Mike Isaac

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News Startup Circa Taps Reuters Social Media Head for Editor in Chief

Circa, a mobile-focused news startup, announced on Tuesday that it has named Anthony De Rosa as its new editor in chief.

De Rosa has been the social media editor for Thomson Reuters for the past two years, aiming to grow the company’s social presence with his very active Twitter and Facebook presence. Before this, De Rosa also worked on a number of media-related partnership programs inside of Thomson Reuters, and also spent time building out SB Nation’s social presence via Tumblr.

Circa, like a number of news-focused mobile apps in the tech space recently, aims to bring breaking stories to consumers on smartphones who want to read news quickly, on the fly. To do that, Circa’s editors break down some of the largest news stories of the day into “atomic units” — the company’s words, not mine — essentially what Circa considers the meat and potatoes of a news story. From there, it’s easier for readers to get in and out of a news story fast.

“There’s a huge opportunity to present news in a way that’s made for mobile,” De Rosa said in a company blog post on Tuesday. “Nobody is thinking about this more than Circa and I’m thrilled to help move that mission forward.”

That’s a different take on a crowded space, as apps like Prismatic, Flipboard and Reeder compete for consumer attention, while others — like Zite and Pulse — have been snapped up by larger companies aiming to build out their content platforms for mobile devices. Seeing as Circa has no immediately apparent plans for monetization, it’s entirely possible that the startup could angle for the latter exit strategy.

But for now, Circa co-founder Matt Galligan told AllThingsD, De Rosa will focus on expanding the number of breaking news verticals that Circa will cover, and the company plans a number of new product releases over the rest of 2013. De Rosa will also begin to build out the startup’s editorial team on the East Coast.

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— Om Malik on Bloomberg TV, talking about Yahoo, the September issue of Vogue Magazine, and our overdependence on Google