Alibaba group owned news aggregation app UCNews will start compensating top bloggers, writers and self-publishers through its earlier launched blogging platform called WE-Media, reports ET. The platform offers “commercial rewards” to writers and bloggers who meet certain preset requirements. The company decided to start paying out writers after the WE-media platform witnessed a growth in non-news news related content like blog posts, independent write ups, imagery feeds, videologs, short video content. The company claims that the platform’s pageviews increased by 184% and 348% month-on-month, but did not mention the time-period of this growth. The news aggregation earlier debuted on the UCWeb browser. This feature was then launched separately as an app titled UCNews in India in June last year. The app features news content in 20 different categories including news, cricket, technology, entertainment, lifestyle and movies. It is currently available in Hindi and English language options. UCWeb also provides an ecommerce shopping aggregation feature on its Android app store called 9Apps which aggregates products and pricing offers from companies like Paytm, Flipkart, Myntra, Snapdeal, Jabong, Askmebazar, Voonik and Shopclues. It also offers discounts and coupon codes in a separate section. 9Apps currently claims to have 250 million monthly active users while UC Browser had crossed over 400 million monthly active users worldwide in May last year. Publishing platform Meduim shifts business model; starts rewarding writers Last week a similar publishing platform Medium founded by Evan Willams mentioned in a blog post that Medium will be altering its business model after its monetization…
