Daylife dawns
I’m excited to report that Daylife, the news startup I’ve been helping on, has launched its site today. Take the tour here.
Actually, Daylife launched its platform a few weeks ago, without fanfare and trumpet, powering the new exportable, embedable NewsTracker on the home page of the Huffington Post (click on a name there and you’ll see pages of news and features about newsmakers built through the Daylife API). As I’ve explained it in email to a few folks, Daylife is a platform of news applications that will feed not only its own site but also, via its API, sites large and small that want to bring new ways to view relevant news to their readers.
I do believe that this is an important element in a new architecture of news, which I’ll write about more later. The service gathers, analyzes, and organizes the news. That analysis will enable us to show news from a high altitude — who’s covering what, where — but also, even more important, it enables you to see the connections in stories among people and topics. Making those connections is what news is all about. Because it is a platform, it helps news sites put their own news in context and present the world of news to readers — which is what readers demand. And because it is a platform, Daylife helps news organizations distribute their relevant headlines and links into the tentacles of the web. We think this is a new way to experience the news, distribute news, and make connections in the news.
It’s a start — a beta — with much more to come. And so please make generous use of the feedback button on the site.
Note that the only thing that is created by editors is the cover you’ll see on the home page. Everything else is automated. I’ve been saying that I am the only editor on earth who is not building an empire. But that is just why it has been so exciting to work on Daylife, to collaborate with an incredible technology team assembled by founder and CEO Upendra Shardanand as they find new ways to analyze, understand, display, and distribute news. I believe that what this does in the long run is send people — and thus support — to journalism at its source.
So more later. As much as it pained me as a blogger and newsman, I chose not to blog this first. Others are writing about it now.
I suggest you go to the site, put in the name of a newsmaker you are interested in, and go from there. It will be like popcorn: You won’t be able to stop.
: LATER: Michael Arrington, among others, criticize Daylife’s lack of RSS and interactivity. No disagreement. Nature of a startup: some things get onto the boat at launch, others hitch the next ride. RSS was one of the last features to get delayed until a later release; it’s coming. I had subscribed to various of the test feeds and got addicted quickly, so I, too, am eager for them to come out. Interactivity is an interesting question for a platform: Is the use of the platform on sites everywhere a rich form of interactivity itself? What is the best form of interactivity on the site: comments or contributions? (This is a corollary to Arrington’s question the other day about whether a blog is a blog without comments…. My own answer is that a blog is a blog if it is involved in a conversation via links or comments.) So I don’t think the answer about interactivity is necessarily as obvious as it may at first appear. But the bottom line of a beta remains: There are lots of good things in the pipeline but at some point, you need to get the platform and product out so people can use it and show you what it can and should be. That’s where Daylife is today. So all this feedback and more is incredibly valuable. And that will be even truer as the full API is released and other sites show us what they want and need and what they can invent around the data Daylife provides. So please do keep clicking, commenting, criticizing, wishing.
Tags: daylife
January 4th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
FYI, your link to Huffington is missing a letter.
Daylife sounds like it’ll be fun — on my way to check it out.
January 4th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
[...] Today Mr. Jarvis, author of Buzzmachine, announced the beta launch of Daylife, a news browser, filter, and aggregator. It seems to have some genes in comon with Google News, Technorati, and Squidoo. [...]
January 4th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
[...] Update: One of the folks who helped Daylife dawn, Jeff Jarvis, provides more information about the site and invites feedback from someone other than Michael Arrington. (I’m kidding, he didn’t say that.) [...]
January 4th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
[...] Mike Arrington rips into Daylife today in his review on TechCrunch, even though he has made an investment into the company. I almost wonder if he is so negative because he has been accused of favoritism one time too many. Jeff Jarvis, also involved with the company, has a more even-handed review. Liz Gannes of Gigaom calles it a meatier version of aggregators such as Google News, Topix.net, and Techmeme, offering tools for pivoting around information by story, characters, time, popularity, photos, and quotes, in a wide range of news categories. Funded by old media and new media alike — “roughly twice as many investors as it has employees,†says paidContent — the company is perhaps best known for the involvement of media guru Jeff Jarvis and media bogeyman Craig Newmark. Daylife is basically a news aggregator. One of the facts that Arrington highlights is that it doesn’t feature an RSS feed. He likens it to “buying a car without a gas pedal,” a comparison I find ridiculously wrong. As a news site that wants to display the context of the news, an RSS feed is really not necessarily a good way of displaying information. The RSS feed for TechMeme, for example, isn’t very useful either. [...]
January 4th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
[...] Jeff Jarvis has officially launched his new site Daylife today in a public beta format. For the past few months, there has been some initial private alpha testing by a small group of individuals, including Steve Rubel. So far there are mixed opinions about Daylife throughout the blogosphere, but no matter what your current position is, you have to admit that the project does show a lot of potential. Personally I like Daylife as a first release beta, but also recognize that it is going to have to add some more features if it wishes to stand out of the pack. [...]
