Pulse was a news aggregation app that launched in 2015. It aimed to provide users with a tailored news reading experience by learning their interests and preferences. Pulse quickly gained popularity, attracting over 10 million users within its first year. However, in early 2018, Pulse was acquired by LinkedIn and subsequently shut down. This left many wondering – what happened to Pulse and why did the once-popular news app meet its demise?
What was Pulse?
Pulse was a news aggregation app available on iOS and Android. It used AI and machine learning to study a user’s reading behavior and deliver a personalized newsfeed. The app aimed to solve the problem of information overload by showing users the news they cared about most.
Some key features of Pulse included:
- Personalized newsfeed based on reading history and preferences
- Support for adding favorite topics, publications, and keywords to tailor recommendations
- Ability to “discover” new topics and publications
- Options to follow friends and influencers to see stories they shared
- Integration with services like Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, and Pocket to easily share stories
- Audio versions of articles using text-to-speech
Pulse prided itself on using advanced machine learning and natural language processing to study news stories, user behavior, and feedback to improve its recommendations over time.
What made Pulse popular?
There were several factors that contributed to Pulse’s rapid growth and popularity after launching in 2015:
- Personalization – Pulse used AI to learn reader preferences and offer a tailored, relevant news experience. This solved the issue of information overload from other news apps.
- Clean and intuitive UI – Pulse had a simple, visually appealing interface that made scanning headlines easy.
- Top publications – Pulse provided access to full articles from top publishers like NYT, Washington Post, BBC, ESPN, and more.
- Additional features – Options like audio articles and integrating with other apps added additional functionality.
- Free to use – Pulse was free to download and use, allowing it to quickly attract a large user base.
- Strong marketing and PR – Pulse’s founders were successful entrepreneurs previously and invested in marketing.
Within a year of launch, Pulse was acquiring over 1 million new users per month. It became the top news app in over 20 countries across North and South America, Europe, and Asia.
The Decline of Pulse
Despite Pulse’s initial success and rapid growth, its popularity eventually began to decline. There were a few key factors that contributed to this downward turn:
Challenges to sustaining growth
After the initial excitement of its launch and viral growth phase, Pulse found it difficult to sustain its momentum. Their available market was limited to iOS and Android smartphone users who would discover and download a news aggregation app.
Once they reached tens of millions of users, continuing to rapidly expand their user base was an uphill battle. This led growth to stagnate.
Increased competition
The personalized news app space became more competitive with new entrants like SmartNews, News360, and Google News. With overlapping features and technology, these apps gave consumers more choices.
This diluted Pulse’s market share as users checked out alternatives. Each competitor chipped away at Pulse’s user base.
Monetization challenges
Pulse struggled to effectively monetize its large user base. Their app was free to use, so Pulse needed to rely on tactics like advertising, promoted content, and data licensing to generate revenue.
However, many users found ads and promoted stories annoying. Pulse feared placing more ads would frustrate users. This limited their potential ad-based revenues.
Failure to diversify
Pulse concentrated narrowly on its personalized news app. The company did not successfully diversify into additional product offerings, revenue streams, or partnerships.
This left Pulse heavily reliant on one product and income source. When that product faltered, so did Pulse’s business.
Acquisition by LinkedIn
By early 2018, it was clear Pulse was struggling. Growth had stalled, competitors were gaining ground, and revenues remained insufficient.
With Pulse in a precarious position, established tech company LinkedIn acquired Pulse in April 2018. Reports estimated the acquisition deal was between $25 million and $50 million.
Why did LinkedIn acquire Pulse?
There were a few strategic reasons why acquiring Pulse appealed to LinkedIn:
- Gain Pulse’s news recommendation technology – LinkedIn planned to incorporate Pulse’s AI and machine learning capabilities into its own platform to improve content suggestions for users.
- Expand content offerings – Pulse provided LinkedIn a news vertical to complement its professional content and broaden its reach.
- Bolster data on user interests – Pulse’s data on news preferences offered additional intelligence on user interests and behavior patterns.
- Engineering talent – Acquiring Pulse gave LinkedIn access to a skilled team of data scientists and engineers behind Pulse’s technology.
- Eliminate a competitor – Removing Pulse from the competitive landscape prevented it from disrupting LinkedIn’s growth plans.
For Pulse, being acquired provided the exit and liquidity its investors desired after its decline. But for users, the days of Pulse were now numbered.
The End of Pulse
In October 2018, just 6 months after acquiring Pulse, LinkedIn announced it would be shutting down the Pulse app. Pulse was removed from app stores and officially discontinued on December 17, 2018.
Why did LinkedIn shut down Pulse?
LinkedIn decided to close Pulse for a few reasons:
- Focus on core products – LinkedIn wanted to concentrate resources on enhancing LinkedIn’s own features rather than dividing focus across multiple properties.
