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Japanese news app developer Shiroyagi Corporation raises $490K from Global Brain

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Shiroyagi Corporation [1] recently launched a new curation app called Kamelio. And now just last week the startup announced that it has raised about 50 million yen ($490,000) from Japanese investment firm Global Brain. The money comes from a $150-million fund managed by Global Brain but primarily invested by the country’s state-run investment company, Innovation Network Corporation of Japan. Shiroyagi’s co-representative director Yoshi Watanabe elaborated how his team will be improving on app: We’re currently a eight-person team. In order to build up a solid user base, we’ll keep focusing on improving the interface of our app for the time being, improvising the algorithm on our ‘follow’ engine and speeding up back-end data processing. Kamelio has adopted a new concept that differs slightly from conventional news curation apps. While many apps present selected articles based on what articles are trending on social media or which media you subscribe to, Kamelio picks up articles based on topics you are likely to be interested in, using their unique algorithm to go even beyond the keywords you’ve entered in your preference. As the team is comprised of technology experts, they expect to attract potential co-workers by…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Shiroyagi Corporation [1] recently launched a new curation app called Kamelio. And now just last week the startup announced that it has raised about 50 million yen ($490,000) from Japanese investment firm Global Brain. The money comes from a $150-million fund managed by Global Brain but primarily invested by the country’s state-run investment company, Innovation Network Corporation of Japan.

Shiroyagi’s co-representative director Yoshi Watanabe elaborated how his team will be improving on app:

We’re currently a eight-person team. In order to build up a solid user base, we’ll keep focusing on improving the interface of our app for the time being, improvising the algorithm on our ‘follow’ engine and speeding up back-end data processing.

Kamelio has adopted a new concept that differs slightly from conventional news curation apps. While many apps present selected articles based on what articles are trending on social media or which media you subscribe to, Kamelio picks up articles based on topics you are likely to be interested in, using their unique algorithm to go even beyond the keywords you’ve entered in your preference.

As the team is comprised of technology experts, they expect to attract potential co-workers by opening their growth hack knowledge to the public.

shioroyagi-team


  1. The company name ‘Shiroyagi’ is means ‘white goat’ in Japanese, encourages their team members to climb higher and higher. ↩

Meet Kamelio, Japan’s latest mobile news app

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See the original article in Japanese Tokyo-based startup Shiroyagi Corporation recently launched a news curation app called Kamelio. Here in Japan the competition between mobile news apps is heating up lately, and this is just the latest of entry. Similar services include Gunosy, SmartNews, NewsPicks, and Line News. Shiroyagi Corporation was previously chosen to participate in Movida Japan’s accelerator program, on Demo Day pitching their app under the name of Bizlio. Can Kamelio survive this competitive news app landscape in Japan? Let’s take a look at the application. Topics and timelines After login, the app asks you to type a keyword that you are interested in, and then related topics appear as well. When you choose a topic, you’ll see a preview news items around that theme. Topics are based on Wikipedia, and in total the app crawls amounts over 4000 news/media sites. On the preview page, you can follow a topic via the follow button in the upper right. You can keep following topics by typing other keywords or tapping on related topics. Trendy topics will be shown with the red “trending” mark, so you can what’s popular in real time. Another remarkable feature of this app is its…

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See the original article in Japanese

Tokyo-based startup Shiroyagi Corporation recently launched a news curation app called Kamelio. Here in Japan the competition between mobile news apps is heating up lately, and this is just the latest of entry. Similar services include Gunosy, SmartNews, NewsPicks, and Line News.

Shiroyagi Corporation was previously chosen to participate in Movida Japan’s accelerator program, on Demo Day pitching their app under the name of Bizlio. Can Kamelio survive this competitive news app landscape in Japan? Let’s take a look at the application.

Topics and timelines

After login, the app asks you to type a keyword that you are interested in, and then related topics appear as well. When you choose a topic, you’ll see a preview news items around that theme.

Topics are based on Wikipedia, and in total the app crawls amounts over 4000 news/media sites.

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On the preview page, you can follow a topic via the follow button in the upper right. You can keep following topics by typing other keywords or tapping on related topics. Trendy topics will be shown with the red “trending” mark, so you can what’s popular in real time.

Another remarkable feature of this app is its timeline. Each news article has a timeline in the upper right, and when you tap it, other related articles will appear in chronological order.

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Serving user interest

The chief scientist at Shiroyagi Corporation, Akira Shibata, tells us that the potential of Kamelio lies in its ability to present what users are unaware of:

We are often unaware of what we are really interested in. With Kamelio, we’d like to help users find information about their interests. If a user likes music, he’ll be reminded when his favorite artist releases a new song. A user can keep up with a topic that interests him even when he doesn’t follow a certain media.

The early pioneer in mobile news curation in Japan is Gunosy, which goes beyond being just a news service. It matches individual users and information, and the company is now running a successful ad network.

Kamelio has the same potential as well. But the startup is behind the other major competitors. No matter how developed their recommendation system or algorithm are, if the app isn’t accepted by enough users, the business can’t move forward.

Stay tuned to this space, because it’s only going to get more interesting!