Ankle-deep in the Newspond

I’m going to agree with Mike Arrington’s take on this one: Newspond, the new Digg-style news aggregator that just launched, is pretty much all eye-candy at the moment. Paul Glazowski at Mashable seems to think that’s enough — in fact, his review borders on gushing — but I would have to disagree. While it’s true that the site is nice-looking and well-designed, I don’t think that’s enough to give it a lock on success (whatever that means), and as my friend Tony Hung says at Deep Jive Interests, cool design can even be a detriment for a news aggregator.

I found Newspond pretty slick, but I think a lot of the Ajaxy on-hover effects and layout actually make it harder to skim or pull information out of when compared with Techmeme or Digg. And there’s no question that, as Mike notes, the site’s pumped-up rhetoric is pretty over the top. The most advanced news site on the planet? Right. It’s nice to set your goals high, but less talk and more delivering would be nice. I certainly don’t think Techmeme has anything to fear. But then, as Mark Evans points out, news aggregator fans are a tough crowd to please.

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Tagged as: Digg, Newspond, techmeme

Michael

Their rhetoric and design sure got them a lot of attention for launch.

scrawledinwax

While I'm a sucker for a pretty site, unless I'm missing something, I don't see an RSS feed. Perhaps it's unfair, but to me that suggests a prioritisation of aesthetics over usability.

So Newspond is basically perfect for use on a MacBook Air ;)

mathewi

Good one, Nav :-)

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 9:23 AM, Disqus

James Lewin

Matthew -

The first thought I had when I saw this was Pligg without RSS.

James Lewin

The second thought I had was "Techmeme, with a third the amount of information, in Pligg format, without RSS."

That wasn't as catchy, though.

I'm with you - not sure what people are wowed about on this. The bubbled up items aren't that impressive.

mathewi

I agree, James.

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 11:41 AM, Disqus

antje wilsch

well, I tried to use Digg exactly 3 times. WIthin minutes, my two images and my one story all "disappeared" or buried or whatever they say. If there was any reason, I was unable to figure out how to see it. I just couldn't find my stuff. So I never tried again. I wonder how many other people are like me, who get irritated by getting buried for unknown reasons and just leave, thus diminishing the aggregrate component of the site? Maybe a new one without those users will attract others. [Maybe the users who have a lot of the control of Digg and Wikipedia's fanatical editors are the same.] I'll try it as a welcome alternative if I am able to actually get somewhere with it.

mathewi

As far as I can tell, Antje, the site doesn't have any user input
other than comments -- no ability to submit or vote on a story or
link. That definitely solves the issue you're talking about, but it
makes it difficult to see it as anything other than a news aggregator
with comments -- i.e., not really a community of any kind (of course,
neither is Techmeme).

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 11:57 AM, Disqus