News360 Selected to Join the Microsoft BizSpark One program; Receives $1.5 Million Grant From Skolkovo Foundation

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - Nov 10, 2011) - News360, the popular cross-platform newsreader that delivers personalized content based on a user's unique interest graph, announced today that it has been selected to join the Microsoft BizSpark One program, identifying a small number of high-potential startups from among more than 45,000 BizSpark program participants in 100 countries. BizSpark One participants demonstrate a strong potential to succeed, shape the industry's future and enhance the overall value of Microsoft products and services for end users.

News360 also announced that it has been awarded a $1.5 million grant from the Skolkovo Foundation, a non-profit organization that works with innovators, scientists and international corporations to spur a culture of innovation and technology entrepreneurship in Russia. The Foundation's IT Cluster, led by Alexander Turkot, selected News360 for its use of semantic data structure analysis to create new ways to search for content across the Web. The grant will be used to accelerate linguistic research and further development of News360's semantic analysis engine by a Moscow-based R&D team.

"It's an honor to be recognized by two organizations whose missions are so closely focused on accelerating innovation and entrepreneurship across the globe," said Roman Karachinsky, CEO, News360. "Having access to Microsoft's advisors and technology resources is a huge asset as we continue to expand across mobile platforms and on the Web to build the next-generation news platform."

"The BizSpark One program is comprised of some of the strongest startups in the industry with the greatest potential for continued success," said Mark Relph, Senior Director, Strategic & Emerging Business Team at Microsoft. "We believe News360 has identified a unique opportunity in a crowded news application industry -- to approach personalization in a whole new way. We look forward to continuing to work with the company through its growth and development."

"The goal of the Skolkovo Innovation Center is to identify and support high-impact innovation, and News360 is one of our member companies that is combining unique scientific research with a successful consumer product," said Alexander Turkot, executive director of the Skolkovo IT Cluster. "The company has created a best-in-class linguistic analysis engine, and we see tremendous potential for applying this technology around the world."

About News360
News360 is a popular newsreader for use on smartphones, tablets and the Web that presents a comprehensive look at the most important news of the day around the world, and the most important news of the day as it relates directly to its users. The app analyzes more than 150,000 articles from 10,000 sources daily and ranks them according to quality, relevance and freshness. News360 uses the social cloud to build unique interest graphs for each user, helping them discover new content, sources, and interests. News360 is available for the Web, and all major mobile platforms, including iPhone and iPad, Android Honeycomb tablets and Android smartphones, BlackBerry PlayBook, and Windows Phone 7 devices. News360 is privately held. For more information, visit www.news360app.com

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