Well, another news aggregator launched today. This one is called Newspond, and while they didn’t set a record for baseless hyperbole, they come close.
The site, like TechMeme and Digg, tries to determine breaking and important news - but it is a little different than both. Digg uses user voting to determine headlines. Techmeme uses linking behavior of blogs and other news sites. Both are, arguably, fairly transparent, and you can see the number of user votes or inbound links, respectively to a headline. Newspond, by contrast, has a black box algorithm that looks at number of factors and comes up with an overall score called a Buoyancy Rating. The higher the rating, the higher the headline.
So their approach is fine, although I argue that it’s filling a need that doesn’t exist. There’s just little to drive people to the site day after day. The user interaction on Digg, both from submitting and voting on stories (and getting all your friends to vote on stories) drives significant viral growth. TechMeme doesn’t have that, and has orders of magnitude less traffic. Newspond doesn’t have it either. And it’s unlikely to replace TechMeme as the blogger’s news site of choice.
But they just make ridiculous statements on the website that I can’t ignore. The home page says Newspond is “The most advanced news site on the planet.” The about page has a huge yellow ball thingy and the same words in 40 point type. It also calls itself “the ultimate hub for the latest news.”
What’s the technology behind this stunning new startup? Well, within “the heart of Newspond lies a tireless electronic brain” with “highly-advanced machine intelligence” that analyzes news “at a faster rate of speed than any human being could ever dream of.”
It reads like a movie script.
So far here’s my experience with the site - questionable freshness on the headlines and a complete failure to send me an activation for my account signup (they’ve posted on their blog about the problem). They also fail to provide a RSS feed for their content. Not so useful.
More and more websites are starting to make these types of ridiculous claims to get attention. It works, but only for a day. And after that, with your credibility shot, everyone is waiting for the inevitable failure. And since expectations have been set so astronomically high, even a mild success is still seen as a dismal failure.
Glam did it on a grand scale when they called themselves the “fastest growing web property in the United States” to justify a huge valuation. What they really are is a big ad network that’s currently unprofitable but is growing rapidly. But they are most certainly not the largest womens site on the Internet, or the fastest growing site in the U.S. (they count the traffic of all of the sites they sell ads for as “theirs). Glam is worthy of positive attention, but their ridiculous statements cost them credibility.
And we saw it again yesterday. New startup YouNoodle, which is currently little more than a catalog of startups, claimed that they could predict the valuation of startups five years out based on nothing more than information about the founders. The product hasn’t even launched, but the New York Times jumped on the story anyway. The only way I’ll believe it works, I said, is if they use it to predict their own failure.
I’m going to continue to call companies on unrestrained hyperbole, and hold them to the expectations they’ve set with users. Being proud of your work is one thing, but spouting random nonsense is something else entirely. Enough.
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Good for you.
With all due respect, for the longest time you were guilty of blowing air into the bubble… so it’s a welcome change to call BS on some of this, well, you know what.
Yes, I am talking about that magical 2-day span when you chronicled:
- a peeing site, mizpee
- Kevin Rose’s 3rd startup
- a back from the dead company, Swaptree
- a walking dead company, Feedster.
I like the site personally. I like the look of it and find the stories interesting. adtech ile reklam 2.0 dönemi başlıyor ve Trkycmhrytllbtpydrklcktr r10.net seo yarışmasıTo be honest, this is better than Digg because you don’t have the Digg “gangs”, groups of idiots that only vote up Apple and anti-Microsoft stories.
The site AND claims are BS. It reminds me of one horse shops numbering in the thousands that opened an auction site using out of the box software claiming to be the next ebay. Thousands failed.
Ridiculous and pointless. At the end of the day, you know who breaks news? CNN or FoxNews. Because they have the journalists and they buy the AP feeds. And you know who else America turns to keep up to date on the day’s news? Drudge.
peeing site?
No RSS feed? It’s useless to me.
i prefer the old spond.
wow. we did.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....mizpeecom/
cool.
you should change the headline to “introducing the most advanced news site on the planet”
oh i thought this was a venture backed company. it’s just a web designer’s project. like whitesoap.com or something. oh well. no point to get all riled up for a designer’s pet project.
