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| 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.
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.
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 ...
