Skip to main content

Pulse adds social news section to ‘Highlight’ articles your friends are sharing

pulse highlight
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Pulse formerly only aggregated the news from just select publications. But as time went on and as Zite and other mobile reader platforms were evolving and adding social curated content, Pulse eventually relented and followed suit. Today Pulse announced Highlight, a standalone curated section in the app that pulls in all the important news shared by your social circle on Facebook.

With Highlight, Pulse is putting the curatorial power into your friends’ hands. If you swipe the navigation bar open, Highlight is the first option. Clicking on “Highlight” opens up a news feed, curated with the news that your friends are sharing excessively on Facebook. If you’d like, you can manually curate your friends’ Highlights by tapping on the blue Highlights icon at the bottom of an article in Pulse. Clicking on the icon shoots the Highlighted story to the top of your friends’ Highlight. At the same time, the icon also facilitates sharing news from Pulse to other social networks. For some of us, our friends are an excellent purveyor of the latest breaking news we’d actually care about. 

Recommended Videos

There are a few aspects of Highlight that Pulse is working on fleshing out right now. For starters, profiles and profile pages have made an entrance. You can now select your friends’ profile (inside of the Highlight feature) to view everything they’ve highlighted. In addition, Highlight in its current state shares full articles, but Pulse doesn’t want to settle with this. The Pulse team also wants to add support for excerpts your friends may have plucked out including quotes, short snippets of text, or images.

Pulse has been undergoing rapid changes in the last several months. The news aggregation app released a completely redesigned platform in November that allows users to discover more content since the pages now display as many publications as you’d like to. Then in January Pulse took its first step into social with the deep integration of social networks including Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube, and Flickr. Everything shared by friends or followers on these social networks would pop up on your Pulse news feed, depending on the social networks you’ve decided to integrate with the app.

And Pulse isn’t done yet. With the release of Highlight, the app is “just scratching the surface of what’s coming in Pulse.” 2013 will spell out a new direction for the app, “where a lot of exciting things are going to be launching and building on this platform.”

Highlight is currently available on Android, but its iOS app is waiting to be approved by Apple.

Francis Bea
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Francis got his first taste of the tech industry in a failed attempt at a startup during his time as a student at the…
Missed Prime Day? The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 is still on sale at 27% off
Samsung Galaxy Tab s9 back and front visible

If you missed the tablet deals of Prime Day for any reason, the good news is that there are still some amazing discounts available on Amazon. If you don't mind going for a previous-generation model for more savings, check out the 256GB model of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9, which is on sale at 27% off. From its original price of $920, it's down to just $670 for huge savings of $250, but probably not for much longer as this is a limited-time offer. You need to hurry if you don't want to miss out on this bargain!

Buy Now

Read more
OnePlus Nord 5 shows Samsung how to make the perfect Galaxy S25 FE
Rwar shell of the the OnePlus Nord 5.

About three weeks ago, a rather interesting phone landed at my doorstep. It was OnePlus’ latest budget pleaser, which neither falls in the “mid-tier” segment, nor sniffs too close to the flagship summit. Yet, the value it offers at an MSRP of around $400 redefines the whole concept of the class that we often refer to as “budget flagships.” 

The Samsung Galaxy Fan Edition phones are the quintessential definition of this honor, at least for the competition-starved US market. After using the OnePlus Nord 5, I’ve come to the realization that this is what a true Fan Edition phone should look like. One that delivers where it matters, without a confoundingly high price tag slapped on the box. I believe it's a recipe for Samsung to emulate for its next Fan Edition phone.

Read more
I’m excited for the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, but it could let us down in one area
Google's tipped to deny its most expensive phone a top spec
Someone holding the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold, showing the back of the phone.

The Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold looks set to gain a number of significant upgrades over its predecessor including a larger display, smaller hinge, bigger battery, and improved dust resistance.

The Google Pixel 10 series is tipped to arrive in the coming months - possibly as soon as August - and we're expecting to see a quartet of new devices, including the Pixel 10 Pro Fold.

Read more