As often as with subjects that I want really to follow well, I need more than one source. So, this time I wanted to compare 4 different automatic news portals in my Netvibes page: Wikio, Google news, Inform and Topix.
As you can see from my capture, I have setted all 4 with the same number of feeds and details and I have selected also the publishing by date. Wikio and Topix are publishing also pictures.
What is interesting and contrary to my expectations is that the 20 news on my screen are all different ! That depends of course on sources and methodology and on the date of publishing.
That would also suggest that all 4 portals have different approaches that could appeal to different users.
For Wikio I have choosen the Wikio.co.uk (as the Wikio.com was less focused on the tournament and a special human created directory: http://www.wikio.co.uk/sport/tennis/tennis_tournaments/wimbledon.
Wikio searches the medias but also the blogs (if pertinent).
For Google News it is the .com edition and the search string is just Wimbledon and Google news is limited at the media (no blogs). The same works for Inform which presents a selection of UK media sources. Topix checks thousands of sources.
I must confess, with just this 20 results, I am not able to choose which is working best. I will have to look a them, over time.
But if things remain like that, I think that I will keep just Wikio and Google news to check eachother as the human content selected sources (blogs included) of Wikio can correct the full automated Google news based on ranking.
And you, what is your favorite and why ?
If you want you can check my Tab in my Universe.
24/06/2008
I compared 4 news aggregators in my Netvibes: Wikio, Google news, Inform and Topix.
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3 comments:
Hi, I prefer Google News because the total of media they cover is much bigger than the ones followed by Wikio.
Erik
A very interesting experiment, Netviber. I'm glad you liked that at Wikio we include such a large number of blogs and have a human touch in our search. I found it interesting that you chose to balance our human-assisted Wikio search against what you felt was a more automated Google search, by using them together.
Just in response to what Erik said, our approach is to include all the large media news sites, and also a large number of blogs. This means that our users will get the news from the big-name sites, and also discover stories not covered by the mainstream media.
We do not distinguish between blogs and the media as news sources. So in the same way that Netviber chooses to use Wikio in tandem with Google to get a balance on his/her news, we attempt to provide a balance on Wikio itself so that our users will get the news and views from the giants of the media world and the also from blogs they might not have read before.
Anyway, very interesting stuff, Netviber. Glad you took the time to check all this out :)
Dan
Erik, Dan thanks for your comments.
Dan, as you are a Wikio insider, what else would make me choose just Wikio ? Some new features ? ;)
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