New functions SelectYourNews: Keywords and export your news

News functions have been added to SelectYourNews; Keywords and export your news.


Keywords
A newsfield selects the news based on selected keywords and only shows the newsitems containing those keywords. Thus creating a personal newsfield containing only the news about a specific subject. 


Keywords function

Selecting keywords works similair to searchengines as Google. Use quotations when searching with multiple keywords for news containing those exact keywords. For example "Tour de France" only shows the news about the Tour de France. Other newsitems containing France or Tour are ignored.

The resultaat is a newsfield with the latest news about the Tour de France.



Newsfield with keywords "Tour de France"



The new function Keywords offers users even more possibilities to personalies their newspage.

Export your news
A newsfield containing news selected using the Keyword function can be exported with a RSS link. Users can use this RSS link to show the latest news on a subject based on the keyworks on their personal blog of company website.

RSS link for news export

And no, SelectYourNews does not change any copyrighted RSS feeds from authers. The link between a headline from a newsarticle and the newsarticle on the website from the auther is not changed so users go directly those the original newssource. This is following the news 3.0 userfriendly.

SelectYourNews and the Pareto principle

Figure 1. Vilfredo Pareto
Source: Wikipedia

Four months SelectYourNews
SelectYourNews is now four months online and the first user experiences with constructive criticism are in. The underlying database of RSS feeds is growing steadily and offers users all the major news sources of The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, the  United Kingdom and the United States. To offers as many users as possible the functionality of SelectYourNews I use the Pareto principle, also known as the 80-20 rule to expand the database.

Pareto principle
Vilfredo Pareto (1848 - 1923) was an Italian economist and is known for Pareto optimum for utility curves in microeconomics and the Pareto principle. Pareto discovered that 20% of all Italians possessed  80% of Italy’s wealth. Therefore, the Pareto principle popularly known as the 80-20 rule. Pareto is one of the founders of the modern welfare theory.  For more information about Pareto and the Pareto principle I refer you to Wikipedia.

For SelectYourNews the is principle applied for expanding the RSS database. The principle reasons that 80% of users (the majority) uses only 20% (the most popular) of available news sources.  It may not exactly 80% - 20% offcourse. It is the principle that counts. And it’s this principle that I apply for the expansion of the RSS database.

The RSS database
The expansion of the database is divided into two main actions. Of those countries which newssources  aren’t submitted yet they will be during the following months.  Lists of the most popular newssources are available through Google. For other categories such as showbiz, economy and sports the newssources are found through specific searches in Google for popular magazines of blogs. And off course all RSS feeds I encounter while being online are submitted.

Currently there are 4.547 RSS feeds submitted into the database from 585 news sources. On average, a news source contains 8 feeds with different categories such as domestic news, foreign news, sports, business and showbiz.

Country	Newssources	RSS Feeds
United States	164	1.202
The Netherlands	151	694
France	59	538
United Kingdom	55	281
Belgium	43	569
International	36	143
Germany	29	273
India	19	563
Spain	7	128
Australia	6	42
Canada	4	24
Austria	3	4
Sweden	3	62
Italy	2	12
Japan	2	4
Bosnia and Herzegovina	1	1
China	1	3
Totaal	585	4.543
Number of newssources	585
Number of RSS feeds	4.543
Av. Number of feeds per source	8

In four months time there are over 4,500 feeds submitted from 585 different sources. A limited number have been submitted through the websiteform by users. The fast majority is imported by myself in the free hours I have available. A friend of mine with language skills assisted me  with the German and Spanish feeds. Spanish is not really my language. For all other languages ​​Google Translate is a must.

The database currently provides over 500 million potential users of SelectYourNews the major newssources through the Pareto principle. The future expansion includes the remaining countries in Europe and countries as Canada and Australia.  India and China are in the planning but because of a different type of character in their alphabet it will require additional modification of the programming of SelectYourNews. Given the potential number of additional visitors both countries are off course on my expansion list.

