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| Justin Bieber seen at the World Premiere of Open Road's "Justin Bieber's Believe" presented by Teen Vogue and sponsored by Clearasil, on Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2013 in Los Angeles. |
Snipp3t is a celebrity-tracking app that enables users to "subscribe" to news and updates about the stars they care about.
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At its heart, the free app is a celebrity-news aggregator that pulls in and organizes the latest headlines.
Users begin by choosing their favorite stars to follow. Microsoft said Snipp3t includes profiles for more than 100,000 celebs, which include everyone from A-list actors and reality TV stars to more curious names such as serial killer Charles Manson. If users sign in with Facebook, the app will automatically subscribe them to celebrities whose pages they've liked on the social network.
Snipp3t then creates a stream of headlines based on the latest news related to the names users have subscribed to. If they want to dig deeper into one particular person's background, users can visit his or her profile page, which includes a bio, career highlights and related celebrities, along with most recent news stories.
Powered (naturally) by Bing, Microsoft's search engine, Snipp3t "is just the latest manifestation of Microsoft’s new strategy," the company said in a blog post, referencing CEO Satya Nadella's recent memo, which outlined his vision for Microsoft's future.
"Bing is not just Bing.com; it’s also a platform," the company explained in its post. "And one of the goals of SNIPP3T was to demonstrate that Bing could be useful as a platform in a variety of scenarios."
It's unclear whether the app, currently on iOS only, will come to Android or Microsoft's Windows Phone. Snipp3t is being billed as an experiment, so its future will likely depend on how well it's received on iOS first.
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TOPICS: APPS AND SOFTWARE, APS AND SOFTWARE, BING, IOS, IOS APPS, MICROSOFT, SNIPP3T, TECH
