By Anabelle Nicoud
At the heart of Particle lies a simple concept: allowing users to see the same news from different views. “Particle is a tool that lets you personalize your news experience and see stories from multiple perspectives,” explains Sara Beykpour, co-founder and CEO of Particle. “It reads the news from different sources, and summarizes a story for you. So it’s really based around a story instead of an individual article, and it brings you multiple perspectives about that story.”
Sara Beykpour
The app provides summaries (bullet points of a story), but more interestingly, it then provides direct links to content mentioned in stories (like an Instagram post or judicial document), key quotes from people involved, and an AI chatbot for questions about a story. Users can ask questions or use already suggested questions and their answers. Essentially, a deeper engagement with a topic – a deeper user experience.
The app includes two tabs: one personalized for the user, and another showing the most written-about and popular stories on Particle. Users can also follow topics at a granular level, staying updated on stories they deeply care about.
The app features one tool, called “Opposite Sides,” that includes a political spectrum displaying how news is being reported across liberal and conservative sites with the goal of preventing filter bubbles.
“It’s visualized so you can easily see if the coverage is balanced, leaning more to the right, or more to the left,” said Beykpour, who brings senior expertise in UX, product and engineering from her time with Twitter, Periscope and Vine. “We use this as a way to help you understand how the summaries are being generated and to reflect the lens through which the story is being covered,” she explains. “That’s why we also highlight if a story is one-sided – meaning it’s only being covered from one perspective. It’s essential for you to understand when this happens so you can have that context in mind.
“What’s really important, and something we are mindful about, is that for stories with a political element, we don’t let you choose the sources that make up the summary for those stories. We ensure the sources are varied so that you always get a broad perspective. We think it’s important not to allow users to create their own filter bubble.”
The app also comes with a wide range of engagement tools: a weekly newsletter, push-notifications. “We let you follow anything you’re interested in. You can also choose to get notifications on that content so you stay updated whenever something new happens. This way, you can keep coming back and stay informed,” Beykpour details.
Particle is launching with several news partners (AFP, Fortune, Getty Images, TheStreet, and TIME, via its partnership with the platform TollBit, have already been announced). Beykpour hasn’t disclosed specifics on what those partnerships entail and if the model includes revenue-sharing.
“We want to partner with publishers and journalists to create an experience that is valuable both to us and to them. We think there are a lot of interesting ways we can partner, one of which is around audience expansion,” she says. Other avenues include a variety of benefits for users, such as in-app, full-content display.” a
Beykpour is also mindful of the fact that information can also require human oversight around sensitive issues, and developing stories. Although her team doesn’t yet include editorial staff, she said they plan to expand.
“AI is a tool – a very powerful one – but it’s not a replacement for journalism, publishers, news, or media. Particle aims to provide a user experience that addresses user needs, needs that have been largely unmet since news moved online. But it’s not a replacement for the work journalists and publishers do,” she says.
About the author, Anabelle Nicoud
A freelance journalist and consultant based in San Francisco, Nicoud currently collaborates with The Audiencers newsletter and the Canadian monthly L’actualité.
She has worked with Apple News+ (2022-2024); helped the editorial teams at La Presse (2015-2019) and Le Devoir (2019-2022) with their digital transformation, while leading ambitious editorial projects that have won prestigious journalism awards in Canada and Quebec.
A former journalist for La Presse and correspondent for Libération in Canada, Nicoud is passionate about the impact of technology on the media, she closely follows issues related to the use of artificial intelligence.
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