It’s been close to 200 days since we went beta with Pipes and boy hasn’t it been a journey. We’ve come a long long way. One look at the images below and you’ll see how its worked out.
But I am extremely elated to introduce Pipes 2.0. Reid Hoffman once said “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you‘ve launchedtoo late”
Pipes 2.0 takes the mickey out of what we had. 2.0 is such a huge step up from the version before. Maybe you think I’m using ‘Huge’ too loosely but just a read through this post, will change that.
So, what’s new then? Click here
Well frankly for us, we built Pipes 2.0 from the ground up. We’ve rejigged everything.
A. A whole new User Experience
Pipes 2.0 comes with a great new design. Design for us is as much about user experience as it is about making something look pretty and 2.0 offers just that. Great new typefaces, integrated Stories, Twitter & Wikipedia views. We’ve also introduced a few new characters. Tap on these characters and they’ll keep you entertained. We’re calling them AniPipes.
AniPipes are a great new way of having some fun with Pipes.
B. Pipeline
We’re also introducing Pipeline. After popular request on App Stores across the Globe, Pipeline has come into existence. Pipeline’s fully conceptualised and ideated by our wonderful users who have had some great suggestions for the app. Pipeline curates all your Pipes in a very interactive UI. If you just want to quickly read through all your Pipes without opening them, jump to Pipeline.
Pipeline curates 40 of the most important articles from your 10 Pipes. It’s a great new addition.
C. What’s Hot
Pipes has always had the wonderful shake feature embedded into our app to tell you what was trending. But as cool as the feature was, it never told users why was a certain Pipe trending. With What’s Hot we’ve changed that. What’s Hot tells you what’s trending locally and globally & more importantly why.
A little snippet will tell you what’s happening, and if you find it interesting you can add the Pipe right from there.
D. News by Photos
We all love images don’t we? There’s a reason social apps like Instagram & Snapchat exist amongst popular culture. We thought we’ll bring that to news. Hence, with 2.0, we’re now launching News by Photos. We love lazy. And if you fit that bill, news by photos was handcrafted just for you!
Tap to read if you find ‘em interesting!
E. Data improvements
So that was that for the tangible, now here’s the important bit. Pipes is a fraction of the app without the data, and our Bread & Toast teams (2 properties developed & owned by Pipes) have worked incredibly hard to take data to a whole new level.
We literally want to be challenged on finding news. Anything that’s half as much as making news, will find its place. We’ve accounted for misspelt searches, missing letters & even synonyms. Pipes’ search is now so much smarter.
F. Others
While we’ve increased our database size by 10X we’ve increased the speed by 3 times.
We’re very very excited about 2.0. It brings us closer to our vision. We want to make news intimate & 2.0 takes customising to a whole new level.
You can download Pipes 2.0 here.