“We noted that the activity of young people has gone down on Facebook, even here in Finland,” said news editor Jussi Pullinen, which got her team thinking about reaching younger readers through WhatsApp, a mobile messaging service growing in that country and elsewhere. The team decided to try a one-message daily “newsletter” drawn from its section looking at events, pop culture, music and the internet. It reached 3,000 subscribers in 2 months, and moreover, “its subscribers often reply and chat with the reporters, asking questions about upcoming events or sending photos.”

+ Stateside in messaging apps: BuzzFeed launches its own “public chat” channel in messaging app Viber, following an earlier deal with rival weChat and rumors of a similar alliance with Snapchat (The Guardian)

+ UK’s The Times and Sunday Times are hosting Build the News, a hackathon aimed at students (EventBrite)