January 4th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
I just perused the site. Why would I want to read anything from the BBC, ABC, NYT, LA Times, Reuters, CNN, or MSNBC?
Their audience is old, dying, and off-line.
The days of platform subjugating substance are waning.
January 4th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
[...] Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine is involved with DayLife, a news startup launched today. [...]
January 4th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Jeff:
Since you’re asking, an immediate, Blink suggestion I’m sure someone’s already thought of: the frontpage thumbnails should have a headline with them when I mouse over. Right now I just see the date above and “Getty Images” below. A headline would help me decide.
January 4th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
[...] The much-buzzed-about news sote Daylife is now up and running. It combines Web 2.0 elements with conventional news aggregation into a visually unique format. Craig Newmark of craigslist fame is a top investor, as is the NY Times, Mike Arrington (who is apparently not pleased with the outcome), Dave Winer and others. This is not a review. I thought I’d encourage you all to check it out and review it here yourselves. In the spirit of Daylife, this should be an open review. Jeff Jarvis, a longtime friend of LR, consulted on the project. Jeff explains his role and the site’s mission here. Again - I’m not reviewing it, but I will offer two immediate observations: The cover page with rotating “big pictures” is very cool, and the graphical choices are quite good. But I’m surprised the site doesn’t offer RSS, commenting or other key social networking features. [...]
January 4th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
[...] Jeff erklärt in seinem Blog, bei Daylife handle es sich um eine Medienmaschine, die Inhalte für grosse und kleine Dienste im Web via spezieller Schnittstellen bereit halte. Ausserdem biete es eine Analyse darüber, wer wann und wo über welche Themen berichte. “Aber vor allem, und das ist wichtiger, ermöglicht es Euch, die Verbindungen ind en Geschichten zwischen menschen und andern Themen zu sehen. Diese Verbindungen aufzuzeigen ist es, was News ausmacht.” Dem kann ich nur zustimmen, aber ich sehe den Gedanken nicht einmal zur Hälfte umgesetzt: Vor allem die “Analyse” ist nicht viel mehr als eine Statistik über die Berichterstattung zu einem Thema, und das hat mit Relevanz leider überhaupt nichts zu tun. [...]
January 5th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Congratulations, Jeff, to the launch of Daylife. Interesting approach to news in the online-era.
Yet I strongly disagree with you saying “it analyzes the news”. At best, it puts together some statistical numbers about the flow of the news and it’s redundance. This is not news-analysis but search-engine vodoo which has nothing to do with relevance whatsoever.
Interestingly enough I see more and more of our collegues in the media switching their personal habits from being complete newsjunkies to very delibaretly picking a handful of trusted sources and authors (and bloggers) which provide a much more efficient way of getting a view of the world.
At the same time, all my not-so-media-savvy friends tend to become stressed out newsjunkies, getting lost in the ocean of sugar-coated peanuts in an age of everything-is-realtime-and-therefore-news. It’s tempting at first, and then it gets overwhelming and frustrating. Or why is it Daylife claims to have a “hand-picked” selection of topics on it’s “Cover”?
I am completely conviced that, while the “gatekeeping” days of journalism are over, the “sorting and preparing”-job will become more important as we see portals flooding people with “here’s everything completely raw, go figure out out what’s important to you”.
Funny enough you praise the machine-made linkage in Daylife as addictive as popcorn. It’s exactly the comparison one of my journalistic teachers used to challenge the newspapers tendency to catch up with all the noise in electronic media and turn away from background and news-analysis to publish more, shorter and more entertaining “news”. It’s like Popcorn: Buckets of tasty flakes lacking any nutrition value.
The “New Yorker” has never tasted better.
January 5th, 2007 at 12:37 am
[...] Daylife Disappointing — Even In its Design. January 4th, 2007 at 10:00 pm by Tony So, Daylife, the startup that Mike Arrington invested in so many moons ago, has finally unveiled itself (even to Mike), and lo and behold, even in spite of its A-list backers and their supporters, it is profoundly underwelming, with perhaps one exception. Daylife is a news aggregator, much in the vein like Topix, Google News and Techmeme. [...]
January 5th, 2007 at 6:47 am
Peter,
The analysis is what powers, for example, the connections among players. So from, say, Angelina Jolie’s page, you traverse connections to Africa and the U.N. or to Hollywood and celebrities. There’s more to this that isn’t visible in this iteration and the top-down view isn’t visible at all. But those are examples of what can be tamed from the API.
As for the role of editors, which is what you’re really talking about, I agree; in a completely open world, there’s more need for editing (read: no gatekeeping but selection, digging, vetting, and adding perspective) than before. As I said above, I think we’re heading to an architecture — not just technical, but in a business sense — of needing to support (find, send audience to) journalism at its source; we hope this powers that. Finally, it’s also necessary for editors to present not just their coverage but their coverage in the context of other coverage (here’s our story, says the Times of Anytown and here’s the coverage of the Timeses of New York, London, and India). These, I hope, will be tools that help you and your harried friends - which is all of us — find better coverage, coverage closer to events, coverage from different perspectives.
