doing Mobile

Israel advocacy app prompts users to share personalized pro-Israel content.

Jacob Kamaras I JNS.org

I

srael news is omnipresent these days.
Myriad sources, from the mainstream
to the niche, are serving it up — par-
ticularly during times like the current
wave of Palestinian terrorism. But which
content should a pro-Israel advocate
read, trust and share with others to
make an impact?
The recently launched Talk Israel
mobile app seeks to give a well-orga-
nized and personalized feel to Israel
news consumers' content experience.
Calling itself the "first mobile app to
bring you pro-Israel digital content
from dozens of sources tailored to your
personal preferences and interests using
machine learning?' Talk Israel culls con-
tent from various sources, analyzes it

and crafts a personal news feed (called
"My Stream") for users based on both
their preferences among preselected
news categories and the stories they
read once they are using the app.
The objective? Getting Israel support-
ers — through the vehicle of the news
and information they read and share —
to do more than preach to the choir.
"The challenge that we looked at and
wanted to give a technological solu-
tion to was bringing pro-Israel content
beyond the base," says Dr. Amir Give'on,
Talk Israel's co-founder and CEO.
The free app was launched with the
support of the Adam and Gila Milstein
Family Foundation and with the Israeli-
American Council as its lead partner.
From Give'on's perspective, a particu-
lar circle of individuals might either

only talk amongst themselves or encoun-
ter those whose arguments they clearly
disagree with. Those two extremes, he
says, each represent about 10 percent of
the population on any given issue, but
Talk Israel's goal is for pro-Israel content
to reach the other 80 percent.
"We wanted to create an app that
would allow pro-Israel activists to
receive and see content based on their
own personal preferences," says Give'on,
a former aerospace engineer for NASM
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We believe
that if people get things that are more
relevant to them personally, they'll talk
about it more and they'll be able to
reach outside their circle?'

HOW IT WORKS
First, Talk Israel monitors and aggre-

gates Israel content through Rich Site
Summary (RSS) feeds. Once a piece of
relevant content is identified, it moves to
the analysis phase, in which Talk Israel
breaks the content down into 50 dif-
ferent "DNA" elements, as Give'on calls
them. For instance: Is it light or serious?
Is it short or long? Is it a video or text,
or text accompanied by a video?
Users downloading the app can cus-
tomize their content preferences from
a menu of topics including medicine,
environment/agriculture, human right,
sports, science, arts and entertainment,
coexistence, technology, business/eco-
nomics, lifestyle/food/travel, BDS, ter-
rorism, anti-Semitism, Hamas, Iran, IDF
morality and more.
But the customization doesn't stop
there. Just like each piece of content on

continued on page 40

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