Trove was a

social news A social news website is a website that features user-posted stories. Such stories are ranked based on popularity, as voted on by other users of the site or by website administrators. Users typically comment online on the news posts and these com ...

aggregation web and mobile application, with apps available on

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

, Android, and Fire Phone. Trove is also the name of the company behind the application, which was owned by

Graham Holdings Graham Holdings Company (formerly The Washington Post Company) is a diversified American conglomerate holding company. Headquartered in Arlington County, Virginia, and incorporated in Delaware, it was formerly the owner of ''The Washington Po ...

. Trove was shut down in December 2015.

Usage and features

Trove was a free

discovery and sharing platform where users connect with others through shared topical interests. Users can curate personalized newsfeeds based on their interests, called troves. Users then "pick" the best stories to share with their followers both on Trove and other

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

sites. Users could follow a trove to see those picks on their

home page A home page (or homepage) is the main web page of a website. Usually, the home page is located at the Root directory, root of the website's Domain name, domain or subdomain. For example, if the domain is example.com, the home page is likely l ...

. Smartpick In January 2015, Trove added a "Smartpick" capability. When enabled, any relevant articles posted to a user's

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

account will be categorized and picked on Trove automatically. Conversations In October 2015, Trove launched "conversations", which enables curators to engage their following in a discussion about a particular pick.

History

In 2009, Washington Post Labs (WaPo Labs) was created as the digital innovation and technology team of The Washington Post Company. In 2010, The Washington Post Company acquired iCurrent, a personalized news and information service that became the basis for the company's news application. In August 2013, after

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

CEO

Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ; born January 12, 1964) is an American businessman best known as the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and clou ...

bought The Washington Post Company's newspaper division, WaPo Labs was formally renamed Trove. Trove remained part of the parent company, which was renamed

Graham Holdings Company Graham Holdings Company (formerly The Washington Post Company) is a diversified American conglomerate holding company. Headquartered in Arlington County, Virginia, and incorporated in Delaware, it was formerly the owner of ''The Washington Po ...

(GHC). Graham Holdings Chief Digital Officer Vijay Ravindran is Trove's CEO. Headquarters are in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, with a second office in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. In December 2015, Trove was shut down after being integrated with SocialCode.

Product evolution

Trove's First Launch
In April 2011, the first iteration of Trove was launched as a personalized news web application. Washington Post Social Reader
In September 2011, the WaPo Labs team optimized the web application for

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

and launched Washington Post Social Reader, one of the first social news applications to leverage Facebook's

Open Graph The Facebook Platform is the set of services, tools, and products provided by the social networking service Facebook for third-party developers to create their own applications and services that access data in Facebook. The current Facebook Pla ...

technology. Social Reader had 17 million monthly users at its peak. iCurrent powered the personalization technology behind Social Reader. Trove's Relaunch and Platform Releases
In January 2014, Trove relaunched as an

and web application. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' called Trove, "a treasure for news junkies."

CNBC CNBC is an American List of business news channels, business news channel owned by the NBCUniversal News Group, a unit of Comcast's NBCUniversal. The network broadcasts live business news and analysis programming during the morning, Day ...

called Trove, "a

Pinterest Pinterest is an American social media service for publishing and discovery of information in the form of digital Bulletin board, pinboards. This includes recipes, home, style, motivation, and inspiration on the Internet using image sharing. Pint ...

board for news." ''

USA Today ''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...

'' and ''

The Today Show ''Today'' (also called ''The Today Show'') is an American morning television show that airs weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on NBC. The program debuted on January 14, 1952. It was the first of its genre on American television ...

'' have also given positive reviews. Trove launched on the Android platform in July 2014. Fire Phone
In collaboration with

's Fire Phone launch in July 2014, Trove began providing news search results through the Firefly plugin. When Fire Phone users scanned something with Firely, Trove would return relevant news articles and troves. Apple Watch
In April 2015, Trove announced the release of their

Apple Watch The Apple Watch is a brand of smartwatch products developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple. It incorporates activity tracker, fitness tracking, Health (Apple), health-oriented capabilities, and wireless telecommunication, and integrates wit ...

integration. Users could scan headlines, pick stories, and leave comments directly from the watch. Amazon Echo
In September 2015, Trove became available on

Amazon Echo Amazon Echo, often shortened to Echo, is a brand of smart speakers developed by Amazon (company), Amazon. Echo devices connect to the voice-controlled Virtual assistant, intelligent personal assistant service. ''Amazon Alexa, Alexa'', which resp ...

as an Alexa skill. Users could instruct Alexa to ask Trove about the latest news, or request information on a specific topic.

References

{{Reflist English-language mass media IOS software Android (operating system) software IPod software Mobile social software News aggregator software