Plex Acquires Watchup To Stream National, Local And Internet News On Demand
Today, Plex is upping its efforts to be your one-stop shop for all things media with the acquisition of Watchup streaming news service. Watchup aggregates some of the world’s most trusted news services into one place so that you can create your own customized viewing experience. Over 150 news partners are available through Watchup including CNN, CBS, Sky News, EuroNews, The Street, Financial Times and GameSpot (among many others).
The service also covers over 100 local markets nationwide. Local coverage is provided thanks to partnerships with Scripps, Tribune Media, Cox Media Group, Hearst, Lilly Broadcasting and Meredith, just to name a few.
Users can customize their news-watching experience, allowing you to choose topics that are most relevant to you. You can build your own channels and reorder videos clips to your liking. Your video feed will play continuously, and the app’s algorithms learn from you viewing feedback (using a simple thumbs up or thumbs down) to better tailor news delivery to your tastes. This sounds almost like a video equivalent of Pandora.
“People have to navigate a ridiculous number of interfaces and apps to get to their favorite content,” said Plex CEO Keith Valory. “Our mission at Plex has always been to provide our users with one simple and personalized window into all of their media, accessible from any device. Adding a trusted and reliable news experience into Plex, so that people can choose and organize the news they care about along with the other content they care about, is a natural next step for us.”
WatchUp is currently available on iOS, watchOS, Android, Wii U, Amazon Fire TV platforms, but this new acquisition means that the functionality will eventually be incorporated directly into the Plex app, which joins other such recent additions like Plex DVR and Plex Cloud. We’re told, however, that this addition will occur until a few months down the road.