- Integration challenges – Integrating Pulse’s technology meaningfully into LinkedIn proved more difficult than anticipated.
- Declining growth – Pulse’s sluggish growth made it hard to justify continued investment for a standalone app.
- Regulatory concerns – Questions around news aggregation apps emerged regarding impacts on publications whose content was used.
Essentially, LinkedIn felt that allocating resources towards Pulse was unlikely to provide sufficient return on investment. The company determined sunsetting Pulse to double down on LinkedIn was a better path forward.
How did users react to Pulse’s closure?
Many former Pulse users expressed disappointment and frustration when the shutdown was announced. Key complaints included:
- Loss of a useful service – Users felt Pulse filled an important niche providing personalized news curation versus algorithmic feeds in other apps.
- Wasted time investment – Users were frustrated their time spent personalizing Pulse was erased with no comparable alternative.
- Lack of data access – Users wanted the ability to export their Pulse data like reading history and preferences.
- Dissatisfaction with LinkedIn – Some felt LinkedIn acquired then killed a superior news product just to eliminate a competitor.
While LinkedIn offered an alternative called LinkedIn News, users complained it failed to match Pulse’s capabilities. Overall, Pulse’s committed user base was deeply unhappy to see the app shuttered.
Why Did Personalized News Apps Struggle?
The decline of Pulse points to wider challenges faced by personalized news aggregation apps, despite early hype and usage growth:
Questionable value proposition
For mainstream users, personalized news aggregators faced an unclear value proposition. Most people effectively received “good enough” news curation from established platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Apple News, etc. Asking users to try yet another news app was a hard sell.
Barriers to entry
Network effects made user acquisition difficult for new news apps entrants. When users’ friends and connections were already engaged elsewhere, it created high friction to get users to adopt a new platform. This made growth expensive and challenging to sustain.
Technology limitations
The technology behind personalized news aggregation apps remained imperfect. More advanced AI/ML is still needed to deliver consistently high-quality recommendations at scale across topics and user preferences. Existing solutions had flaws.
Revenue generation challenges
Most personalized news apps struggled to effectively monetize. Many kept apps free to encourage user adoption, forgoing subscription fees. But then they relied heavily on unpopular advertising without alternate income streams.
Algorithmic biases
Like all algorithmic recommendation systems, personalized news apps faced criticism over potential algorithmic biases impacting the information surfaced for users.
Costly to operate at scale
The infrastructure, data licensing, engineering talent, and computation power required to deliver personalized news apps at scale involved high operating costs. Revenue often couldn’t keep pace with expenses.
Factor | Description |
---|---|
Questionable value proposition | Unclear benefit over existing platforms for most mainstream users |
Barriers to entry | Network effects made user acquisition difficult |
Technology limitations | Imperfect personalization algorithms |
Revenue challenges | Difficulty monetizing users and content |
Algorithmic biases | Criticism over biases in recommendation algorithms |
High operating costs | Expensive infrastructure and data licensing costs |
What’s Next for Personalized News?
While apps like Pulse have faded, personalized news aggregation remains an active technology space. Some key developments to watch:
Major platforms enhancing recommendations
Legacy platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube continue improving their recommendation algorithms to better tailor content to user interests. These incremental enhancements pose ongoing competition to standalone personalized news apps.
Emerging alternative business models
Some newer startups explore alternate models like using personalization for subscription-based newsletters rather than ad-supported apps. This avoids some downsides of the personalized app approach.
Advances in AI and machine learning
As AI/ML capabilities expand, particularly in natural language understanding, personalized news recommendation technology improves. But major advances are still needed to overcome current limitations.
Incorporating trust and transparency
In response to concerns over filter bubbles and algorithmic biases, newer services emphasize building user trust through transparency, control, and diversity of recommendations.
Focused local alternatives gain traction
Smaller, niche apps tailoring recommendations to specific user segments or geographic regions avoid competing directly with tech giants. For example, local news apps personalized to cities.
While the broad vision of AI-driven personalized news aggregation struggled to take hold, targeted applications of personalization show more promise. As technology and business models evolve, this space continues to shift.
Conclusion
In the end, Pulse represents a cautionary tale of startup growth stalling and established giants winning out. Pulse’s acquisition and closure highlights the ongoing challenges facing personalized news aggregation apps.
Major players like LinkedIn and Facebook can readily absorb emerging competitors once they have proven an idea works. But doing so often results in the acquired product fading away, frustrating engaged users left without their preferred solution.
Pulse showed early promise to reform how we consume news. But the realities of maturation pressure startups to sell. Then stagnation often follows at the larger acquirer. For personalization technology to transform news, big breakthroughs still remain needed – either from groundbreaking startups or visionary initiatives within the current tech titans.