MySpace Takes on Google News and Digg
MySpace is launching a news aggregator.
MySpace is going into the news business with a service that will scour the internet for news stories and let users vote on which ones receive the most exposure. This approach blends elements of Google News and sites such as Digg and Netscape, which rely on readers to submit stories and determine their prominence. It also marks the site’s ambitions to become a web portal like Yahoo!, providing its users with a front door to the internet.
MySpace, which is owned by News Corp, also the parent company of Times Online, will display headlines from external new sites, a practice that attracted legal challenges when Google used it for its news service.
The news aggregator with social media space is crowded but MySpace, especially with the backing of News Corp, has the base and resources to make it work. Ultimately, this makes more sense than having readers submit stories, which creates both incentives for gaming and arcane rules to thwart gaming.
Awesome, because I want all the news about Fergie I can get.
Imagine if Digg were run by pre-pubescents. There you go.