Steve,
Thank you. Good feedback. Keep it coming.
Captious,
There are thousands of sources with more being added constantly (especially blogs). I know you there are sources to please you in that sauce.
Jeremy,
Thanks. See, yes, there is always a need for editing.
January 5th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Peter is right, people handpick news filters. Unfortunately, filters have to spend 90% of their time debunking “sources”.
January 5th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Why would I want to go to a site that only had “some sources to please” me but others that chafed me?
My chi coach insists that I avoid all possible irritation. Other aggregators, filters, or my own self-direction will fill that prescription.
Triangulation and balanced opinion quotas will prove a fad in the interregnum between Old Big Media and the nascent New Media.
Hah! I used the “word of the day”.
January 5th, 2007 at 10:35 am
I hope Daylife stands above the news aggregator crowd. All the best.
On a related note, MediaVidea blog has a story on types of bloggers and the dangers associated with blogging.
http://mediavidea.blogspot.com/2007/01/two-basic-types-of-bloggers.html
January 5th, 2007 at 10:57 am
[...] The hottest web news of the past few days have definitely been Daylife. This startup is a new aggregation site, which is not something that is particularly exciting, but it has had some big name investors, a lot of exposure, and help from some smart people. [...]
January 5th, 2007 at 11:04 am
I don’t find Daylife that exciting:
“You must have Javascript and Flash version 8+ enabled to see this content.”
January 5th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
[...] I think a big part of the problem is that Daylife has been in stealth or development mode for a year or more, and it has some pretty high-profile people involved, including Jeff Jarvis — who seems to be taking all the criticism pretty well so far — as well as Craig Newmark, Dave Winer and the NYT. So I think the expectation was that when it launched it would be significantly different than Newsvine and Topix and so on. And it’s not. [...]
January 5th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
[...] Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine has had a strong hand in getting DayLife up and running and it is clear that his many years experience with media and journalism were well used here. Jeff’s thoughts on the Daylife release, as well as comments and trackbacks that link to both useful commentary and childish invective,’ can be found on Jeff’s blog. [...]
January 5th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
[...] I think a big part of the problem is that Daylife has been in stealth or development mode for a year or more, and it has some pretty high-profile people involved, including Jeff Jarvis — who seems to be taking all the criticism pretty well so far — as well as Craig Newmark, Dave Winer and the NYT. So I think the expectation was that when it launched it would be significantly different than Newsvine and Topix and so on. And it’s not. [...]
January 5th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
looks like Sploid 2.0
January 5th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
What is the big deal here? It looks like Microsoft designed it. Plus screen navigagtion is sloooooooooooooow.
January 5th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Beta or not, the site severly lacks depth.
When one of your investors crtitizes your efforts it’s time for a reevaluation.
And I’m still left asking myself, what’s the purpose of DayLIfe???
January 5th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
[...] I have somewhat Japanized daylife.com, which is the newly beta-launched news aggregation site, being led by Jeff Jarvis, among others. My purpose here in Japanizing is simply to show the Japanese audience how it feels, yet I know Japanizing English news aggregation site is of little practical use, since the content is still to come in English. It seems the aggregation is, in part, being done by human and, in part, by machine. [...]
January 7th, 2007 at 11:09 am
[...] It will be interesting to see where Jeff Jarvis and his cohorts take DayLife. It’s an attractive site and looks like it could be a useful way to consumer big media news — but that’s just it, it’s big media. From Jarvis, I was expecting something more social and more networked. It’s not revolutionary, from what I can see, but certainly evolutionary. The TK API is a smart move. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
January 7th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Congratulations. I’ve enjoyed being a beta user and had really good luck diving into stories where the angle I was interested in was different than the popular angle. I wanted to know if Allen Iverson was being a good teammate in Denver and how Lance Armstrong trained for the NYC Marathon. In both cases I was able to find the article I wanted in one click.
January 7th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Where do you click on Huff Post to see your engine integrated? I was one of the private beta users & a huge fan of the actual site. I’d love to see how it was integrated into HuffPost.
- Sean
January 10th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
[...] Aside from my personal interest in his view of what he calls exploding TV Jeff spends time thinking, writing, and now doing about journalism and how people are changing their relationship to the news. An early proponent of Digg his venture Daylife is bringing some great revolutionary thinking to daily news. I don’t really have a handle on it yet (it’s new) but it feels smart, and fun. Truly a new way to news. [...]
January 12th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
No punches pulled here: Your concept needs plenty of refinement, and your interface blows.
Unlike some of the previous posters, I don’t give away advice.
Interface testing and designing is my specialty, so please email me at the address I provided, and maybe we can work a deal out.
Please don’t consider this a smartass post…consider it an offer to help. If you pay me to help make your concept better, it’s win-win.
January 14th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Daylife A New Way To Explore News On The Web
Daylife, a New York-based news aggregator with personalization hooks, launched a few weeks ago to offer users another way to ingest the daily news. It brings a new fresh look to a news site. Daylife is backed by many, including