Not terribly surprised. When I tried the app out I didn't really get the appeal. It was like adding a comments section to existing news feeds and didn't provide enough tailoring or algorithmic understanding of reading habits to be a compelling offering.
Besides the fact that they were using a chrome embedded browser, meaning I couldn't even ad block on the sites I visited: which made the reading experience nearly impossible.
It had a built in reader mode to bypass the shitty ad-ridden websites. My favorite feature was the block words list. No more stories with the word “kardashian” for example.
I found it worked pretty well, seemed to understand my interests pretty well after a couple days, when I usually don't feel that way, having tried many many similar apps. The chrome web view wasn't ideal, but I use pihole which helped :)
What are the best news aggregators that people use these days? I have fallen back to using news.google.com, which Im not that too happy about, but it does seem to work ok for me.
It’s a shame. It was a good news aggregator. Much better than the news app included with iOS. You’d think if they lost the comments section/moderation and added some ads and a premium ad-free tier, it could’ve stayed in business. Also surprised they didn’t find a buyer who’d want to slap their name on existing tech.