Future: Google News To Catch “Comment Fever”
It looks as if harvesting the world’s news information was not enough for the search engine giant, as Google is preparing to revamp their Google News section by allowing comments to appear next to the stories online.
But before users celebrate the fact that Google News is finally adapting a feature that has been apart of Topix, you may want to read the “fine print.”
(Google News Blog) Starting this week, we’ll be displaying reader comments on stories in Google News, but with a bit of a twist…
We’ll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question. Our long-term vision is that any participant will be able to send in their comments, and we’ll show them next to the articles about the story. Comments will be published in full, without any edits, but marked as “comments” so readers know it’s the individual’s perspective, rather than part of a journalist’s report.
As always, Google News will direct readers to the professionally-written articles and news sources our algorithms have determined are relevant for a topic. From bloggers to mainstream journalists, the journalists who help create the news we read every day occupy a critical place in the information age.
(Note: emphasis mine)
In order for user’s comments to appear, they will first have to email Google at [email protected] and submit their real name and title (and email of course) to the search engine giant.
Google in the future intends to open up this feature to the world, which would probably be a brighter idea. Hopefully they will consider creating a real commenting page, as emailing comments to editors (or any organization) gets very old after a while.
