Summly, an iPhone app that creates automated summaries of the news, has been launched by 16-year-old entrepreneur Nick DAloisio.

The free app enables its time poor users to quickly browse and read condensed versions of news stories.

Users can discover new content from hundreds of sources, including the Wall Street Journal, ESPN and even Twitter streams, as well as sharing with friends on social channels, SMS and email.

News hounds can customise the news with topics and keywords, Summlys algorithm then automatically determines the most relevant facts in a story and generates short summaries for the user.

For the full story, readers can click through to the original article. Summaries can also be cached to be read offline.

Summly is backed by several investors, including Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry and Yoko Ono.

“I designed Summly because I felt that my generation wasnt consuming traditional news anymore,” said DAloisio. “In designing for the mobile generation, I believe weve created an app that will benefit anyone who loves reading news on the go.”

Mary Meeker, venture capitalist, said: “Nick and his team have cleverly re-imagined how content will be consumed on mobile devices. With the Summly app, not only does the who, what, when, where and how of content rise to the top, Summly has the potential to create an ecosystem for the best content to be distributed more broadly.”