Following the Daylife buzz

The big online journalism news I missed while on holidays was the launch of Daylife, the human- and computer-aggregated news site that has big name backers such as Jeff Jarvis and Craig Newmark.

I’ve come across a number of posts about the site, some positive (such as this one from Mark Federman) and some not (such as this one from Dan Farber). Note that both contain links to other reviews and reactions.

I’ve only spent a little time at the actual site and find a lot to like: it’s well-designed (although it took me a minute or two to figure out the navigation for the cover features), the clustering of aggregated news works and the addition of pull-quotes and multiple ways into the aggregated news deepens the experience.

But what makes it unlikely that this will become a regular stop during my browsing is that this feels too much like a portal that requires time, attention and some work to get to the news. I’m not looking for One Big Source for news. I don’t chase information that way anymore. I surf several hundred pages, picking and choosing from major media sites, bloggers, aggregators….you name it. I can see using Daylife the way I tend to use major media, as an occasional source to turn to track breaking/big news.

And, despite the greater depth of its aggregated coverage, the lack of community features makes Daylife less compelling than a couple of aggregated sites I do scan daily — Newsvine and NowPublic.

(An aside: This is interesting. I was just poking around a little more and checked out the Sports section. The top story was one of the two NFL playoff games played this evening; the other one — Seattle vs. Dallas — was nowhere in sight, making me wonder if the editors who put these pages together checked out early this evening.)