Targeted News Enters A New Dimension

There are so many ways to get news now, from TV, online, mobile, iPad, Facebook, Twitter…the list goes on. News is so accessible and so abundant now that it becomes harder to effectively capture an audience. It is information overload and people flit from one news source to another. Local news used to be considered targeted news, but with the industry in flux that has all changed. Hyper-targeted news sources are emerging to draw in their audience by making news simplified, interactive and more relatable. With more people deviating from mainstream media, the emergence of these news sources reflects the need to keep people engaged with the news and more frequently engaged with the news. One of these hyper-targeted examples is aimed at Generation Y, also known as the 21-35 age group, and takes a more simplified approach that they call OneMinuteNews
http://bit.ly/fQHhFp
. Like the name suggests, OneMinuteNews offers one minute news bites on-demand to web and mobile users. Its content covers a variety of topics, from lifestyle to technology and everything in between. As attention spans grow increasingly limited, OneMinuteNews seems like an effective way to capture interest and an audience who is on the move and needs news to be wherever they are and convenient to the increasing demands on their time. Another interesting aspect is the person who developed it, Douglas J. Greenlaw. After holding senior positions at MTV and Viacom, networks which have a history of developing news formats for younger demographics (MTV News and Nick News with Linda Ellerbee), who better to pitch OneMinuteNews to Generation Y? Another example seeks to make news more engaging by allowing any organization to post hyper-local news assignments that users can search, by location, as eyewitness accounts break and as news unfolds.

Known as Tackable this mobile-oriented news source, which is still in beta, envisions offering a lot of opportunities to media as well as ordinary people
http://bit.ly/g0qfzM
. Reporters could more easily find breaking news simply by pulling the map over to their location. Meanwhile, ordinary people would be given a voice as Tackable entices them to contribute their first-hand accounts of breaking news. It also shows promise for advertising and tracking events that are happening where you are, at your destination or in an area of interest. Since Tackable has so many applications, and gets people involved with news, it could be an interesting one to watch when it arrives. The third example, News360, serves up a more relatable news offering by algorithmically delivering, using AI technology, news stories that are the newest and the most credible
http://bit.ly/dDXmrI
. News360 is an attempt to cut through the clutter and filter out news that is the most interesting to you. Mathew Ingram notes that so far Facebook and Twitter have been the best ways to get recommended content when it comes to news, and that anyone who seeks to top them is going to have to use both of them to do it. While News360 is not perfect by any means, who’s to say that Facebook and Twitter are? I believe this is an area that is still in development. It is very hard to accurately tune into what people want to read at a certain time and in a certain mood, and if they happen to be looking for something different it does not work when you have a program suggesting things akin to what you usually search for and read. Perhaps that is why I think the first two hold more relevance, because they allow control to remain in the hands of the recipients. After all, who better to know what news you want to see than yourself? Much like a search engine serves up the most relevant sources to our queries, each of these hyper-targeted news sources allows us to cut through massive amounts of news and access only those tidbits that we deem interesting. Although still in development, each of these brings us one step closer to a news on-demand format that efficiently serves and satisfies the news appetite of every individual. With varying interests and demands, that will be a feat in itself. One could say these new targeted news sources put us on the precipice of a new dimension for the news industry. We live in interesting times, and these hyper-targeted news sources make sure that everyone continues to engage with and keep up with them.