Swell Launches A Personalized App For News Radio Listening
Summary
Ramkumar told me that the team has been focused on making the experience as simple as possible — you can start listening to Swell at the beginning of your commute, and as you drive, you only need to interact with it if you want to skip a program. Swell says that it has partnered with NPR, American Public Media, and ABC News, and it also includes podcasts from the BBC, CBC, Comedy Central, TED Talks, and others. Ramkumar said there’s an element of human curation, so that only high quality content makes it into the app, and it also looks at the response from a larger user base to figure out what’s resonating. There’s also a WiFi-only mode, where you download the content when you’re on WiFi and then listen while offline, which could be appealing for people who want to go easy on their data plans or who don’t have reliable cell signal during their commutes (like if they take the subway). Even though I hadn’t done much to personalize the experience, I still thought there was a nice mix of content, starting off with some of the day’s big news and then moving into less obvious programs about business and culture.
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