NYT aggregator by The Shifted Librarian via FlickrToday I was asked by the people of Chinadev if I would agree to have the rss-feed of my weblog China Herald included in their news aggregator. A few weeks ago, I was also asked by yet another new news aggregator China.alltop.com and I discovered by accident the new country news aggregator by the New York Times, who included me without asking. A whole row of other aggregators I might have forgotten by now.Of course, I would not refuse to become included in any service that would bring traffic to my site and they would actually not have to ask me to link to me. But if they would not tell they would start their operation the chances are pretty huge I would never discover them. Do (country news) aggregators still makes sense, if you only collect news from others, without adding any value?
For me they do not, but then, when it comes to China I might not be your average news consumer. I have a pretty decent filled rss-reader, where I would also read the Google-news feed on China and those two together would be better than any aggregator I have seen. When I would need news about other countries or subjects, I would also turn to the search engines. Maybe I would turn to the New York Times to check their aggregators, now I know they have this system.
Do you still use aggregators to get your news?
3 comments:
Fons --
I use aggregators sometimes to find new sources of information that I didn't know about before. In that case, I would just visit the aggregator once, the first time I hear about them. And then maybe again, much later, if I was randomly surfing.
I agree with you -- I prefer to have my news delivered on demand, through an RSS feed. And I want to be the one who controls my sources of news.
-- Maria
You're publishing a freely available syndication feed of your website and you're upset somebody is using it? They need to ask?? Hello.
I hate to quote myself, but there is no way out:
"Of course, I would not refuse to become included in any service that would bring traffic to my site and they would actually not have to ask me to link to me."
The only think I (and the law supports me in that) is when whole articles are being republished, even worse when that would happen without proper attribution. I have no problems in the "fair use" of my intellectual property.
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