I’m excited to announce that the Engadget app is now available for download on Windows 10. As the General Manager at AOL Alpha, I partnered closely with Microsoft and our engineering teams to define the features users would experience as well as the overall look and feel of the new app. Over the past six months we at, AOL Alpha, have been highly focused on bringing our brands onto many emerging platforms, such as streaming OTT boxes, new distributed content plays and virtual reality. Now we are excited to announce our latest emerging platform … Windows 10!
Our focus on Windows 10 as an emerging platform might come as a surprise for some. After all, Windows has been around for a while and many think of emerging platforms as brand new. For me, Windows 10 reasonably fits all of the criteria we use to define our strategy when delving into a new platform.
- Strong growth and velocity: Adoption of Windows 10 has far outpaced the growth of the previous operating systems, and continues to get a major foothold on users on Desktop, tablet and mobile devices.
- Scalable opportunity: At over 270 million active devices and growing quickly, the Windows user base is already at a scale in which we can reach a whole new audience. And with new platforms on the horizon, the sky’s the limit for our opportunity for success.
- Strong native experience: From Cortana to notifications, Windows uses a strong native experience to enhance the content consumption experience for our users.
- Strategic fit with our brands: Finally, there is a strategic fit for brands like Engadget, TechCrunch and more, to leverage the platform.
The AOL Alpha team took on the task of building our first Windows 10 experience just six weeks ago. And in that time, we were able to build an engaging experience that we believe makes the most of the Windows 10 platform.
Highlights of the Engadget Windows 10 app:
We designed and built the Engadget app with the Universal Windows platform in mind. Our goal was to create an experience that gives users the full Engadget experience in the most seamless and engaging way possible. To achieve this, we included the following Windows 10 features.
- Cortana support: We have started simply with asking Cortana to open Engadget to your favorite section (as an example you can say – “Hey Cortana, open Engadget with entertainment section” or “Hey Cortana, open Engadget with gear section”). As we learn more about what users want, we will be adding more phrases and functionality.
- Live Tiles: We integrated ‘Live Tiles’ so that our users can discover latest and most popular articles.
- Notifications: With breaking news notifications in the ‘Action Center’, users will never miss out on the latest news or breaking stories.
The Engadget team is very excited to bring a truly native and feature rich experience to Windows 10 users. This will allow us to not only serve the existing Engadget fan base already on Windows devices, but also reach new readers. We are also excited to continue supporting and building on this experience. Look for additional features coming to the Engadget app, such as authentication, customization and more. Download the Engadget app for Windows 10 today!
