Naver's 'Overall Ranking News' Disappears... "Abolished in October"

[Asia Economy Reporter Buaeri] Naver announced on the 23rd that it will abolish the 'Overall Ranking News' by next month.

On the same day, Naver stated on its official blog, "As 'subscriptions' have become central to news consumption, Naver News has prepared some changes," adding, "We will abolish section- and age-specific rankings for all articles by October."

Last April, Naver introduced a new mobile Naver, consisting of two editions: 'Media Editing,' which is the editorial area of subscribed media outlets, and 'MY News,' an AI-recommended personalized news service.

Naver explained, "Users now consume news from subscribed media and personalized recommended articles, leading to a diversification of overall article consumption."

In fact, Naver delivers about 20,000 articles to users through its AI system, which is 100 times more than before the reorganization (200 articles).

Additionally, the number of articles with page views (PV) exceeding 100,000 has decreased by 24%, indicating a reduction in concentration on specific articles, according to Naver's assessment.

As article consumption has diversified and consumption by subscribed media outlets has become more prominent, Naver decided to abolish the 'section- and age-specific rankings' for all articles.

On the mobile 'MY News' edition, section- and age-specific rankings will be excluded, and the ranking homepage of the news service will gradually be changed to a collection of rankings by media outlet.

Naver will reorganize to make it easier to check subscribed reporters and serial articles.

From the 24th, the reporter and serial subscription cards that could be checked on the 'MY News' edition will move to the 'Media Editing' edition. From now on, users can see the latest updated articles of subscribed reporters and serial series all at once in the 'Media Editing' edition.

Reporter pages will also be upgraded. Naver plans to allow reporters to select their profile type on their reporter page themselves by October.

A Naver official said, "We will support reporters to directly curate major articles through their reporter pages, communicate with readers, and establish the page as a central area for personal branding."

Meanwhile, since October 2017, Naver News has operated a media subscription service where users directly select preferred media outlets, reflecting the editorial values pursued by those outlets. Currently, about 20.7 million users subscribe to an average of 5.8 media outlets each, and partner media outlets update more than 40 articles daily on the media editing edition.