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Ask.com Launches Social Media News Site BigNews

posted on February 7, 2008


Search engine Ask.com just launched a news aggregation site called BigNews. The difference is that it integrates voting with what it calls “BigFactor.” BigNews is like Yahoo News or Google News except it’s broader – it includes video, images, and blog posts related to each story.

If you click through to the actual story you’ll see related stories from Digg, sorted by number of votes. I also noticed Wikipedia content relating to the story.

If you mouseover the “BigFactor” vote you’ll see a score. It also shows a quick rundown on how the story rates according to criteria like how new the story is, how much discussion has resulted from the story, and other measurements. BigNews feeds in top stories on Digg as well as Digg stories with no votes – so you can be the first to vote on them. Click “track” and you can subscribe to the newsfeed or put it in “MyStuff.”

Here’s an example of a story:

It’s not clear how to submit news stories. Vanessa Fox writes: “As noted in a recent PEW Research Center study, Yahoo! and Microsoft (via msnb.com) lead the pack for search-engine powered news sites. Google News is used by only 9% of web searchers (compared to 26% for msnbc.com and 22% for Yahoo! News).” Like the other top news sites there are no comments accepted on stories.

Note that you can’t get to the site typing in www.bignews.com, instead it’s a subdomain of Ask – http://news.ask.com.

On one hand, the space is crowded. There is Netscape and there are plenty of voting sites each with its own twist. On the other hand, as a marketer I’m interested in the site if it sends traffic. As a blogger I wonder how to get included on the list of blogs. I noticed Search Engine Land and TechCrunch and a lot of news blogs are included. I also think the history feature could save me time when I’m trying to get some background on a story.

My vote – thumbs up. Ask.com has done well integrating social media with news in a clean, easy-to-use interface. Features like story history could save me time. I don’t care for their story ranking stats and why include Digg stories with no votes – is this a pitch for the underdog??


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  • http://www.thevanblog.com Steven Bradley

    I haven’t explored it much yet, but Big News does look nice as do most things Ask. I’m not seeing any voting though. It looks more like the ranking is taken from what’s going on across the web, but not an actual vote by users.

    I wasn’t signed into Ask so maybe the voting is there or maybe I simply missed it.

    I’m not quite getting the association with Digg, unless Ask plans on integrating more social news sites later.

  • http://www.newhomessection.com Jayson

    I like this; hopefully it catches on. It’s going to make it easy to follow stories and see what blogs etc. are saying. Nice job Ask –

    I wonder how easy it is to game

  • http://www.wpromote.com/blog Mike Mothner

    This may be a great new venue for blogs and for people looking for new and interesting blogs to join. It is also a great move be Ask.com who is now taking a more active role in effectively bringing together news aggregation with the ever-growing domain of social media site.

  • http://www.greatpriceshere.com Nicole

    It looks good, has a kind of all in one feel to it. Will definitely be interested in knowing how to get a blog included in the list. I look forward to a detailed post on it on this blog.

  • http://bushidoblog.com.ar Zen

    I really like what they did with the layout. It’s easy like sunday morning! :D

  • http://chasinggoogle.blogspot.com Mobile guy

    There are a lot of blogs from Blogger, may be these blogs included automatically.

  • http://www.winningponies.com/ Jason

    It seems like Ask is making a big push to become a player in the search market… which seems to be unsuccessful at this point. I wonder if this site is going to do anything for me traffic wise, because I know their search engine is really lacking in that dept.

  • http://www.gowfb.com GoWFB

    Ask seems to be getting into the act now. Sounds good

  • http://www.trbr.net Seomotion

    I think that Ask will become a serious player in the Web search industry. It is really good!

  • http://www.globalrvtrader.com bhavik

    sound good…..ask is a big name in internet industry this will make ask name more popular on internet i used some service of ask and i am very much happy thanks ask.com…and good luck for this

  • http://www.capatrex.com Alexis

    I will definitely give the Ask site a try. Looks good.

  • Pingback: Ask.com Traffic Jumps 20% after Launching Social Media BigNews | Local Search for Local Business

  • Jt

    I like http://www.subbmitt.com which is a new social news site. You can post comments & articles without signing up or logging in. It looks nicer than Digg too.

  • Enzo

    I’m starting to like http://www.subbmitt.com now. I used to use Reddit, but I’ve switched to Subbmitt. It has a better UI and easier to use. I can also post things anonymously if I want to.

  • Enzo

    Wow. I just realized someone said nearly the same thing right before me. I guess Subbmitt is gaining some traction.

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