The Washington Post's Newest Product: Personalized Newsletters (axios.com) 22
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: In 2011, there were four engineers in The Washington Post newsroom," notes Fred Ryan, CEO and Publisher of The Washington Post. "Today there are over 300." And just like fish gotta swim and birds gotta sing, engineers gotta engineer.
Axios reports that as part of the Post's commitment to growing as a product and technology company under the guidance of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the Post will debut new personalized newsletters targeted to subscribers this September (not unlike what CmdrTaco was doing for WaPo cast-off Trove back in January of 2014).
So, will personalized news turn out to be a better idea than targeted ads and targeted videos, or should we be prepared for more unintended consequences?
Axios reports that as part of the Post's commitment to growing as a product and technology company under the guidance of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the Post will debut new personalized newsletters targeted to subscribers this September (not unlike what CmdrTaco was doing for WaPo cast-off Trove back in January of 2014).
So, will personalized news turn out to be a better idea than targeted ads and targeted videos, or should we be prepared for more unintended consequences?
Echo Chamber? (Score:2)
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My thoughts as well. On the flip side, I'm interested in any option taking the Kardashians and their ilk, alternative medicines, unsubstantiated rumour and innuendo, and articles about golf from my news sources. If they can engineer a way to feed my interests without catering exclusively to my beliefs (ie: include credible alternate viewpoints) and eliminate fluff, they would have a winner.
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But this is the very bread and butter from which they make money. If you eliminated that stuff, then there would be nothing left except advertising.
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Yes. We essentially already have the echo chamber effect in almost every news source. Some aren't blatant in that the whole news source is just biased and the echo chamber is created because it attracts others with that bias. Others like Google News and Facebook's feed that tailor the news per our preferences end up even more biased and narrow.
This would be more like Google News and others that are selecting the news you would like. Among the bad points are 1) you don't get exposed to other points of view o
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If well implemented this kind of thing might let you set a preference to low repetition. By definition "I want no echo." If such a thing is an intended feature I might actually buy into it.
As for risk, I mean, you been paying attention to the regular news becoming totally partisan? I'll never watch or read CNN again because they have embraced being all trump all the time. I don't need liberal fox news. I just need the news.
I had been preferring the BBC, but I'm starting to see a lot of slant there now too.
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In theory there would be value in having established institutions that were at least somewhat objective who could make reasonable assessments about what is newsworthy and ensure that all members of society had at least the opportunity to be informed about important matters and have a common frame of reference for discussion and debate.
There used to be something called 'journalism' that did that, but without that, I don't see how this new scheme will make a difference from what we have now.
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Some people dislike the Washington Post, but if you're reading the Post anyway then whatever bubble that may put you in is not going to increase if you have interests in one category more than others.
the problems with newsletters (Score:3)
Re:the problems with newsletters (Score:4, Funny)
"- it might increase the new bubble phenomenon."
Depends. I'm not watching or reading Foxnews or any rag that Murdoch publishes or Infowars or other crap right now either.
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I actually had to install an overlay killer because every fucking website wants me to sign up for some bullshit newsletter. It's at epidemic levels. Almost worth turning off javascript anymore.
Strengthening the bubble (Score:3)
Sounds great. Each reader will receive only the news that strengthen his/her beliefs, while actively filtering out those that go counter to such. Because we need more polarization of society, and also limited information is great.
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Essentially, this is what 90+% of folks already do by themselves. Seeking out news stories from sources that run afoul of the individual's settled belief set is for the few who enjoy contradictory evidence.
Personal beliefs mistakenly become the individual, and most people are quite unable to withstand such a personal attack.
My Post: Built for subscribers. Designed for you. (Score:2)
My Post [washingtonpost.com]: Introducing new, subscriber-exclusive tools to help you keep up with the stories you want to read.
Not a fan of the concept (Score:2)
There’s too much crap arriving in my inbox as it is, even with spam filtering. Email has become a chore, and it’s something I basically work to get through as quickly as possible.
And it’s the same thing with push notifications on my phone. Every app wants to notify me about trivial crap. At least it’s easy to say no...
Now if the newspaper I subscribe to were to personalize what I see when I choose to visit their site... that I could get behind, if it were well implemented. But as oth
In other words (Score:2)
Paywall meets SPAM.
I bet there's no option (Score:2)
I bet that there's there's no option for pro-Trump news.