When readers open the SmartNews app now, they have a choice of news locations: Japan, the U.S and international. “So in the same sense, in terms of news, what you want to know and what you need to know are different.”ĬOO and Chief Engineer Kaisei Hamamoto tested his SmartNews prototype at Tokyo’s eikaiwa cafes, coffee shops where English-speaking teachers are hired. “There is a difference between what you want to eat and what you need to eat,” Hamamoto said to Rest of World.
The company’s latest funding round this past September, which for the first time included U.S-based investors, tipped SmartNews’ valuation to over $2 billion. That’s been supported by an aggressive marketing campaign that included TV advertising on cable news channels like CNN, and an incentive program that pays national publications to bring their articles onto the platform. offices, and said that its users there doubled in 2020 alone. Rather than pushing consumers into algorithmically driven filter bubbles, SmartNews says, their system gives readers a range of views.Īlthough the company refuses to disclose user figures by country, its American operations have grown dramatically. It marks the partisan spectrum of news stories clearly, and allows readers to toggle between them. SmartNews has developed a news-recommendation algorithm that promises to serve its readers a personalized, but politically balanced range of stories.Īlongside is a feature called “News From All Sides,” built specifically for the U.S. The company styles itself as diverging from the received wisdom in American media: that polarization sells. in 2014, and the app is now available in more than 150 countries. SmartNews launched in English in the U.S.
“It was much cheaper than conducting user research,” the SmartNews COO and chief engineer told Rest of World over Zoom. Hamamoto recalls the move with pride, even now. What kind of news were Americans reading? What did they think of the name SmartNews? The design? Hamamoto showed his speaking partners the app, quizzing them on everything he could think of. Armed with a prototype, he ventured out to Tokyo’s eikaiwa cafes, coffee shops where English teachers are hired - usually by aspirational businessmen and housewives - to hold casual conversation lessons. Hamamoto spoke some English, but knew America only as a tourist.
There was a catch: they needed to develop an international version. market, on the other hand, had far more potential for advertising and readership. Japan was bristling with competition from century-old print newspaper giants. It was 2014, and SmartNews, the upstart news discovery app that Hamamoto had co-founded two years earlier, was bumping up against the boundaries of its home market. To prepare for his company’s launch in the U.S., Kaisei Hamamoto went for coffee.
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