Originally published January 20 2006
Topix.net improves, becomes key player in news search
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Topix.net moved to new offices and announced a deal with the New York Times in the last year. The site has implemented several improvements like a new, crisp and clean look and logo, community services, public forums and more.
Topix.net has solidified its reputation as a key player in news search and aggregation over the past year, with major developments in both its business and services.
From a business standpoint, the biggest news was obviously be the acquisition of 75% of the company by three large newspaper publishing companies.
2005 also saw Topix move to new offices and announce a deal with the New York Times.
Topix has increased from 300,000 to 360,000 Topix.net categories/channels.
Some people love to comment on everything so the forums encourage community (good business) and get people to return to the site (more good business).
On the citizen journalism front, 15,000 blogs have been added to the Topix database, in addition to the more than 12,000 "mainstream" news sources.
The company has done a solid job to this point of merging both types of content and picking worthwhile blogs.
In my post that introduced this new content, Topix CEO, Rich Skrenta, shared some amazing stats about the blogosphere about the building of this portion of their overall database and the number of blogs in general.
In June, Topix expanded into Canada with new local pages for most Canadian postal codes and new Canadian sources.
I'm not sure if this was a 2005 or 2004 UI tweak but I appreciate how Topix separates press releases from other content.
For example, this channel about the Health Care Industry clearly labels press releases in the column on the right side of the page.
The company offers basic alerts, but still no keyword-based alerts or feeds but this alert delivers headlines from the front page.
CEO Rich Skrenta and Chris Tolles, VP of sales and marketing, were also quoted and interviewed in the press many times this year.
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