A VC - Latest Comments in Scanning Headlines

Re: Scanning Headlines

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:32:09 -0000

Nope. I'll check it out. Thanks for the heads-up.

Re: Scanning Headlines

Lyn Headley — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:27:50 -0000

Hi Pascal,

Have you seen the Hourly Press? It's an aggregator based on an authoritative social filter that aims to circumvent the Digg problem. It gets its links from twitter. (I'm involved).

http://hourlypress.com/

The first instance is News about News.

http://newsaboutnews.hourly...

Re: Scanning Headlines

juepucta — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:21:27 -0000

The NYTimes site already did that whole linking to outside sites - recently actually. Although, i think they already killed the idea. For the life of me i cannot remember the stupid name of the project, the personalized online edition of the paper (Times Extra?). These days their technology and money sections aggregate. Not argueing against your point, in any case. Just pointing it out.

-G.

Re: Scanning Headlines

vincentvw — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:07:52 -0000

Isn't it more a matter of contextual relevance? What I mean is that news can be relevant to a person, because it's about a certain location (what I imagine that company FW invests in to do, is it called OutsideIN?), to be consumed at a certain time (e.g. when the markets open), or of global interest (e.g. 9/11 or global pandemic)?

It's human nature to browse around for no reason at all, which is what many people do, and no wonder that "(not so) smart" aggregation, basing suggestions only on the past, get confused. Group aggregation is kind of effective, I guess (e.g. techmeme), but it's also often not directly relevant to your every day.

To me, the perfect aggregator collects news that is relevant to my context, and when you really get down to it, that means that Google search is about as smart an aggregator as is needed.

Re: Scanning Headlines

Shreenath Regunathan — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:51:22 -0000

True that; but do you think your reading is that predictable/expected!

Re: Scanning Headlines

Phillip Baker — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:13:47 -0000

The NY Times has also already started to link to other sources from its front page, at least as a test (they are asking for feedback). There is a link under the masthead for Times Extra which inserts several links under story excerpts. It's not pretty, but it is there.

I love that the Times has so many experiments out there and I don't think it gets enough credit for trying most of the time. But, I also fear the way many of these experiments are released - by tip-toeing around the main site - will negatively affect the results it sees and what it learns from each one.

Re: Scanning Headlines

ShanaC — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:30:30 -0000

The better question we should all be asking ourselves is what purpose does aggregating serve in this instance?
I wrote about it in the case of Blip.TV, I think their aggregator solves one problem for their user base- brand management. However that aggregator assumes a high level of text and interaction. Its goal is to easily create communities for tv show creators where their consumers hang out. Not every aggregator needs to have that goal.

Re: Scanning Headlines

jarid — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:47:46 -0000

>>If the front page of NYTimes.com linked to everything interesting on the web instead of just their own stories, they could play the same game. I understand the organization reluctance to do that, but I wonder if they have any other choice.

Interestingly, they already do "Headlines From Around the Web" with their Tech Update email. For example, today's update had links to Techcrunch, Engadget, and TUAW:
http://www.nytimes.com/inde...

It's not quite what you're suggesting, but it's a step in the right direction.

Re: Scanning Headlines

ShanaC — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:04:00 -0000

I'd borrow those parts of her browsing history in a heartbeat.Especially if she has a good fashion aggregator. Specialized and good fashion advice is harder to come by than tech advice, especially if you are female...

Re: Scanning Headlines

Alex Popescu — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:42:42 -0000

Shana,

This is an interesting idea that I'd like to think more about. Would you mind giving a couple of such "task" examples?

In case such a task is: "find out the details of the FriendFeed acquisition" I think this will remain in the search field (or if it is a longer term "task" then alerts are probably the way to go).

./alex

Re: Scanning Headlines

Alex Popescu — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:32:07 -0000

IMO historical data is just a small piece of the whole solution. And Fred is presenting the most basic example for easily breaking its usage.

The more generic problems/questions to be solved about historical data is:
- what parts of the historical data are relevant? (this is probably one of the reasons APML hasn't been adopted so far)
- how should the system rank historical data considering the possible changes in user's interests over time?
- how should the system use historical data when the user is operating in "short term interest" mode? (looking for the last game results, comments, etc.)

bests,
./alex

Re: Scanning Headlines

fredwilson — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:47:33 -0000

Great point on words vs data. That's a big deal carl

Re: Scanning Headlines

fredwilson — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:46:33 -0000

Great point on words vs data. That's a big deal carl

Re: Scanning Headlines

davidmattia — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:44:12 -0000

great comments. Everyone seems to agree that (content consumer) Choice is the dominant trend, and others see how production and distribution should be separated but why is the next step so hard? I guess because it has never been practiced by content related businesses before now. The "win at any cost" social period we just flew through for years is receding just as social "trust" is being examined in every part of our collective lives. Think of it as a pendulum swinging. How might media enterprises reflect this social need ? Having come from several, I do not think the present culture at most old media outlets will support the kind of change needed because their needs are overwhelming their senses right now.

