Tango Channels is a new way to push updates and content to consumers

Mobile messaging company Tango is announcing a new way for companies like Spotify and 500px to push updates and content to consumers through a service called Tango Channels. At first blush, this might sound like a new ad program, but that’s not exactly it. Turns out that Tango already runs in-stream ads through a partnership with Twitter-owned MoPub. The new channels, on the other hand, aren’t ads per se, but more akin to Facebook Pages — a product that gives brands a home on the service. Co-founder and CTO Eric Setton said that things like Tango’s Spotify partnership and its gaming platform have shown that Tango is a great place for users to share content, so Tango Channels expands that idea with a larger group of partners.

Mobile messaging app Tango is boosting its multimedia presence and potential to make money after it introduced content-rich ‘channels’ to itsiOS and Android apps. Channels are basically portals for brands to post messages or multimedia content to Tango users, who can follow specific channels if they want the content to appear in their newsfeed, and also recommend them to their friends. An update adding the feature actually rolled out last week, but now Tango has fleshed out the six main channel categories — entertainment, news, sport, lifestyle, humor and music — with content from Spotify, AOL, Dailymotion and other launch partners. The idea behind channels — which is similar to the feature of the same name in BBM — is to keep users inside the app and more engaged with their friends on the service. Tango was already reminiscent of Asian messaging apps with its gaming platform and personal newsfeed, and adding brands to the mix was inspired by the likes of Line, WeChat and Kakao Talk, Tango CTO Eric Setton told TNW in an interview last week.