I wonder if personalized news has that much appeal, really. Part of the success of traditional tv, radio and newspapers is the shared experience with some group you identify with.
Incidentally, this is why I read news.YC also, it's fascinating to read what smart people have to say after they have been exposed to the same stimulus like you. With traditional media, this discussion was in the pubs or the workplace the day after.
Traditional media is not necessarily dying because the stories are not interesting, well that's the symptom, but the cause is maybe that the group is not one that you feel you belong to anymore, and the content is taylored to the mean of that group anyway.
The product seems like a shiny interface to a personalized Google News, which as you say is just not very interesting.
A word to aspiring news startups: journalism is old and sophisticated - try learning something about it instead of pretending it is a data clustering or personalization problem.
Yes! You put it very well. I've felt this for a while but not been able to get it down like you have.
I'm usually on the "cutting edge" when it comes to things online, new technology, apps, and so forth, but no "personalized news" service has ever stuck with me. It "feels" wrong and I can't put my finger on why. I prefer to just subscribe to a handful of trusted sources and let a human (or many humans, in the case of HN or Reddit) curate what I'll be seeing.
I believe, however, that better querying is going to become a big deal and could become a good way to have "personalized" news but without all of the AI and guessing games that seem to take place with clever new personalized news services.
Part of the success of traditional tv, radio and newspapers is the shared experience with some group you identify with.
Perhaps, but most of the reason for the success of traditional tv, radio, and newspapers is that, until the last five years or so, there weren't really any viable alternatives. Only recently has content distribution become a non-issue; previously, it was a bottleneck.
Incidentally, this is why I read news.YC also, it's fascinating to read what smart people have to say after they have been exposed to the same stimulus like you. With traditional media, this discussion was in the pubs or the workplace the day after.
Traditional media is not necessarily dying because the stories are not interesting, well that's the symptom, but the cause is maybe that the group is not one that you feel you belong to anymore, and the content is taylored to the mean of that group anyway.