The number of monthly active users of Opera’s newsreader service has exceeded 100 million as of November 2017, Opera has announced. This marks an unprecedented growth from two million to more than 100 million monthly active readers in less than one year.
This growth, according to Opera can be attributed to the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) engine which was developed to provide readers with relevant content in a smart way. The AI system studies users’ news-reading behavior in real time and learns from it in order to provide them with a personalized news offer. This means people get faster and easier access to news and videos that interest them.
The news and video service has witnessed a 50-fold growth since its introduction in the Opera Mini browser in January 2017. Usage data from November shows that the average user now spends 40 minutes every day inside the Opera browser and engages with between 65 and 81 news stories per day.
This is also good news for publishers: Opera’s AI technology increases exposure of their articles by delivering them to relevant people who are thus more likely to comment and share. In 2017, Opera has partnered with over 800 websites and publishers, including 96 Indonesian publication websites.
“The AI engine is designed to instantly provide personalized and localized content, right at their fingertips. We are thrilled to see such rapid growth both in terms of users and actual usage of the service.” Jan Standal, VP Product Marketing, and Communication at Opera said.
Opera new app.
Opera has also announced plans to launch a dedicated news and content app. Codenamed Opera Habari, Opera says the new app will offer users news and videos relevant to them and will use the same AI-engine Opera browsers.
“Building on the success of Opera Mini, we will continue developing our AI-service to make it one of the leading content discovery platforms in the world. The unique combination of a large user base with our deep technology skills gives Opera a unique position to achieve this goal. We are looking forward to releasing the new app in the near future.” Jan Standal said.
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