Prototype

Apple-News-Analyzer

What if…

you could analyze Apple’s news coverage within the iPhone news feed and create insights into their page-rank mechanism?

Problem

Apple did not roll out the Apple News app in Germany yet but the iPhone already displays the unpersonalized news feed on the -1 page. The feed shows exactly 4 articles which brings lots of traffic to our news-sites but it is unknown how Apple is selecting and ranking these articles. To understand this mechanism, we needed an analytics tool which tells us exactly what content was displayed when for how long and on which rank.

Solution

Our approach is not elegant but it works: Every minute a script takes a screenshot from the feed on the iPhone simulator and uploads it to our backend. Here an OCR component reads the content and extracts all information that is of interest for us. We collect this data in a database and aggregate it on a dashboard.

Challenges

The whole implementation is a collection of workarounds. The creation of the screenshot tool was challenging because the simulator is not really made for this purpose. If this prototype finds its way into production we definitely have to think of an alternative because this does not scale.

Feel free to visit the dashboard: Apple News Analyzer