Tag Archives: aggregation

Mumbrella: Murdoch to remove sites from Google’s index?

3 Replies

Following his comments last month in which he described aggregators as ‘kleptomaniacs’ and ‘plagiarists’, Rupert Murdoch has suggested News Corp could remove its sites from Google’s index.

Speaking in an interview with Australia’s Sky News (video below): “I think we will [remove our content from Google’s index]. But that’s when we start charging.”

As Mumbrella explains: “Using the robots.txt protocol on a site indicates to automated web spiders such as Google’s not to index that particular page or to serve up links to it in users’ search results.”

In the interview, Murdoch also discusses what could be put behind potential news site pay walls.

Full post at this link…

Aggregator NewsNow says publishers seeking court injunction to stop linking

Leave a reply

In an open letter to publishers last week, news aggregator NewsNow claimed its service is under threat following legal pressure from UK newspaper publishers.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk at the time, managing director Struan Bartlett said almost all of those publishers named and regional newspaper group were putting pressure on the site.

Some publishers have demanded compensation for the site’s links to their content rather than a revenue share, he added.

Today Bartlett has published a ‘free linking’ Q&A outlining further details of the site’s deteriorating relationship with newspaper publishers.

In the post, Bartlett lists the publishers threatening action against the aggregator and says a number of publishers are threatening to seek a court injunction that would stop us linking if the site doesn’t accept proposed charges and controls.

“It is true that news providers perform a critical public-interest role, something we are dedicated to supporting. But the role of news aggregators, as platforms that enable people to locate news and that support a competitive market in news providers, is today equally critical to the public interest,” says the Q&A.

“The impact of the publishers’ proposed charges and controls on link aggregation services like ours is not in the public interest or compatible with newspapers’ stated desire to safeguard journalism and to protect freedom of expression, freedom of communication and access to news.”

Journalism.co.uk also heard from the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) in response to our report on NewsNow’s open letter last week. A spokesman said the NLA supported NewsNows’ non-commercial services e.g. free feeds to consumers.

“We want links back to publishers’ sites and understand their centrality to the internet,” he said.

With regards to NewsNows’ commercial activity e.g. its bespoke feeds for clients, the agency said it is seeking to ‘license and legitimise this activity – not stop it’. In June the agency announced that it intends to start charging web aggregators for a licence permitting them to use links to newspaper articles.

“The NLA believes a legitimate and thriving market in web cuttings – with fair shares for content creators and distributors – will be better for all,” the spokesman said.

TechCrunch: New site for Hearst to semi-automate content

Leave a reply

Following on from Peter Kirwan’s Wired.co.uk article on the move away from journalism and journalists in business magazine publishing, TechCrunch reports on consumer mag publisher Hearst’s new site, LMK (or ‘Let Me Know’).

Using semantic filtering technology the site will aggregate and filter content to create curated topic pages – each with its own freelance editor and designers. The best sources for each topic, e.g. college football, are selected by the editing team and then the technology takes over.

So far, sports topics seem to be dominating the launch – can such semi-automated pages work for breaking news and other news areas?

Full post at this link…

Editor&Publisher: DailyMe’s Newstogram follows readers’ ‘tastes’

1 Reply

News aggregation site DailyMe has launched ‘Newstogram’ – a new piece of tech that analyses the reading behaviour of users.

The idea is that publishers will be able to use this information to serve up personalised news recommendations based on a user’s individual interests.

This basic function will be free to publishers – more complex use of the data will require signing up to DailyMe’s applications.

Full story at this link…

paidContent.org: ‘The fallacy of the link economy’ for news sites

3 Replies

Media consultant Arnon Mishkin argues that the value of linking between sites is getting captured by aggregators rather than by the news sites that they scrape and link to.

“Even in an absolute best-case scenario for producers of original content, the aggregators get at least as much traffic on linked stories as the creators of those stories because anyone who clicks on the link does so from the aggregator’s site (so each site gets a page view),” he writes.

“[E]ach aggregator gets to build a ‘front page’ to target and win over their chosen segment, or enable each user to tailor a front page perfectly suited to his or her needs. And they can do that by leveraging all the resources of the global journalistic community without paying any part of its cost.”

Looking at the link economy from the perspective of making money and getting the most out of initial traffic bursts generated by aggregators linking to a news site, Mishkin suggests three tactics:

  • News sites should seek ‘an equitable economic relationship’ with aggregators and drop links if they don’t get a fair deal;
  • Partner with other content providers to create their own aggregation sites;
  • Look at ‘wadgets’ – a combination of content and advertising – rather than ‘widgets’ purely offering a site’s material. This would allow them to monetise some of the traffic on the aggregators site.

The AP’s recent suggestion that it will creating landing pages for members’ news content and introduce a advertising revenue share arrangement seems to go some way to meeting Mishkin’s recommendations.

Interesting thoughts in a week where user-powered aggregator Digg introduced its new ad system. The question of how much revenue aggregation sites are generating should also be considered.

Full paidContent.org post at this link…

Related: see Publish2 founder Scott Karp’s thoughts on newspapers and the link economy.

Wired.com: URL shortener bit.ly to launch real-time news service?

1 Reply

Bit.ly, the URL shortening service, is planning to create a ‘real-time news service’ by building on its relationship with Twitter, where it is frequently used as a link shortener.

The service would track news trends not just the most used words circulated with bit.ly links, reports Wired.com.

This will involve looking at links shared by unlike people, which suggests topics with ‘universal appeal’, Andrew Cohen, bit.ly general manager, told Wired.

Full story at this link…

DNA09: Aggregators – friend or foe? Unfair competition, says Copiepresse

Leave a reply

Google’s decision to introduce advertising to the US version of Google News invalidates the companies arguments that their aggregation is fair use – the thoughts of Margaret Boribon from Copiepresse, speaking at today’s Digital News Affairs (DNA) conference.

Copiepresse won its case against the search engine giant for publishing and storing the newspaper group’s content without permission or offering payment. Google also removed the group’s content from its index – though the damages filed for (£39million) haven’t been finalised.

Boribon stands by the group’s original argument – Google News is an information portal, a filter between readers and news to the detriment of the newspapers’ own websites.

Plus – the opt-out system of Google News crawling sites is in contradiction with opt-in system of European legislation, adds Boribon.

Is she against aggregation? No – but aggregators must learn to respect content producers and their rights.

Speaker Nigel Baker from the Associated Press (AP) said the agency wants to see its content reused, but there must be control and a commercial model in place for this reuse.

“There are some aggregators out there who are helping themselves to content. It gets to a stage when they are more valuable and they have to negotiate proper deals with content providers or suffer the consequences,” said Baker.

But the age-old question rears its head:

Can news organisations afford to live without Google? What alternatives are they proposing?

Newspapers need to educate people that information has a value and producing it is a costly exercise – it can’t be given away for free, says Boribon.

But it is – and news content in particular has to be monetised quickly before, as Livestation’s Matteo Berlucchi said, ‘it dies on the vine’.

Perhaps a Creative Commons attribution/revenue share deal for news organisations content would work, adds Berlucchi, but you have to realise that the value of news is fleeting.

Howard Owens: Don’t let aggregators replace your newspaper’s homepage

Leave a reply

Few users click on homepage links on a newspaper website – the majority come for the headlines and then leave, suggests Howard Owens.

“That’s one reason newspaper.coms are foolish to let aggregation sites such as Topix display all of their headlines and leads,” he adds.

“Topix is in the business of creating a substitute home page for your community news.”

Design your site instead to meet your readers’ ‘intention-driven mindset’ whatever that may be, he writes.

Full post at this link…