I had a quick look at much-hyped Politics Home site, the brainchild of Stephan Shakespeare and Tim Montgomerie.
You’ll remember Shakespeare and Montgomerie from failed internet TV channel 18DoughtyStreet.
The “concept” of the site, apparently, is to become the ‘Bloomberg for Politics’. And I suppose the two sites do look similar (indeed one could argue that PH has ripped off Bloomberg). Another ex-18DoughtyStreet hack, Iain Dale has proclaimed its Bloomberg-mimicry a success: “It’s certainly that and then some.” However, as Dale suggests, the site is devoid of original content and relies on feed aggregation to populate its front page.
Bloomberg, for the record, has its own writers.
Two things…
Number One. We need another politics feed aggregator like we need Doughty Street’s acrylic plants back in our lives. Aren’t there enough twatting sites sucking content from other people? I wonder, if Stephan Shakespeare can actually get a return on PolHome (18DS haemorrhaged cash), will he share revenue with the people actually providing the guts to his site, or will it be another parasite feeding off the the RSS-teat of other content providers?
Number Two. Who needs a Bloomberg for politics? Business requires up to the minute information. Minutes lost can translate directly into lost revenues. Politics is an industry of wanky news items about MP’s tawdry sex lives and a never-ending conveyor belt of financial scandals. Politicos like to think they’re champions of the universe with ultra-busy lives, but in truth it wouldn’t matter a jot if most of them just fell off the planet.
It’s not case of whether one can build a Bloomberg for Politics, but whether one should?
Also, it’s a bit of a wreck. Yeah, it’s only a BETA, but it looks like a MySpace page built by a couple of Labradors. C’mon, where’s the class?
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As expected, on Dale and other sites, we have the tedious geeks discussing the economics of using black and the problems with too much Java etc etc. The real issue is, as you have said here, what on earth is the point of this in the first place? You could argue the case for a decent aggregator. After all, bloggers weren’t called ‘presurfers’ for nothing way back when… But there needs to be some selection, filtering, recommendation rather than just a list of links. As you rightly point out any RSS reader will do that. If you stripped away the bells and whistles and put the content on a plain old page we would all see it for what it is.
I’d love to know what this thing cost to launch. Actually, I don’t. it would make me weep! Clearly, though, it was cheaper than a TV station
I have a real problem with RSS-based sites. Wardman’s tweet makes little sense. Google blog search is a search engine - it’s google FFS. also I can click the button in WordPress to exclude the blog if I want. I have a choice.
Every post on my Tech site is “syndicated” to half-a-dozen “tech” sites - which are just conduits for other people’s content alongside adsense ads. They’re even attributed to other people on some! Fuckers.
I think the graphical data on PH will provide some bloggers with material on slow news days, but personally I can’t see the point.
Interestingly (maybe?), I always thought the 18DS blog was very attractive.
As an example of a site that offers some real value in spite of just posting links and a short summary there is the long standing and well respected ‘Arts and Letters Daily (aldaily.com)
Posting links from a huge variety of sources that, frankly, I just wouldn’t get around to looking at. And it is backed by real credibility and intellectual authority. These guys know their stuff!
The site was revamped a while back though you’d hardly believe it. No flashy gimmicks for them just plain old html.
I have never visited aldaily.com
Something I intent to remedy forthwith.
Well, I’ll never get to see it, Aaron.
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