Feb
Is This Another Social News Web 2.0 Gimmick Website?
What you see above is not a screenshot of a Beta version of Digg or Newsvine. And believe it or not, it’s not a crappy knock-off script either. It’s actually a site called Newstin, and now, as usual, I’d like to make fun of the website talk about how useful it is and how we can make money with it.
OK, I can’t resist… What’s with the design? Is a mix of light, medium, and dark gray supposed to be appealing? Or am I colorblind after being subjected to so many grotesque internet marketing sales letters?
What is this thing?
Newstin seems to be yet another type of news site. The thing is, it could be pretty advanced. The home page offers customization of the top stories, quick translations into various languages, and some Java Applet for formatting a navigation web/map/tree thing.
Could I get any of it to work? Nope. At least not to my liking. And if I wasn’t a sleazy internet marketer looking to exploit sites for personal profit, I’d leave now. (Since I can get the latest news I want and set things up perfectly on my iGoogle homepage without any learning curve.)
Back to basics.
Let’s take a break from making money and just get the latest news on the Presidential race… I click on Elections and get a list of news stories ranging from “Presidential race moves to Ohio, Texas” to “Thousands protest over Armenia election result.” You see the problem?
See, Newstin is based in the Czech Republic. They probably care about international headlines. But I’m an ignorant American who has never heard of the town “Ohio, Texas,” let alone Armenia. I want to read about how Bush is very successfully implementing foreign policies so I can feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
On to the money.
There are three ways to make money here.
1) Find all the breaking news stories. For this I suggest the Advertising and PR and Marketing categories. Watch these categories for good stories and then announce the news on your blog and hopefully capture some of the people looking for the original story.
It’s pretty easy since there are RSS feeds for each topic, and feeds include aggregated stories from Google News, Yahoo News, and others. The drawback is the fact that some stories come from places like EzineArticles, meaning there are useless spam stories in there too.
[It's funny if you think about it - you're trying to repost news from other sites (i.e. spamming) and you're finding a bunch of self-promotion articles (i.e. other people's spam.)] 
2) The Ever Popular Autoblog. Instead of monitoring the RSS stories, just use them to popular your autoblog with a wider variety of ripped-off content and watch your black hat SEO fantasies come true.
3) Spam the community. Now I don’t see member profiles yet, but a site like this with any sort of Web 2.0 functions is bound to start a community of users sooner or later. (Note to anyone from Newstin that might see this - build in some anti-spam features!)
Anything else?
I think so. White I haven’t found the site to be a shining example of usability for the general public, there is something there. Whatever they’re doing to categorize news by topic and manipulate the data could be extremely useful for a big business looking to stay on top of the industry, for a well-funded startup analyzing trends, or perhaps for a PR firm.
It’s worth checking back later to see if they have started Web 3.0. (Or at least Web 2.1)
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Click here to buy me a beer, because damn, I need to get drunk to forget how much internet marketing sucks!
Why are you such a loser dude? Seriously, if you think that Internet Marketing sucks then why do you blog about it in the first place? And just cause you have failed at Internet Marketing does that mean that everyone else should fail? I guess NOT! Why do you think conventions such as Affiliate Summit are organised? Because people are actually doing money off Internet Marketing! Duh! Bleh you and your blog suck!
Oh Jason, I can only hope that you figure out what this blog is about so that you can enjoy it as much as everyone else. I feel sorry for you, I really do.
It’s just the way newspapers write their (short) headlines… Newstin didn’t mean to write about a town called Ohio in the good ol’ state of Texas… Correction there, buddy… No, I’m not that smart ass that thinks I know more than you do… But, apparently, you read that wrong…
It seems some of your readers stll aren’t understanding sarcasm. If you can’t make fun of yourself and the business you are in, then you are a fuddy-duddy. I liked your review. Keep up the good work, Sucker!
Is there a serious humor shortage on the internets this week? People, turn your satire radars back on please.
I don’t know if I’m giving the dude too much credit, but I thought “I’m an ignorant American who has never heard of the town ‘Ohio, Texas’” was funny. Intentionally funny. Ignorant American… get it?
Sigh.
Finally, someone that gets it!
You’re living up to your “Top Commentators” listing
I’m a top commentator? I think I’ve left a total of three comments (four now) and one of them is just my feeble attempt to redeem myself after you call me a schmuck
(I still argue that talking about TBPR is a waste of good pixels)
Anyway, I was checking my referrer logs and that’s how I ended up back here. Okay, that’s half a lie designed to make me look all tech-savvy and stuff. I don’t check log files, just my cheapo Google Analytics.
But since I’m a top commentator hot shot here now, I might just stick around.
[Take a look at the layout on that post. Forget the example I mentioned, it's all about the example I used, which no one picked up on.]
[hint, #7]
Ohh!
Very tricky. I feel bad that you had to go and give me/us such a big hint. Now I’ll sit back and see if that eventually makes it into the comments on that post.
Oh, and while we’re at it, would you like me to submit a separate comment about “White I haven’t found the site” or does a multi-purpose comment serve your purposes as well as two separate ones?
LOL… white two comments might be better, I think the multipurpose comment works well