If you are experiencing problems with SPUN, please email us.
Updated 18 March, 2013.
Using SPUN
SPUN is the easiest way to keep your finger on the pulse of a city. Stories are curated from over 1000 sources in 11 cities, and we’re growing.
The Cube. To find a story to read, you can scroll and swipe the “cube” that spins in the first time you load the app.
Swipe SPUN left or right to see other categories.
Swipe upwards to see more stories. The most recent stories are at the top.
There are four sides of the cube: Top Stories, Arts & Entertainment, Food & Drink, and Lifestyle. Top Stories contains the best of other categories, so you may see the same story in Top Stories as well as one of the others. To read a story, just tap on any tile with a headline and image and the story view will appear.
Story View. In the story view, there is a map strip at the top and a navigation bar at the bottom. Tapping the map strip will open the Map View.
Map View. Each story is pinned to at least one location in a city. The picture below shows a story pinned to 5 locations, and each part of the story relates to one of those venues . Tapping a pink cube icon will open the map callout (here, “Culture: An American Yogurt…”). You can pan and zoom the map to find other pink cubes.
Stories pinned to one or more venues can be explored on the map.
If you want to see the part of the story that pertains to the place on the map, tap the ( i ) in the map callout and the map view will collapse into the story view with the relevant part of the story at the top. Otherwise, you can tap the ( X ) in the top right corner of Map View to close it and return to Story View.
Bottom Bar. The leftmost button will take you back to the cube categories where you can find another story. The rightmost button will open the Share dialog (discussed below). The center, heart-shaped button is for liking a story.
Liking a story will save it in your Saved Stories as well as send you notifications when you’re near a venue in a Saved Story. It’s a great way to find places you’re interested in that are hiding in plain sight. If you save a story about an event, you’ll get a push notification 4 hours before the event starts. You can change your notification preferences in the Settings menu. You can ‘delete’ a saved story by opening the story you want to remove from your Saved Story list and tapping the heart icon again – essentially un-liking it. NOTE: If you’re connected to Facebook, your Likes will be posted to Facebook, however you can change this in Settings/Facebook.
Sharing. In SPUN 1.5 we introduced a native share sheet that allows sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Mail, and Messages for iOS 6 users.
On iOS 5, you can share a story to Facebook, Twitter, or both at the same time. Just tap the Twitter and Facebook icons to enable sharing. You’ll be asked to connect your account first if you haven’t already. Type a comment if you want, and tap Post to finish. You can also share via email by tapping the link.
Settings. All of SPUN’s settings can be accessed by tapping the gear icon in the top right of the Content menu screen. Most of the settings here should be self-explanatory, but we’ll highlight a few:
- Stories you’ve Liked previously are in Saved Stories.
- Tapping Change City allows you to read about a different location. This is handy if you’re planning on taking a trip to another supported city.
- The My Accounts section allows you log in or out of your social networks, as well as control settings for posting Likes to your Facebook timeline.
FAQ
How do i delete a Saved Story?
Simply open the story you wish to remove from your Saved Story list and un-like it by tapping the heart icon again.
My location icon is on all the time. Why is that?
SPUN checks to see if you’ve changed cities and if you’re near a saved story. As a result, the locator icon in your status bar will be on. This shouldn’t have a significant drain on battery, however.
How do I see only content near me, like in my neighborhood?
We’ll be rolling out new features like this soon. In the meantime, enjoy the best content about your city.
I don’t want to read about sports. Can I hide those stories?
If you never click on sports stories, the app will gradually learn your preferences and rank those stories lower so they won’t clutter up your feed.