Pondnews seems a better name for them.
Eric - agree. done.
Why don’t you bail on that second rate operation you’re currently at and come work for the good guys (us)?
The question is when are we going to get a news site that has useful news for the mainstream? For people who don’t know what Digg is, but still go online to look for non-techie news. Newspond is just another news site because it’s inundated with Tech and Gaming articles. Niches are great, but who will take care of the masses? Newsvine comes close, but there is certainly space for more.
While I respect the effort that they put into it, I feel like they’re trying to sell me on the eyecandy rather than on the content. There are unnecessary design elements all over the site that would have probably been cool back in 2004. Essentially they’re TechMeme but with a candy coating… the only problem with that is TechMeme isn’t broken… so why fix it? Do they bring anything new to the table becuase it certianly doesn’t seem like it…
Chris - they bring lots to the table. Like “highly-advanced machine intelligence.” Who wouldn’t want a little more of that?
its so shiny!
MIANNNE EYESSSSS
Somebody went out of control with photoshop plugins. Nuff said. The rest of it is LOL funnay.
Yesterday in a rural Texas town we had HUGE Gas plant explosion that made national news. I didn’t find anything on Digg or Newspond about the explosion.These sites are creative, cool, and fun, but limited to the industry for the time being. I still think the hot chick reading the breaking news is the key. I’ll keep watching Robin Meade.
at least they dont have a beta sticker.
Michael - Maybe they can utilize some of that “highly-advanced machine intelligence” to get Opera compatibility and an RSS feed? Two things that should be no-brainers for any site these days.
I also love how they fail to mention this fantastic article in their blog thanking everyone for the launch coverage…
Now, do people want the nice, shiny, apple-look-a-like news website, or the more lighter, no-nonsense news site? Interesting to see what the people’s preferences are.
I’m not sure if I’m more impressed that you covered a pee oriented service (*go Duncan*) or that your readers commanded it at the top of their list. That’s pretty cool on multiple levels.
Ok on a serious note, I love the idea of aggregaters like techmeme and even this. I would rather though someone made a “roll you own aggregater”. Something I could adjust the white/black lists on and tune for keywords etc. Someone fund this!
So what is the YouNoodle score for Newspond
Yeah, I don’t know if it’s really the best thing since sliced web 2.0 bread. A newsreader that bases it’s content on a multitude of users really doesn’t give everyone what they want, does it? You know, stuff that actually interests them?
Wow, that sounds really spiel-sy.
But there IS a newsreader out there that exists that bases it’s content on what the user actually WANTS to see. It’s ‘Sprout’, a “new intuitive newsreader that sends content to the user based on their personal preferences.” (says their site). There’s a free trial on now. You can find the trial here: http://www.yoursprout.ca.
@un.valley with a “tireless electronic brain” working for you, why would you ever need to launch in beta?
In before Persai
Two more mistakes (newspond people listen):
1. When you are logged out and click Reply to a comment or favorite a story, it doesn’t do anything. It should send you to a register/login screen or even better bring a lightbox in to gather that info and log them in asynchronously.
2. They ask you to “Create a new user”. Not “Sign Up” or “Register” which would be normal. That just sounds wrong on so many levels.
The Flip Side:
1. This is a two person team according to the about us. Small teams result with often little outside perspective. You keep your head down and control all aspects of a site it happens it’s impossible to account for everything. With Viddler’s version 1 we had many problems.
2. They Solve Story Duplication very nicely. This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I read my RSS feed and I find similar articles all redigested from 5 different sources. This reports one article with multiple sources and let’s you explore the story that way. There database is small right now but look what this sources are aggregated here: http://www.newspond.com/story=231343 . It needs work but a nice start
3. So what if they exaggerate? To me it’s pretty clear they were just some software developers working hard and having fun with this.
PERSAI!
I went to charm school, so I say: It’s nothing but male bovine excrement!
the startup world - just like hollywood, is egos galore
let ‘em be, if it doesn’t work - reality will let them know, all in due time
I like the site personally. I like the look of it and find the stories interesting. To be honest, this is better than Digg because you don’t have the Digg “gangs”, groups of idiots that only vote up Apple and anti-Microsoft stories.
