Scan Magazine | Special Theme | A Spotlight on Danish Apps & Software
CTO of Nows, Mahmoud El-Set, is also the man behind the successful Dalle Valle app. Here seen (right) together with designer of the Nows app, Ayub Beriev (left).
Fighting fake news with Nows By enabling users to stream and watch live breaking news from all over the world, the Nows app aims to redefine news. The app’s two Danish creators are not just aiming to give its future users a broader and more unbiased view of the world but also, by only allowing live content, to prevent the spreading of fake news. All they need now is the right investor to help them launch their news revolution. By Signe Hansen | Photos: Nows
Behind the Nows app are CEO Precila Birungi and CTO Mahmoud El-Set, also the creator of the successful Dalle Valle app. Birungi, a 25-year-old single mother, came up with the idea for the app when her own mother expressed regret about the delay and limited spectrum of news from their homeland of Uganda. “When we look at humans today, we all have a relationship to somewhere other than where we live, and that brings about a desire to be even more connected to the world,” explains Birungi. “Our vision is to change the way people experience news by enabling everyone to record live 36 | Issue 100 | May 2017
content on Nows. At the moment, the problem is that a lot of news video content is fake; it’s always difficult to verify a video from YouTube or on social media platforms like Facebook. Even regular TV channels struggle with verifying videos. But on Nows, people can’t upload anything that’s possibly been edited – they can only record live video and pictures.”
How it works One of the main defining features of Nows is that users are only able to share news. Any other content will be filtered out and deleted by a number of exclusive-
ly tailored algorithms. This differentiates it from existing media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube in that users will not have to navigate through a stream of cute cat videos to find, say, an earthquake update from Italy. Furthermore, Nows is different from more traditional news media in that it will have no specific target group or relevance parameters. Instead, users can search for news via locations as well as hashtags. “Via the hashtags you can, for instance, search for ‘car chase in Paris’, and then you’ll get all the different cameras available for that story. There might be a number of different headlines and angles for the story, and you can choose which one you want to follow,” El-Set explains. The app will also give a quick overview of the most-viewed news stories, which will be saved and available to view for 24 hours.