NewsNow

Last updated

NewsNow
NewsNow (logo).png
Type of site
News Aggregator
OwnerNewsNow Publishing Ltd.
Revenue Subscription and Advertising
URL newsnow.co.uk (UK news)
newsnow.com/us/ (US news)
newsnow.com/ng/ (NG news)
newsnow.com/ro/ (RO news)
newsnow.it (IT news)
RegistrationOptional
Launched1997

NewsNow is a news aggregator service that was launched in 1997 [1] with fewer than ten sources. It now links to thousands of publications including top news providers. NewsNow provides a service in which breaking news articles are matched against key-word topic specifications. The relevant links and publication names are then delivered to the user. [2]

Contents

Other than NewsNow's main website, which is freely accessible to the general public, the company provides customised news feeds for corporate subscribers. The site also offers access via mobile devices and offers a version tailored for the Opera Mini application.

Interface

NewsNow uses a search function and a list of colour-coded, pre-built topics (or categories) to allow users to find desired content. The site also provides the option to search topics and saves up to 10 of one's most-viewed topics. The site also offers a full-text searching service to subscribers (non-subscribers are limited to headline searches for words or phrases). News articles clicked on by users are displayed in a pop up window, or a new tab. If the user enters a particular category NewsNow gathers as many articles as possible on the category and then displays them in chronological order. Beside each news line, a flag icon is shown to represent the country of origin of the publication, which tells the reader at a glance from which part of the globe the news derives. Any user can highlight or hide all headlines of a particular news source by clicking on the name of the news provider.

Sources

NewsNow searches over 33,000 sources from all over the world in real time. NewsNow.co.uk adds approximately 100 new sources every day, which are located by a dedicated research team. It searches through articles in 20 different languages in 141 different countries. In contrast to more conventional news feeds, these sources include reputable blogs and electronic journals. Users are given the option to exclude blogs from newsfeeds if so desired. NewsNow does not host or create any of the supplied articles. It searches through all the major news providers, as well as blogs, scientific and electronic journals. [3]

Ranking

NewsNow.co.uk is the 274th [4] most visited website in the UK, and approximately 14.4% of all its users are from the UK. [5] Moreover, the site is generally visited by over 11 million users monthly. [6]

NewsNow has around 623,000 pages indexed by Google. It has a 20% market share making it the second largest news aggregation site on the Internet second only to Google News. According to data from Hitwise, as of 22 August 2009, NewsNow accounted for almost 20% of visits to news aggregators in the UK. [7]

Business model

NewsNow creates revenue from its many free users through advertisement. Adverts are displayed on all of the site's webpages, clearly visible to anyone who accesses the site.

Subscription Service

NewsNow's second source of income comes from a subscription service. For a monthly fee, organisations can have a tailored news-feed sent to them articles connected to keywords specified by the company. For example, a large company, such as IBM (one of NewsNow's subscribers) can have all articles with any reference to IBM sent directly to them. The service claims that articles will be sent to the customer within 15 minutes of the articles being published on the original site. News feeds can be filtered based on sophisticated key-word (and exclusion) profiles including context of the chosen words. News feeds are delivered to clients by email or by direct FTP or HTTP push.

Controversy

According to an open letter in 2009 [8] placed on its site, NewsNow has been threatened with potential legal action by several publishers, including News International, the publishers of The Times , The Sun and The News of the World . An open letter, written by Struan Bartlett, NewsNow's Managing Director and Chairman, claims that the publishers are threatening legal action over NewsNow's refusal to accept new controls over links to websites owned by these publishers. He responded to the comments from the News International with the following statement: "We deliver you traffic and drive you revenues you otherwise wouldn't have received. The idea that we are undermining your businesses is incorrect. It is fanciful to imagine that, if it weren't for link aggregators, you would have more traffic or revenues. We provide a service that you do not: a means for readers to find your content more readily, via continuously updating links to a diversity of websites."

There has also been interest from the UK's Newspaper Licensing Agency regarding the use of news headlines search results, [9] which they consider to be copyrighted content.

Related Research Articles

A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displaying information ; often, the user can configure which ones to display. Variants of portals include mashups and intranet dashboards for executives and managers. The extent to which content is displayed in a "uniform way" may depend on the intended user and the intended purpose, as well as the diversity of the content. Very often design emphasis is on a certain "metaphor" for configuring and customizing the presentation of the content and the chosen implementation framework or code libraries. In addition, the role of the user in an organization may determine which content can be added to the portal or deleted from the portal configuration.

Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) was the division of Microsoft responsible for managing the firm's relationship with developers and testers, such as hardware developers interested in the operating system (OS), and software developers developing on the various OS platforms or using the API or scripting languages of Microsoft's applications. The relationship management was situated in assorted media: web sites, newsletters, developer conferences, trade media, blogs and DVD distribution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MSN</span> Collection of Internet sites

MSN is an American web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. Unpaid traffic may originate from different kinds of searches, including image search, video search, academic search, news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

Web syndication is making content available from one website to other sites. Most commonly, websites are made available to provide either summaries or full renditions of a website's recently added content. The term may also describe other kinds of content licensing for reuse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google News</span> News aggregator website and app

Google News is a news aggregator service developed by Google. It presents a continuous flow of links to articles organized from thousands of publishers and magazines. Google News is available as an app on Android, iOS, and the Web.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atom (web standard)</span> Web standards

The name Atom applies to a pair of related Web standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BBC News Online</span> Website of BBC News

BBC News Online is the website of BBC News, the division of the BBC responsible for newsgathering and production. It is one of the most popular news websites, with 1.2 billion website visits in April 2021, as well as being used by 60% of the UK's internet users for news.

Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. They can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google beta-tested a cost-per-action service, but discontinued it in October 2008 in favor of a DoubleClick offering. In Q1 2014, Google earned US$3.4 billion, or 22% of total revenue, through Google AdSense. AdSense is a participant in the AdChoices program, so AdSense ads typically include the triangle-shaped AdChoices icon. This program also operates on HTTP cookies. In 2021, over 38.3 million websites use AdSense.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liferea</span> News aggregator software

Liferea is a news aggregator for online news feeds and podcasts. It supports the major feed formats including RSS/RDF and Atom and can import and export subscription lists in OPML format. Liferea is intended to be a fast, easy to use, and easy to install news aggregator for GTK+ that can be used with the GNOME desktop. Liferea features a script manager, in which users can add custom scripts that run whenever a certain action occurs.

BuzzNet is a photo, journal, and video-sharing social media network that is currently owned by Hive Media. The network was owned by SpinMedia from its inception until September 2016, when it was sold to Hive Media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">News aggregator</span> Client software that aggregates syndicated web content

In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, content aggregator, feed reader, news reader, or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates digital content such as online newspapers, blogs, podcasts, and video blogs (vlogs) in one location for easy viewing. The updates distributed may include journal tables of contents, podcasts, videos, and news items.

In blogging, a ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent from the weblog to one or more Ping servers, as specified by originating weblog), to notify a list of their "Services" of new content on the weblog.

This is a list of blogging terms. Blogging, like any hobby, has developed something of a specialized vocabulary. The following is an attempt to explain a few of the more common phrases and words, including etymologies when not obvious.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft TechNet</span> Microsoft web portal and web service for IT professionals

Microsoft TechNet was a Microsoft web portal and web service for IT professionals. It included a library containing documentation and technical resources for Microsoft products, a learning center providing online training, discussion forums, an evaluation center for downloading trialware, blogs for Microsoft employees and a wiki.

Microblogging is a form of blogging using short posts without titles known as microposts. Microblogs "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links", which may be the major reason for their popularity. Some popular social networks such as Twitter, Mastodon, Tumblr, Koo, and Instagram can be viewed as collections of microblogs.

Social network aggregation is the process of collecting content from multiple social network services into a unified presentation. Examples of social network aggregators include Hootsuite or FriendFeed, which may pull together information into a single location or help a user consolidate multiple social networking profiles into a single profile.

BT MyPlace is a service that dynamically delivers content and information to people, based on their personal preferences and location. The location-based service is available over BT’s outdoor Wi-Fi network in central London and the West End. It uses the BT Openzone outdoor Wi-Fi network in Westminster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Play Newsstand</span> Defunct aggregator and digital newsstand

Google Play Newsstand was a news aggregator and digital newsstand service by Google. On May 8, 2018, Google announced at Google I/O that Google Play Newsstand was being amalgamated with Google News. Launched in November 2013 through the merger of Google Play Magazines and Google Currents, the service let users subscribe to magazines and topical news feeds, receiving new issues and updates automatically. Content was offered for reading on a dedicated Newsstand section of the Google Play website or through the mobile apps for Android and iOS. Offline download and reading is supported on the mobile apps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Superfeedr</span>

Superfeedr is a feed API built on WebSub that is sometimes referred to as PuSH. It transforms a variety of feeds into a standardized RSS, Atom, or JSON format and distributes "pushes" them via WebSub or XMPP. Feeds allow publishers to send notifications to subscribers when content is updated.

References

  1. "Companies House, Company No. 03435857, companieshouse.gov.uk, 2021".
  2. "NewsNow,About, newsnow.co.uk, 2009".
  3. "NewsNow Brochure, August 26 newsnow.co.uk, August 26, 2008".
  4. "Statistics of NewsNow.co.uk, "www.alexa.com", 2020". Archived from the original on 19 December 2009. Retrieved 2 December 2009.
  5. "newsnow.co.uk Competitive Analysis, Marketing Mix and Traffic – Alexa". alexa.com. Archived from the original on 27 July 2019. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  6. "NewsNow: Publisher Network". newsnow.co.uk. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  7. "Microsoft Bing News Search, Hitwise.com, 2009".
  8. "An Open Letter to the UK's national, regional and local newspapers; Struan Bartlett, Managing Director and Chairman, NewsNow; 20th October 2009".
  9. PDA, The Guardian Digital Content Blog, 10 November 2009.

"Growing Public Support for NewsNow on weblink charging, newsnow.co.uk, 2009".