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back to article Youngster backed by Yoko Ono and Stephen Fry launches 'Summly'

A 17-year-old Londoner has launched a new app that summarises news stories for smartphones after getting over $1m in funding. The Summly app started out life as TrimIt, getting 100,000 downloads last year before private equity firm Horizons Ventures spotted it. The firm, run by Li Ka-Shing - the eleventh wealthiest person in …

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  1. Lord Voldemortgage

    Ka-Shing

    Ka-Shing

    Ka-Shing

    Ka-Shing

    I love the sound of money rolling in.

    6 1
  2. TheTrouser

    Boy Genius

    An app which sucks stuff from social networks - summarizes it - spews it back onto social networks.

    The boy is indeed a genius.

    1 0
  3. spencer

    Just don't do it in France

    ...as google has just found out.

    3 0
  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Copyright...

    Wonder how long it will be before:

    A) He is sued over copyright

    B) Someone comes along and sue him for stealing their idea.

    3 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Copyright...

      or

      C) the summarizing algorithm misses out the wrong parts of the story completely changing the meaning and someone sues him for defamation

      2 0
      1. horse of a different color
        Reply Icon
        Mushroom

        Re: Copyright...

        If I recall correctly, newspaper copy is written to be trimmed. If another story needs more column inches, it's trivial to remove paragraphs from the end of the story without substantially changing the meaning (the story loses detail and colour instead). I don't know if the same writing style is applied to online copy, but it doesn't sound completely implausible.

        2 0
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Li Ka-Shing - the eleventh wealthiest person in the world"

    Really?

    1 0
    1. Jediben
      Reply Icon
      Angel

      Yep, he's my boss's boss.

      0 0
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So to summliarize:

    A 17-year-old Londoner ... sank ... into ... celebs like Ashton Kutcher, Yoko Ono and Stephen Fry, and tech folk like Joanna Shields and Mark Pincus. Nick D'Aloisio came ... while trying ... a deep dive. D'Aloisio started ... on ... top

    11 0
  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This reeks of..

    .."likely to be bought by Apple/Google/whoever", if the VC funding doesn't mean that the legalities and price aren't too fanciful.

    0 0
  8. Jediben

    The little sprat was on BBC this morning, stating that he hoped to monetize the system by charging people to link to the stories that were summarilisationified.

    I suspect this will see him in big trouble - you can't go charging for other people's content without licencing, right?

    3 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Hmmm.... Even without the legals, it'd not probably work. I want to know where my summarised news is coming from (trusted sources and all that), so the app would have to tell me. So if I see an interesting summary from the BBC on Chinese politics I can either:

      a) go to my BBC app and if it's not on the front page find it in the 'China' section - three clicks max

      b) click on the 'go to source' button, and probably have to click 'yes' to a 'we're going to charge you' box.

      I'd not be willing to pay very much to save me 1 click.

      1 0
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Yeah but who's going to believe that the button you click on goes to the web site it says it will? Oh hang on, the sort of fuckwit who would be tempted to use crap like this in the first place.

        0 0
  9. Aaron Em

    Utter bollocks

    Just tried it out. Nice how you can't add your own sources. I also liked the noisy, garish animated tutorial that's necessary only because the interface lacks discoverability. A million bucks for this? Well done whatsisname; as an app developer, he makes a first-rate salesman.

    1 1
    1. Aldous
      Reply Icon

      Re: Utter bollocks

      facebook paid 1 billion for the app equivelent of smearing vasaline on a camera lens....

      i suspect the whole "its an app" catchphrase will do as well as "we have a website" in 99/2000. At least until everyone works out its all a load of nathan barley self congratulating circle jerkery and the whole thing collapses ala first dotcom crash

      4 0
  10. Anonymous C0ward
    Joke

    So presumably he's going to marry Yoko and then it'll all go down the tubes?

    1 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Then let's hope history doesn't repeat itself...

      ...or it'll take eleven long years before somebody shoots him

      1 0
  11. Alistair
    Pint

    name says it all

    summ

    lies

    ... the sum of all lies?

    (sorry -- its friday, and well --

    2 0
  12. elaar

    Good luck to him, no doubt he'll rake it in just as quickly as an investment banker has money thrown at him.

    I'm sure I know people that have regularly made perl scripts far more complicated than his news "algorithm".

    It will be popular as people have become so lazy then are unable to source multiple newsfeeds. The problem is, will it create a section of people that don't care if all of the summary news feeds are from a certain biased news source? Murdoch supporting it is always worrying.

    1 0
  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Another Facebook

    Hyped by another load of early investors looking for another bunch of mug punters to cash in on.

    2 0
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