The next step with SelectYourNews
After four months online, it's time to evaluate SelectYourNews based on user experience and constructive criticism. This evaluation and the integration of the results I have named "phase 2" of SelectYourNews. The extra features and changes are mentioned in the following months on this blog.

 I’ll keep you posted ...

RSS use?



RSS logo

It's all about information 
The bulk of my work consists of seeking information. Especially for the world- and businessnews I’m a big fan of using RSS. When I asked however, the people in my network aren’t familiar with RSS, let alone using it. Beside a single internet nerd, hardly anyone is seem to know about the functionality of RSS. And that surprises me, especially considering the convenience and possibilities that RSS offers. Yes, I'm a RSS enthusiast.

RSS usage in the Netherlands
To have an idea of the worldwide use of RSS, I consulted Google. Unfortunately, the latest studies about RSS usage were done in 2008 and in the rapid changing world of social media and the internet I considered them outdated. So I decided to do a short questionnaire through my own website OKonderzoek.nl. The 235 Dutch people who have completed the questionnaire confirm my suspicion. RSS is a relatively unknown online feature. Only 50% of the respondents where familiar with RSS. And of that group only 50% uses RSS. Ultimately that’s only 1 in 4 respondents. There’s room for improvement here. For further figures, the completed report and research data are available for download.

RSS Promotion
I’m convinced that a good implementation of a RSS function has added value for a website. Facebook and LinkedIn get enough attention on a website but the RSS is –when available- not big on the promotion agenda . The RSS function with its subscription feature generates a stream of potential visitors after the publication of new content. When combined with other social media there is much potential for additional exposure. I can only assume that the limited awareness of the functionality of RSS explains the limited usage. Then there is the issue about the current RSS readers available.



75% of the current users use an offline RSS reader. Offline readers generally look quite similar to Outlook in terms of layout and appearance. And let's face it, nobody likes to look at the Outlook screen for much longer then necessary. Outlook for me is a lot of extra work through the incoming work related emails. It just doesn’t feel right. And the corporate layout with is lacking any form of sex-appeal doesn’t make it any more attractive or fun to use either. 

RSS use 2.0
So as a pragmatic Internet user with a business spirit I developed SelectYourNews. SelectYourNews is an online webbased RSS reader. The RSS technique may not ring any bells for the regular internet user but that is the general idea. It's all about showing the news. SelectYourNews contains eight mini RSS readers on a single screen and clearly shows the headlines from the selected newspapers and magazines. Users select their preferred sources through the database which is filled with 3500+ feeds as we speak. Is SelectYourNews unique? Yes and no. There are a lot of RSS readers available with a comprehensive functionality for information supply. The uniqueness of SelectYourNews is the layout with eight fields and the large database of RSS feeds. The user selects the news sources they want and do not need to copy / paste the RSS feeds from a website into the reader. This gives the user more flexibility, convenience and choice. The news profiles provide the user with preselected news sources to match the user interests.



SelectYourNews logo

And now further
I'm very pleased with the usability of SelectYourNews There are many more expansion options I want to realize. Obviously there are some improvement, a website is and will always remain a dynamic product whose development never stands still. I am therefore very curious about the reactions of users. One of the many reasons I started this blog.
 After all, it's all about information ...

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Who?

This is an English translation of the Dutch blog by Chris Bakker.

My name is Chris Baker and I am an internet enthusiast. After I wrote down a number of my ideas and dreams, I took the big step and started a small company to make my dreams reality and develop it into products. The company was named CHJ Internet. It’s not very original; C.H.J. are my initials and "Internet" is obvious. These are my dreams in my own business.

I started this blog to give you access to my ideas and the underlying ideas and an insight into the process of the development that will ensue.

Being an entrepreneur for me is  trying, falling, getting up and especially enjoy doing. That freedom really appeals to me. Where the future will take me I don't know. So far it's an interesting leisure activity that I do take really seriously. Where it all goes you'll be reading here.

I’ll keep you updated :-)


Chris