MySpace News has a way to go

Stephen Withers
Friday, 20 April 2007 13:25

Your IT - Home IT

MySpace News is up and running, but it has a long way to go to catch up with Google News or Digg.

The basic idea is sound - trawl news sites for stories and classify them, much like Google News does, and then allow readers to vote on the stories, a la Digg.

This has the potential to deliver the best or the worst of both models.

Automatic spidering means a much wider range of content can be brought to readers' attention than by relying on people being sufficiently interested to submit stories.

On the other hand, the fact that MySpace is owned by News Corp - itself a major news provider - means some people are likely to be cynical about the initial placings of stories. If a new story gets a prominent placement (eg, on the front page), it's more likely to be seen and voted on than one that's buried in the heap.

It's a 'power law' effect. A small difference in quality, timeliness or bias in initial selection or presentation means a few stories on a particular topic get more attention at the outset, so more people read them, so they attract more votes, which keeps them in prominent positions.

What's wrong with voting? I'll list some shortcomings on the next page.