Circa is seeking a buyer after failing to raise a new round of venture capital funding, Fortune reports. It sounds like 2015 is going to be a make-or-break year for the pioneering mobile news app, which first appeared nearly three years ago.
Circa delivers bite-sized nuggets of breaking news on mobile devices which can then be followed in more depth on the Web. In many ways it anticipated the era of the smartwatch, where “glanceable” snippets arrive to lead users into more detail on subjects that interest them.
See also: Circa’s Matt Gilligan On The Future Of Wearable News
It’s mobile first in a way that most big media outlets aren’t, even if they have smartphone and wearable apps to their name. Its approach has never made more sense than it does in the era of the Apple Watch and its ilk.
Whoever buys Circa to make use of its technologies has a ready-made head start in the wearable race—something that certainly should interest major publishers. Remember, Yahoo was willing to pay handsomely for a news summary tool of its own, spending $30 million on Summly a couple of years ago.
Circa has amassed more than $5 million in angel and seed funding since its October 2012 launch. It offers dedicated apps for iOS and Android, complete with Apple Watch and Android Wear support.
Wearable Screens
A smartwatch screen is not just smaller than a smartphone display, it’s used in a completely different way—a point Circa CEO Matt Galligan made to us as part of his Wearable World Congress speaker profile.
“Anyone who’s going to try to present articles [on a smartwatch] is insane,” he says. “The lesson for me is that it’s all about ‘glanceability’ and quick actions. Get those right, and then worry about features.”
Users can’t spend a long time staring at a wristwatch like they can with a phone or tablet. Plus, notifications are harder to ignore, because a smartwatch is always at hand—and that means alerts have to be as useful and as pertinent as possible.
Which brings us back to Circa and its uncertain future. If it can get wearable news right, then that’s worth a lot to the right buyer. The startup is working with an undisclosed third-party to explore who that could be. “We have some good leads,” Galligan told ReadWrite by email.
The failure to secure more funding will be a disappointment to the Circa team, but in a market shifting towards smaller screens and wearable devices, there’s still potential in its unique approach to news.
If you want to find out how the Circa story continues, join us at Wearable World Congress 2015, May 19-20 in San Francisco, where you can hear from Matt Galligan and many other innovators at experts.
Lead image by Nick Statt for ReadWrite
