How to get to the top of the list
So is it basically a cross between Techmeme and Digg as it seems to have been characterised? “Digg appears to have a lot of top 10 lists and personal, quirky stuff, so content-wise we’re more similar to Techmeme. I love Techmeme,” says Reardon. “However they’re a bit more focused on the blogosphere and the start-up crowd. Newspond has more of a mainstream following and it also covers games and science. There is also the community aspect.”
This is where the comparisons with sites like Digg come from. As well as offering a list of links to the biggest stories of the day, Newspond hopes to develop a community of opinionated, gobby types who want to argue the toss over those stories. While Reardon is careful not to refer to any sites specifically, he does reveal that “we’re hoping for more mature conversations and themes.” No clips of people putting Mentos in bottles of Diet Coke then, damn.
Reardon forgives my shameless self-interest when I ask him what you have to do to get to the top of the list. “There are tons of factors involved,” he says. “Things like the relationships between stories, quality of source, speed of reporting and a lot of other objective criteria. There is also a natural language processor, which ‘reads’ the story and extracts its meaning, a bit like Google News.”
The site itself offers a fair bit of explanation of how it all works, so rather than humiliate myself by publicly trying to get my head around the techie stuff, I urge you to go there.
Perseverance
“So how do I get to the top of the list?” I persevere. “Be as descriptive as possible early in your story,” says Reardon. “If you cover key stuff in your headline and soon after you will help your chances. Also, having an RSS feed seems to help.” Fair enough.
“RSS is increasingly the gateway to your site; it is the bookmark of 2008,” he adds. “We actually didn’t have an RSS on Newspond until yesterday – we were hoping people would conclude it was the only news source they needed. But overwhelming demand convinced us to add one.”
I conclude by asking Reardon what takes up most of his time now that the site is launched. “Starting chats,” he says. “I also keep an eye on the back-end, but it’s critical to the success of the site that we get people talking.”
One of the great things about the internet is that it’s meritocratic. If you’re popular, you’re successful and there’s no way to fake popularity. Google went from an algorithm to a multi zillion dollar company because everyone started using it as their chosen search engine.
Because of this it’s very difficult to predict what will be a success. Newspond seems to have a lot of desirable qualities, but a similar site could be launched tomorrow, with a bit more of the old ‘x-factor’, and it will be game over.
If that doesn't happen and Newspond goes on to be the next Facebook, however, I’m sure Ian Reardon won’t forget his old limey journalist pal Scott when he’s wondering what to do with his new-found mountains of cash.