As for the about us page, sure its a little over the top, but at least they are using marketing principles - remember 99% of the world falls for them
And for the average Joe that might stumble across NewsPond.com, this could be the greatest thing in the world to them.
Whilst the site seems a little useless to me, the website look and feel is magnificent, right down to the way you interact with the threading in comments.
I want to hire this web designer!
I actually liked the site… for goodness sake, they are a 2 person startup and has just launched.. so I would at least give them the benefit of the doubt.. although its not too smart for claiming themselves to be the most advance news site on the planet, come on, they are missing out by not claiming to the best in the milky way.. aliens do read news u know..
Hey thanks for the comments. The about page was indeed written with a lot of enthusiasm for the site, and perhaps was a little over the top, even I admit. It definitely wouldn’t hurt to tone it down a bit and we’ll definitely look into re-wording that page a bit.
Newspond was originally built as a tool for both myself and LucyLuBot to get the latest news, long before we decided to make into an actual product. And we’ll continue to try and make it the best news gathering tool we can, regardless of how we present ourselves.
Cheers!
i think the proof is in the pudding… (proof in the putting? pudding? who cares…) the fact remains, function is king… you can make something as pretty as you think it can be… but putting all your attention to detail into your design first and foremost is a sin… look at the top services… any of them that you find visually attractive, hit up the wayback machine and see how pretty that shit was when the core was coming to life… right? i think it’s a valuable lesson… people don’t care as much about “great design” as designers tend to think… and it’s clearly not going to win your service any comers in lieu of a decent technical offering…
pretty though… just not very useful.
@Chan don’t tone it down, push it way over the top. overlay.tv launched there product video on there frontpage way over the top and it was clear they were having fun with it.
Have fun with it and don’t pay attention to the critics.
Is it me or does “Newspond” sound like “New Spawn”
Was that the last domain left on the internet? Maybe they should buy “therapists4kids.com” That would be a better domain for them…
Michael, if you are sick of aggregators touting movie scripts, take a look at nobosh. nobosh has dozens of reasons for users to keep coming back in ways that the so-called “tireless electronic brain” has failed.
@36 .. newspond is actually a great name.. jealous?
I don’t know how the service will work out, but I have to admit that the design is gorgeous. I checked out the homepage of the designer and it looks like a lot of his designs are very similar. He does one thing, but he does it very, very well.
gorgeous sites tend to fail. useful sites tend to succeed.
you’re going to continue to cover and give publicity to site’s with rediculous claims?? What a total waste of time, a single post aggregating and comparing these sorts of releases would be ample.
In a way it is counterproductive, I’m sure many an entrepeneur cranked up the hyperbole dial a notch just to get a mention after they saw your post.
Based on their about page, I’m guessing that they saw a vacancy in the market for “Apple-styled” news sites. It’s soooooooo Apple!
Yup, gorgeous but not very useful. The question is when are we going to get a news site that has useful news for the mainstream? For people who don’t know what Digg is, but still go online to look for non-techie news. Newspond is just another news site because it’s inundated with Tech and Gaming articles. Niches are great, but who will take care of the masses? Newsvine comes close, but there is certainly space for more.
I thought the interaction and speed was great! I liked the design though felt maybe the colors were a little dark. However, I like the AJAX and speed of content loads.
The site seems totally useless to me.
Kudos to the interface designer though, the site looks gorgeous whilst remaining clean, fast and usable. There are still way too few designers out there that can pull that off.
actually, gorgeous sites are doomed to fail, but you can be sure butt-ugly sites that stick around for awhile are doing something right.
(ebay, case in point, looked like dog vomit warmed over for many of the early years. didn’t matter, they were still printing fuck-you money all over the place)
(sorry are => aren’t)
Judo - an interesting debate has certainly popped up around the site, with people on both sides. definitely glad i posted.
Are you going to call out people who review products with a few minutes of experience with the products? What would you call such reviews? Uninformed, lazy, crap?
You really believe the site looks gorgeous ???? I need a drink …