely customizable and lets you read articles from the Guardian’s Environment section but also from other well-known sources for green articles such as Al Gore’s Blog, Mother Jones, AlterNet, SciDev and Yale Environment 360.

Are you watching specific environment news? You can create your own keyword stream from any of our curated streams (Green Living), or from a single source stream (Mother Jones). For example, if you’re really interested in recycling, you could create a “recyling” key word stream from Green Living.

Moreover, like our main news reader app, you can bookmark articles to save them, send them to Pocket (formerly Read it Later) or Instapaper, or share it via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or email.

We hope you’ll give the environment app a try. Let us know how you find the app. We can be reached on Twitter at @taptu, on our Facebook page, or via email at [email protected]

Thanks!

Comments: 0

Taptu 2.1 Now Live: Synching Across All Devices & More

Posted by on May 14, 2012

Hi Taptu fans:

Today, we’re introducing a whole load of new features in our latest update—2.1–for Taptu. We hope you find our app one of the most—if not the most—comprehensive readers on the market. The updates run across all of our apps: iOS, Android, Nook, Playbook, and Amazon.

So, what do we have for you?

1) Synch Taptu Across ALL Your Devices: That’s right, you can now synch your news across all of your devices and you don’t even need to create a new user profile. You can simply log into Taptu using Facebook, Twitter, Google or LinkedIn and all of your mixed and mashed streams from your favorite sources and topics will update in real-time on all devices. And, when an article has been read in Taptu it will be marked as read on all devices.

2) Search Streams for iOS: Search streams have been a hit with our Android users, and we’ve now added the same capability for iOS users.

iPhone and iPad users can now create a stream for any topic from a keyword. How do you do this? Let’s say you want to read news on just “the iPad”. You can either create the search stream from a single source such as TechCrunch, Taptu’s curated Technology streams, or your own mixed stream of technology news. The keyword stream will pull all articles with the term “iPad,” in it.

3) A Significant Face Lift: Taptu has a new look and feel—cleaner and less cluttered. We’ve redesigned the home page and the article cards to make discovery, navigation and sharing even easier. Stories you are reading in Taptu now include links that take you directly to more stories.

4) Localized Versions for Germany, France, and Spain: We’ve translated Taptu in German, French and Spanish. We’ve also created country-specific StreamStores with topics and streams specifically for our fans in German, France and Spain.

5) Taptu now fully supports the new iPad’s retina display.

6) Speed and performance improvements: faster and more fluid, Taptu has gotten a significant boost in speed.

As always, we welcome your thoughts and questions on Taptu. The easiest way to contact us is through @Taptu on Twitter, or on our Facebook Page, or via email at [email protected] Thanks for trying out Taptu!

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