Journalism Enterprise.com

Newstin

January 18th, 2008

Rating:

By Nicolas Kayser-Bril

What do they say it is?

“NewsTin provides multilingual news search and it introduces a completely unique dimension to it. You can search/browse/read news by topics and not just by keywords. While browsing through the topic structure you can switch languages and have foreign-language stories translated in real time”.

What do I say it is?

Newstin aims at becoming your gateway to news. Any news in any language. Sounds familiar? Then you’ve probably heard of Google News.

What’s great about it?

Its taxonomy engine goes way beyond the usual keyword and tags approach. For each article, Newstin’s engine is able to tell you what it’s about, who was mentioned, where it happened, etc.

What could be better?

Such power is certainly impressive, but creates little direct value for the web user next door. Many aspects of the site are just too sloppy to be attractive, from design to responsiveness.

For instance, on-the-fly translation is nice, but I doubt any English-speaker is interested in the marriage of Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Browned.

How is it going to make money?

Newstin is more of a B2B taxonomy business than a consumer-oriented service provider. Most of its revenues come from its professional clients. Their AdSense account probably pays for the 40-strong staff coffee, if only that.

Should I pay it any attention?

If you’re a professional with loads of textual data to organize (for instance, geotagging your archives), you probably want to consider outsourcing to Newstin. Similarly, if you are monitoring markets you don’t speak the language of, Newstin’s translation tools will prove handy.

But in the wider web, nobody beats Google at making algorithms for the masses. Newstin is no exception.

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