Re: Scanning Headlines

magickseeker — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:13:05 -0000

Very fascinating discussion. It reminds me of the debate between publishers (social gate keepers) and authors (providers of content).

Re: Scanning Headlines

fredwilson — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:03:14 -0000

I don't think so. I believe it was a 'human resources' acquisition

Re: Scanning Headlines

Carl Rahn Griffith — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:58:42 -0000

I don't see this as necessarily being a problem, Fred - maybe it's because we are still conditioned to think of how we scanned hard-copy newspapers?

Whilst we may think (through rose-tinted spectacles) that we 'read' the entire newspaper in fact what we typically did (or 'do' if still a patron of hard copy news, like myself) is only drill-down into a small percentage of articles. From a headline we assimilate very quickly what stimulates us and so what warrants our further time to read in more detail.

Only a given number of stories at a given time can truly engage us - depending on our frame of mind at the given time, attention-span available, external influences, motives, etc.

I'm happy to sacrifice some time to skim a given % of headlines knowing this is part of the process of identifying/filtering what's really of interest to me. If all my headlines were so finely tuned to me I drilled-down 100% of the time I'd be a tad concerned that I was missing out on other news/articles that required me to decide on whether they interest me or not.

With 'perfect' headline tuning resulting, there is also the risk of losing that greatest of delights - serendipity.

The more we aggregate, the more headlines we have to scan and decide upon, and all in the blink of an eye. If an app can (over time) 'learn' from what the reader is actually drilling-down into it can begin to fine-tune the results on any given topic - as we are trying to do with ensembli.

But, in my opinion, we must never lose sight of the fact we're talking about words, not data - the tuning of words/their nuances and the discovery of news/articles is something we should take delight in and not be frustrated by.

Re: Scanning Headlines

fredwilson — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:56:21 -0000

I think it can be built on top of twitter

Agreed about hacker news. What a great service and community they've got there

Re: Scanning Headlines

fredwilson — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:56:18 -0000

Hi andraz. I give out my browsing history right here on my blog. Its on the blogrollr widget. Unfortunately my daughter borrowed my laptop and has been visiting fashion blogs!

Re: Scanning Headlines

fredwilson — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:56:17 -0000

I think my clickstream, my various social nets, and a bit of stumbleupon together would get a lot of that done

Re: Scanning Headlines

fredwilson — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:56:16 -0000

@qotd baby!

Re: Scanning Headlines

fredwilson — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:55:15 -0000

Hmm. A move back to licensed content? I'm not sure about that. It has so much overhead

Re: Scanning Headlines

Robert Hacker — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:24:45 -0000

The notion of becoming an aggregator of content is why FaceBook bought FriendFeed. http://bit.ly/4CAKo2

Re: Scanning Headlines

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:22:12 -0000

The problem -- and the strength -- of social aggregation is that everything depends on the community. If you have the right sort of community the best news comes up and if you don't the worthless stuff comes up.

The best example of a successful social aggregator, in my view, is Hacker News, while the worst is Digg, which has become completely useless to me as it went mainstream. Not that I think there's something wrong with "going mainstream", on the contrary, but there's something about the *way* Digg did it that let all the good out and all the bad in, and now whenever you go to Digg the only things that come to the top are lolcats.

Which is why I thought Reddit open sourcing their platform was such a great idea -- I think what you need is a sort of "Ning for News", where there would be infinite potential for niche communities to come together around a smart technical platform for aggregation. But Reddit never really pulled it off, probably because they got acquired too soon. Then you could build "meta-aggregators" around specific verticals -- tech, politics, etc.

Perhaps today the best potential for a smart social aggregator might be Twitter, especially combined with Bit.ly and other services.

Re: Scanning Headlines

Andraz Tori — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:12:16 -0000

User's browsing history might be a great learning set for the aggregators, but are you willing to give that data out?

OTOH it seems that 'social aggregation' is faring much better than fully automatic one, most of the web communities function is 'social aggregation' of data.

bye
Andraz Tori, Zemanta