Facebook’s Notify news app is official, but forgets all about Android users
It’s almost been a full week since we heard rumors that Facebook was planning to launch a stand-alone news app called Notify this week. Sure enough, Facebook has officially unveiled the brand new app that pushes news stories from popular media outlets to your smartphone or tablet. Our problem? Once again, it seems they have forgotten all about Android users with their latest release. Sigh.
Notify gives users the ability to subscribe to “stations,” these are basically news stories by category. These can be fine tuned if you’d like to leave some news outlets out, and Notify can even subscribe to you specific stations based on the likes from your Facebook profile. Here are a few examples of stations you can subscribe to in Notify:
- The Final Scores station from FOX Sports provides end-of-game summaries for your favorite teams.
- The Daily AM Forecast station from The Weather Channel sends a local weather forecast at the start of your day.
- Hot New Trailers from Fandango gets you the newest trailers for the hottest movies as they drop.
- Breaking News from CNN and Top Stories from Fox News deliver the day’s news headlines.
- The 10 Best Dressed station from Vogue is your weekly digest of the best-dressed celebs.
- Daily Meditation from Headspace brings bite-sized guided meditation exercises into your day.
- The Flashback station from Getty Images delivers iconic imagery from this day in history.
Notifications with news snippets are pushed to you lock screen and all stories are easily shareable in the app, whether it’s through Facebook, SMS, email, or any other social network. Notifications can also be saved to a list for later reading during downtime.
Despite word of the company forcing its mobile developers to use Android devices exclusively to better support OS, Facebook’s press release didn’t mention a single word about an Android version. Not even so much as a vague “coming soon” can be found. Lame.
Still for our multi-platform friends, if you’d like to give Notify by Facebook a try, you can download the app from Apple’s App Store right here. Be sure to let us know what you think.
[Facebook]