Topix.net has relaunched as a local-based news aggregator, supposedly with human editors, and with some very smart technology that throws up your city from the main URL. (I say supposedly human editors. It’s tough to tell when their screen names are things like RoboBlogger and Str8_2_the_Point.)
It’s still early in the game, but so far the local pickings are lean when compared to a somewhat similar undertaking: NowPublic. But Topix also has a forum and classified ads, setting it up to become a disrupter of both hyperlocal aggregation sites and local legacy media.
Topix, owned by newspaper chains Gannett, McClatchey and the Tribune Company, has the potential to become a player on a number of fronts, particularly if local media is slow to start adopting some of the aggregation and comment features.
Topix arrival as a quasi-local site is adding to the online media crowd. While the local dailies, and most significant community newspapers, have paltry web presences, Vancouver has the independent news and feature drive The Tyee, Now Public, Urban Vancouver, a ton of placeblogs and another new, Seattle-based, regional entry, Crosscut, which also launched today.
Some other reaction to Topix from the web:
Ryan Sholin: As with Digg or Fark or any other news aggregator that allows readers to comment on the stories (from your newspaper) people post to them, the conversation that belongs with the story on your own site, with your branding at the top of it, is walking away to places like Topix.
Susan Mernit: I love Topix, always have, and think this new play is so disruptive to other emerging efforts out there–NowPublic and Placeblogger come to mind, along with every portal and newspaper vision of how to drill down on local and get the secret sauce (yes, I mean this could be a super platform, kids). Those automated feeds and results ain’t going away, they’re just being wrapped in a more expensive to commoditize wrapper.
Rafat Ali: I have talked in the past about Topix’s “rut of low visibility”, and this is a risky yet ambitious attempt to redefine the site. Competition is heavy; managing and evaluating user contributions, and keeping signal-to-noise ratio high will be a challenge, but Topix intends to use a mix of human plus software intelligence for it.
TAGS: TOPIX, AGGREGATION, NEWS, ONLINE, MEDIA, NOWPUBLIC, THE TYEE, CROSSCUT
