A Tin For News

It wasn't a business Newstin planned to get into originally. But an incident turned out to have become a service that endeavors to provide Internet news readers the first experience in global news reading.

Using its patented Cross Language Data Retrieval technology, Newstin started its business in 1998 to create IT solutions for business clients. But the technology's great potential in arranging all types of online information inspired its business development director Jeremy Lopez to use it to organize Internet news.

"We've enabled our readers to get news tailored to their unique needs. It goes beyond key words search," said Lopez, who joined Newstin in 2006 to start this global news aggregation project. For example, a reader can type in a search phrase such as “technology” and the site is able to pull out stories not only contain the key word “technology,” but related articles on IT and inventions.

Newstin subscribers can search for stories on selected topics retrieving from hundreds of thousands of sources from around the world such as the U.S., Czech, and China. The Web site pulls in stories from main stream media, blogs and press releases from each country and list them either by relevance or time. What's better: Everything is free.

Newstin also encourages its members to play an active role in the site. Any member can suggest new sources to the existing 700,00 categories. New sources are subject to be reviewed by the Newstin editorial team before being added to the list. But the result of this Wikipedia-like approach is a soaring number of sources. As of today, the site has 15,000 sources from around the globe and it is growing daily.

The concern of the ever-growing online sources including blogs is their viability. “Every moment, all the data has been piled. But to determine the authority of the sources is one of the most difficult thing,” Alan Mutter, an independent media investor and veteran media watcher.

The key word is “reliability”. For that, Newstin seems to have some way to go. “Its content stretches too widely that it's not clear to me whose needs it is serving,” said Mutter. “It needs to be more focused.”