MySpace is launching a news aggregator called MySpace News in the second quarter of 2007. It’ll rely on both algorithms and user rating - basically a combination of Google News and Digg. You’ll remember that Fox acquired the news aggregator NewRoo about a year ago, so it’s taken them a long time to get to the product stage. The feature list, via Terry Heaton:
*MySpace News takes News to a whole new level by dynamically aggregating real-time news and blogs from top sites around the Web
*Creates focused, topical news pages that users can interact and engage with throughout their day
*MySpace is making the news social, allowing users to:
-Rate and comment on every news item that comes through the system
-Submit stories they think are cool and even author pieces from their MySpace blog
* MySpace users previously had to leave the site to find comprehensive news, gossip, sporting news, etc. With MySpace News, we bring the news to them!
It’s kind of obvious when you think about it: a news company launching a news site. Not many details yet, but you can’t deny this will be a game changer. Like Google News, they’ll be aggregating news sources from around the web - that could raise the same issues that YouTube and MySpace video are facing: do the other newspapers really want News Corp to package their news? Of course they don’t.
It’ll also be interesting to see what the MySpace demographic selects as the most important news of the day: just like Digg users focus on Apple, the RIAA, Google and how awesome Digg is, we can probably expect MySpace users to talk about celebrity news and other mainstream, lowest common denominator stuff. I call this a win for the celebrity blogs, if they can seek inclusion.
Perhaps MySpace news will succeed where NooZ failed - NooZ, you’ll remember, tried to build a “Digg for MySpace users”, but failed to target the content to that demographic. I wonder if we’ll also be seeing MySpace News Widgets to post to your profile, “MySpace This” buttons, and the “MySpace effect”. Interesting development.
