Kanye West, the multi-industry creative entrepreneur, is poised to disrupt the media business. Ye has launched a mobile-first news platform called Yews. Currently a website accessible only on mobile browsers, Yews provides a quick snapshot of news delivered several times daily. For example, as of 8PM/ET in the United States, Yews offers two news drops to -10AM and 3PM. Furthermore, catch each news drop daily or risk missing out. To be clear, the previous days headlines disappear.
Your Guide to Yews
News headline hoppers simply click on a drop time and a list of headlines appears. For example, the 10AM news drop on December 29 reveals stories covering everything from conflict in the Middle East to the trend in AI social media influencers. If you were expecting a steady diet of entertainment coverage, think again. Yews truly captures the biggest stories of the day. In summary, after reading Yews over several days, we’d say major trends covered by Ye’s news platform include artificial intelligence, war, spirituality, U.S. politics, China and finance.
The 3PM drop covered tech stocks, which superhero movies flopped in 2023 and a study showing emojis activate brain regions. Next, readers can open a story by tapping a headline. Then, a William Blake artwork accompanies each headline along with a brief of the story. Furthermore, each story has a link to the original source. We’ve seen sources range from Newsweek to Bloomberg to Business Insider.
Does Ye feel a kinship to Blake? Like Ye, Blake is considered a visionary poet, skilled artist and nonconformist thinker. The great English poet of the Romantic era challenged norms of his day and was misunderstood in his time. His poems often explored themes of innocence, experience, imagination, and social injustice.
No Ads
While there is no advertising on Yews, Ye’s YEEZY brand has utilized the platform to make announcements. For example, a December 13 item was a quick press release about Gosha Rubchinskiy joining YEEZY as Head of Design: “The arrival of this legendary Russian designer at YEEZY, the pre-eminent global brand in music and fashion, is a milestone in design history.”
Rubchinskiy is a Russian fashion designer and photographer who left a significant mark on the global fashion scene before taking a hiatus in 2018.
Also, Yews has covered the launch of Ye’s latest entry in the footwear space- YEEZY PODS. Described as the “foldable future of footwear”. Further, the brand says PODS are their first product “since liberation from Adidas”.
News Publishers and Social Platforms Break-Up
Yews comes at an interesting time. According to The New York Times, executives of the largest tech companies have said that “hosting news on their sites can often be more trouble than it is worth because it generates polarized debates.” The Times points to Elon Musk’s “disdain for the mainstream press.” The X owner has encouraged content creators to publish directly on the X platform instead of driving users to their sites via links.
With a decline in referral traffic from social apps, intermediate platforms like SmartNews, Apple News and Flipboard are becoming more important to publishers. Yews joins that mix.
