Circa is an app that’s become very popular recently. Scoring a near perfect five-stars on the iTunes app store, it seeks to chronicle news by subject and delivers only those stories to its users via notifications.
When I first heard about Circa, I was beyond thrilled that an app like this had been created. For people in the news industry who don’t always have access to wires, this would be an amazing way for them to keep track of things on the go without much effort and with the added benefit of ease of use in apps.
The app works by giving its users news articles that Circa publishes themselves and divides those articles into six sections: Top Stories, United States, Politics, World, Technology, and Science and Health. Upon choosing a section, the user has articles displayed to them in chronological order. Once a user reads about a story they’d like to keep tabs on, they simply tap the follow icon to receive notifications on the related articles.
Circa’s user interface is beautiful and welcoming. But although all of this seemed very exciting and promising, I found myself being let down frequently. First, the six sections make it very hard to follow other very popular topics like money or sports, which nearly every news organization covers to some extent.
Being a news app also demands a lot of information. Constantly. On a given day, I observed that there were only six national stories worth publishing by 3:48 PM. If this seems slim, it is.
It’s also concerning that Circa fails in its most basic function to keep its users informed. I would receive updates on articles quite late compared to other news apps. However, the best comparison would be to that of Google’s email alerts in news.
When you search the news tabs within Google, a link at the very bottom of the page reads, “Stay up to date on these results: Create an email alert for [topic].” Once set, Google emails its users updates depending on how frequently they want them. The most appealing thing about this version is the ability to see a variety of news sources on a selected topic. Imagine getting rid of every other news app and creating an email account just for news alerts. All in all, while Circa’s has the right idea about what people want, they’re, at best, a basic prototype for what’s next.