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One note/question - did the seattle times link to the "best" coverage or the "loudest/biggest" coverage? It certainly wasn't the best coverage in my opinion.
The difficulty is that as you suggest, everyone wants their pageviews - so it's like everyone has to pull back for anyone to pull back.
My rule on CN is simple - if I have nothing to contribute I don't post. And I know where I am on the totem pole, the news will be read 4x over before they get to me - so its critical i add additional insights.
I also don't ever copy full press releases - I saw a lot of this yesterday with the biggest blogs/newspapers. Yet they still all get the love - amazing, right?
This issue will only get worse sadly as more and more people compete for the eyeballs.
1. Video over on fastcompany.tv which is all original content and can't easily be duplicated (today's video was done in Israel, for instance).
2. Community conversation on FriendFeed and Twitter.
As Allen Stern notes above, its not worth writing the main story when you are a "micro-cap" blog, its far easier just to link to it, especially if it is being discussed ad nausea.
Any piece of specific analysis in our post? Yes - the difference in interests between Management and other Stakeholders. And who will be called to account once the stock prices re-set.
The fact that Madonna is a star with a large audience doesn't make it less interesting for other people to sing too.
My idea: people spreading news (word of mouth) is good and will only increase as blogs and social networks become even more popular. This trend is not bad but good.
If, in fact, trying to get information from the Web is occasionally like trying to take a drink from a fire hose, then there exists a business model for the mechanism that turns it into a drinking fountain.
Excellent article - my question (using your example of the local Midwest city where a factory that is a major employer announces that it is shutting down) is how can one easily determine what is original whitout wading through say 500 stories about the subject? That's where a large problem lies and I think a great business opportunity is.
Jeff
I'm moving on that opportunity. It is taking time, but building contextual authority, knowing that a topic is about a Local topic and picking the local news source is part of that. I'm also looking at context by category, TMZ knows more about Sex Tapes than CNN. Chicago Tribune knows more about Oprah than the Hillsdale Daily.
Try isayhello.com and see what you think.
Today's Colbert Greatest Living American story is a great example of knowing context.
http://www.takingthebridge.com/2008/05/response...
About filtering redundant news, doesn't Google already try to do this by omitting similar results? You can search for a topic and get 1,156 results, but when you click to see all related articles, Google pares it down to something like 788.
Google removes duplicates from the same source. And duplicates that are the same reposting of an AP story.
But if the stories are about the same topic but are not 70% the same words you get them all, and you either get them in Chronological order or in Page Rank order.
So.... If you write that What's Next for Yahoo, and I write Where does Yahoo go from here, Google doesn't see those as dupes.
And... If you are writing for a PR8 site, and I am writing for a PR2 Site, until 100 people have linked to my story and none have linked to your story you are going to out rank me.
So in a scenario where I get an exclusive interview with someone, and CNN reports that I had the interview, CNN will out rank me, which you might say was right, since they are CNN, but when you get in to something like the Yahoo Story, isn't GigaOm more of an authority on the Merger Fall out than say Associated Press?
I think the Seattle Times blog article you point to is interesting. On such a controversial topic, however, I wish they had gone for a more opinion laden piece which captured short block quotes from the authors they were referencing. I felt that Times article felt very much like a newspaper article + links.
If you serve an editorial role (ie hitting the most salient point or quote)--is that content redundant? I think the line of redundant may be vague. Some might say the Campbell soup cans paintings are redundant or meaningless pop culture....but others would call them art.
Cheers!
(I'm going to argue no because most of my readers may NOT have considered this problem in the way most of your have and I then take it a different way.)
That "different way" I go with it is this - what's an average (or maybe, I hope?) slightly better-than-averagely-tech-proficient web consumer/user to do?
I'm new to the blogosphere, but a lifelong researcher/journalist/social science (emphasis on the social) at heart. I LOVE twitter, facebook, linkdin, digg, del.icio.us, aggregators, alltop (where I found you) and ... you get the picture. But at the same time it paralyzes me. I literally don't know if I'm learning anything/benefitting from the hours I can put in "twittering" or digging thing and checking out what my pals have.
When I try to learn more, I just sink in this whole deeper either because I'm 1) in over my head with SEO and metamemes or because 2) I find something fabulous like this or journadism or cjr or alltop and bam, 3 hours have gone by of me "commenting" and filling my brain with knowledge so much it hurts, literally.
And meanwhile, what new facts did I glean?
Sometimes a chestnut like this one, right up my alley of what I just plain LIKE so it was worth it. But other times. I wonder shouldnm't I be outside playing?
Your help, wise people, please!
People only have so much time and we largely assume regular web users know how to move through as many sites as we monitor on a daily basis, which isn't true.
The view above is like flying over a city in a helicopter. Not everyone has a helicopter nor would they know how to fly one if they did. So regular surfers don't get this macro view of the web and need stories to show up on the part of the web they visit the most.
Maybe not total re-posts of stories, but links for sure.
This is inevitable....
http://www.parislemon.com/2008/05/another-class...
And that seems to be the argument that WashWords above
is making. The echochamber will always be with us....how do deal with it--in order to progress and to solve info overload in the coming years will be critical.