News aggregators: problems and solutions
News aggregation technology has solved the news tracking problem. When news aggregators appeared, the regular checking of news updates from one website to another became easier and faster.
A news aggregator is a tool or system that collects news content from different new sources. Today, there are various news aggregation sites that people can use to get the latest news. While this is web-based, the aggregators can also be used in web browsers, email applications, or it can be a desktop application.
Software-based aggregators are installed in web browsers and email applications to deliver news updates directly to these applications, which can be viewed in a dashboard composition. In this way, a user must subscribe to an RSS feed, which is embedded in the websites, and then updates from these sites are sent to their email browser, email application, or the aggregator’s own desktop application.
Although this sounds like good technology, it is still plagued with various problems. Here are a few:
Some news aggregation sites have unorganized news content. To address this, these sites may use a system that automatically classifies news content into its appropriate news categories (national, global, crime, political, environmental, etc.). This will help users to find their favorite stories immediately.
News sources are misleading. This can be attributed to broken links or simply links not directing users to the correct story. Aggregation websites collect their content manually, so enough attention should be paid to data collection to avoid errors.
In the case of subscriptions to web feeds, there are times when a person may receive a large volume of news content, especially if they have subscribed to many sites. Although, you can always unsubscribe from their feeds (and if they are all relevant feeds), you can use the tagging system instead. You can tag your sources with keywords to sort and organize them. In this way, you can easily find which article you want to open and read. This process is called feed filtering.
Other problems that users face are:
* News aggregation sites do not contain local news (although others do) or community news is rarely listed.
* In the case of RSS feeds, other websites do not support RSS.
* Not all software-based aggregators are free.
* Not all software-based aggregators are compatible with every operating system.
* Freeware-based aggregators are confused by banner ads, which are quite distracting.
In the midst of all this, one thing is for sure. News aggregators will be a trend, especially since many people are favoring technological advances.