Yahoo: platform shapes content

While content plays a major role in capturing the attention of readers of news, the role of the platform is not to be underestimated."With the phenomenal platform shift to mobile, users’ content consumption today is hugely shaped by how the content is served and how easily they discover content they are interested in," Yahoo South East Asia managing editor Alan Soon said."This is where platforms and their designs play a huge role in connecting people to content they want and keeping them engaged."For example, the company's News Digest mobile app takes a mobile-first approach."These stories are framed by the platform in the sense that they represent summarized, bite-sized storytelling for a mobile audience."Sports and entertainment are not the only popular types of news in South-east Asia, with local news also in the top three types of news.People want to be both informed and entertained. That’s why we see a lot of consumption around hard news as well as celebrities,” Soon said.To help engage users and advertisers key to the monetisation of Yahoo News, Yahoo South-east Asia offers content in some local languages, including English, Vietnamese and Indonesia in the region. For Taiwan and Hong Kong audiences, the news site's content is available in Chinese.