When I get up in the morning I have a list of maybe 20 different websites I visit to read up on news and other things before I start my day. I check the same 20 websites maybes 3 or 4 times a day either to get an update or if I’m just really bored at work. Browsing to 20 different websites multiple times per day does get taxing however. There are a couple of solutions out there that would improve my browsing experience. Through the use of RSS feeds, which most content providers use now, it would be possible for me to add all 20 websites to a single program or website, like Google Reader or Feedreader, and centralize all of the news on these separate websites.
I've tried this solution however and for some reason I tend to like browsing to each individual website rather than going to Google Reader and updating myself that way. For me, the biggest downside to using RSS feeds at the moment is the lack of content they provide. On Google Reader I can check the top stores from websites like digg.com and Gizmodo but instead of a partial text summary complete with pictures and other media, like I would get at the actual website, the information that gets sent to me via RSS is incredibly stripped down and bland. With my product I want to change the experience RSS feeds provide.
I'm a big fan of pages like Netvibes and Pageflakes. Essentially these websites want to provide a similar experience to the one I'm interested in, except instead of focusing on raw news and informations both websites instead rely on a "widget" type interface to provide local weather, sports scores, and some very paired down RSS news. Users can also add their own content or suggest content for the website to add, such as a favorite local newspaper, but when it comes to reading real news on these websites the experience is lackluster and boring. "News" on these websites simply consists of one line of text, normally a headline or deckhead, per story which will link the user to the actual full text report on the host website. However, these headlines are almost always cut off by the graphics on these websites or by other feeds and widgets, not to mention there are no visuals or other content to make the story more appealing and eyecatching.
My solution to this problem is to drop the widgets and instead focus on using content rich RSS feeds that would provide more than a partial headline to the user. Possibly reflecting the format of a newspaper's front page my product would serve up only RSS feeds, which the user can select, modify, and add to their heart's content, which would include a partial text summary of the article in question, pictures that accompany the story, and any video or other media associated with the piece. Having these extra bits on information included with some text of the article's text not only garners more interest for the user but it also provides a visually rich news experience from multiple sources in a centralized location, something which is lacking currently on the internet.
Other features I would like to add, to help customize the user experience even more, include adding a StumbleUpon-like list of categories which the user can check off to receive only content that they'd be interested in. For instance, if you want to grab an RSS feed from the New York Times there are 20+ options to choose from, from the front page news to the books section to the classified ads. Let's say our user is interested in world news and gardening. If they select the right options instead of receiving other NYT stories from the science section, arts and entertainment, and local news they would only receive stories that had to do with gardening and world news.
Another similar feature I'd like to implement would let content providers serve up their most popular daily content to the user. On websites such as digg, where users vote to keep a story popular or bury them, one can filter out the junk from the important information, in most cases, by seeing how many people have dugg a particular story. Many of the most important items of the day, such as news over the White House and the War in Iraq, receive a large amount of attention on such websites and using their ranking systems can only help provide the most relevant news to the user.
Down the line there are other features I feel would be important to such a project, but at the moment I envision a website that provides relevant and interesting news via RSS feeds to a user and enhances the stories through the addition of more textual content and other media that accompanies the story. Multiple items would still be served up for a single RSS feed but they would only include the stories the user wanted to read, not a list of junk articles one might have no interest in reading. The hope for the website is to interest occasional news consumers and news junkies alike by giving them a content rich and focused news report containing headlines, text, images, and other items for the most important and relevant stories of the day.
[MOCK UP IMAGES GOES HERE]
5 comments:
I'm going to admit, I don't understand all the tech. ideas behind this idea. I was confused at first becuase I thought you were opposed to using RSS feeds, but by the end you were using the content-enhanced ones. Your idea to include an application similar to stumble upon really strengthens this idea because the consumer is enabled to choose what they receive. Furthermore, it would be a pointless site if they were being forced to sift thorugh the info they didn't want. My only concern was how "partial" is the partial story and what determines the cut off point? If it's at a certain word count, etc., what about stories not written in inverted pyramid style? Or is it going to be a recreated summary? The idea would definitely be strengthened with the addition of other media to this text-based site.
This seems a lot like my idea for college papers but at a national level. If you think of adding the geographic ideas to it, I think it would be a lot more appealing. Maybe a more steady base than stumble upon has. More in depth interests and maybe even adding taggs to articles?
Jordan
What I find most appealing about this idea where it brings the most important stories to the top of an RSS feed. You're right, you get a lot of junk blog entries and stories in a day and sometimes the good stuff sinks off of your reader before you even get a chance to check it.
However, I can't help but feel that RSS feeds may be so simple because it is somehow necessary. I have no idea how the technology works, but maybe there's a limit to the amount of information that these systems can handle? I think there would need to be a lot of research into how technically achievable this concept is.
Kyle (of Voltron)
I really like where this idea is going. My biggest concern is whther or not this creates a sense of community. I understand that there will be a rating system, but that doesn't instill a community feeling. Personalization and news that matters to the individual are key elements and I like it.
Sounds like an aggregator. Add geographic or interest specific content filters and refine the functionality. There is potential in this idea.
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