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Topix.net under the Spotlight

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I find Topix.net a great news source, and a facinating business model. On that basis, i thought the article about Topix by Mark Glaser at OJR was superb. Quite revealing as he talks to Rich Skrenta, ex of ODP fame.
On algorithms..

Skrenta doesn't have any illusions about making the computer responsible for any tough editorial decisions.
"Somebody wrote the algorithm to make it happen," he said. "[At Google] they pretend they're not making editorial decisions, but they really are. You go across the street to Yahoo, and they have no problem making editorial decisions. They're not doing the 100-percent engineer thing trying to hide behind the algorithm. They take responsibility for it."

Toward the end, there's a good Q&A also. Interesting stuff, particularly the use of AI in its algos...

- Y! MyWeb

Thanks, I enjoyed that one a lot

Great article/interview, great topic. Thanks a lot for posting that, I've been following that "industry" for a few years (on the sideline though). I liked this quote:

Skrenta: In a year and a half, there have been only four publications that have said, 'We'd rather you not crawl our site.' They've all been really small sites, a TV station in Pennsylvania, a tiny newspaper in Pennsylvania. We've had several thousand people come to us and say, 'Can you crawl us? We want to be on your site.'

The Danish Newspapers Assocation has managed to make aggregation -- even the use of "deep links" (links to stories) -- forbidden. Otherwise I'd have had a local version of Topix up and running for years. Somebody else did it and got prosecuted a few years ago. Had to close the shop.

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Oh, and the one about serving scrapers doughnuts *ROFL*

By claus at Aug 3 2005 - 21:33

Newsbooster

I interviewed their ceo and mikkel i think for sitepoint, though they don't seem to be carrying the story anymore..

How weird was THAT case? sheeesh

By Nick W at Aug 3 2005 - 21:40

Totally weird

Then again, it's much the same set of arguments they have as webmasters in general have against scrapers; "They [aggregators] make money off our [content producers] content".

The main difference is that the aggregator sites (if built properly) convert both for the advertisers/affiliates and for the content producers. So, the news sources get additional clickthroughs as well. And users are happy, too.

Anyway, I'm preaching to the choir...

By claus at Aug 3 2005 - 22:08