contextify

contextify.org

Media outlets around the world produce hundreds of thousands of

stories every day.

But the demands of the industry mean that they often lack the context that

readers need to truly understand what's happening to the world around

them.

“The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context.”

Carl Bernstein

That's a shame, because context is important.

We don't just need the where and the when and the who.

We need to know why things are happening around us.

We need to understand how.

It's big picture. It’s long zoom. It's context.

It’s not all bad, however

It's not that context doesn't exist. The truth is that top quality journalism

and high value information — the really engaging, deep stories that give you the background to the headlines

— exist in abundance.The problem is simply that

finding those stories is difficult

Why?

Money and attention.

Most publishers point you to their "related articles" whether or not they

are the most insightful or informative.

For all the rhetoric about aggregating news and sending readers to the best

material online, they don't do it.

Linking at the New York Times

Source: Jonathan Stray, Nieman Lab, June 2010http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/06/linking-by-the-numbers-how-news-organizations-are-using-

links-or-not/

6.8 links per article

Linking at the Guardian


links-or-not/


Linking at CNN


links-or-not/


Everybody thinks they’ve got the definitive version of the news.

In fact, they’re nearly all repeating the same story.

“Out of the 121 distinct versions of last week’s story about tracing Google’s recent attackers to two schools in China, only 11 percent included at least some original reporting.”

Nieman Lab, Feb 2010http://is.gd/hN6zX

“The level of repetition in the 24-hour news cycle is one of the most striking features one finds in examining a day of news. Google News, for instance, offers consumers access to some 14,000 stories from its front page, yet on this day they were actually accounts of the same 24 news events.”

Pew State of the News Media report, 2006

We’re drowning in news, but finding context is harder than ever.

So what do you do?

“Related stories” are usually just driving traffic to unintelligent topic

pages

Google doesn’t provide a filter.

Where else can you turn?

Maybe you end up on Wikipedia. It’s certainly successful.

Source: ComScore traffic figureshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Stu/

comScore_data_on_Wikimedia

But Wikipedia pages aren’t stories.

They’re encyclopedia entries that are often built by synthesizing and

repackaging the best journalism.

You’re still a link or two from what you need.

Maybe you turn to your friends on Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere.

“If the news is important it will find me”

Loic Le Meur, 2008

http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2008/03/my-

social-map-i.html

That’s great if you have lots of friendswho are obsessed with the news,

love to share it with everyone and know about everything

you could ever be interested in.

Most people aren’t like that.

Average Facebook user has 130 friendsSource: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Average Twitter user has 126 followersSource:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/29/twitter-users-average-api-traffic

And those numbers are skewed.

Facebook “Whales”Users who are maxed out with 5,000 friends.

Facebook hates them because they’re unprofitable system hogs.

Research suggests more than 800 friends is seen as “too many” by most people.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2007/dec/18/facebookwhales800istooman

Twitter power users

Massive celebrity skew (Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Justin Bieber)

As of November 2010, there are 281 users with more than a million followers

“Nobody has a million followers”

Anil Dashhttp://dashes.com/anil/2010/01/

nobody-has-a-million-twitter-followers.html

Social networks can help

But it’s better if you know the right people

Most of us don’t know the right people

Which means Facebook and Twitter are better for discovering news or

talking about it than they are at giving you context

Still no context

News sites point you in the right direction

Google takes a broad slice of news

Wikipedia can fill in some of the blanks

Social networks can help with discovery

But what if you could take a news storyand find the

the best original journalism the most compelling stories

the smartest writingthe deepest insight

on that subject?

We want to built tools to help people gain a better understanding of why the

news is happening.

We want to direct them to the highest quality information there is on the web.

We want to point them to things that they will enjoy reading and help them

be as informed as possible.

How?

We plan to build an engine that can analyze articles on the web to find the highest quality stories with the most

context.

First, our spiders will go out into the web and read the news.

Then we'll analyze everything we find to understand what it's about.

And after that we'll apply a series of filters to try and work out if it's good.

and we’ll do it the way users need it, not publishers.

data in the stories themselves explicit and implicit keywords

data hidden in stories metadata and semantic analysis

the open web authority and link patterns

social networks popularity, social ranking, zeitgeist

our own users activity and interestingness

In the early days we may need some manual curation to get the algorithms working optimally

but we believe that by cross referencing all of these data pointswe'll be able to take any story and offer readers a way to drill down to discover the most informative stories about the same subject.

three steps

1. news aggregator2. in-browser

3. platform

news aggregator

NORTH KOREA

North Korea Issues Warning as Artillery Fire Rattles IslandNew York Times, USA

FIJI

Doctor examining 3 teenage boys rescued after 50 days at seaCNN, USA

AFGHANISTAN

UK blamed for success of Taliban impostorSydney Morning Herald, Australia

North Korea: riling up the world for six decades. CBC, November 23 2010For North Korea, Timing Is Everything, Global Post, November 26 2010The Ghosts of Cheju, Newsweek, June 18 2000

MORE CONTEXT ABOUT NORTH KOREA

Boozy teens’ midnight trip goes 1300km astray Stuff, November 26 2010Joy in Tokelau over missing teenagers, Radio New Zealand, November 26 2010The Epic Rescue of Andrea Doria, Newsweek, June 18 2000

MORE CONTEXT ABOUT AMAZING RESCUES

UK-based Taliban spend months fighting Nato in Afghanistan. Guardian, November 25 2010For North Korea, Timing Is Everything, Global Post, November 26 2010The Ghosts of Cheju, Newsweek, June 18 2000

MORE CONTEXT ABOUT AFGHAN POLITICS

in-browser tools

a website where users can enter a URL

a browser tool so users can Contextify any page

a Facebook application for links from friends

Obama sends U.S. warship to Yellow Sea in show of strength as two Koreas teeter on the brink of all-out war

This story about North Korea in the Daily Mail is rated

~TODAY~

South Korea Reassesses Defenses After Attack, New York Times

~ANALYSIS~

For North Korea, Timing Is Everything, Global Post, November 26 2010

~BACKGROUND~

Kim Wan Mae is 95 years old, but she hasn't forgotten a tragic episode in her past--and South Korea's. Newsweek, June

2000

Sgt. Berry F. Rhoden was handed a card before being shot in the back. The legend on the card said: "You are about to die the most horrible kind of death. VFW magazine, February

2003

The little that is known about Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s leader, conjures up a caricature of a diminutive playboy, a comic picture at odds with his brutal regime. BBC, January

2009

Want more recommendations?

Recommended North Korea sources38North.orgBBCAsia Times Online

More about North Korea fromWikipediaGoogleYoutube

platform

a system for publishers to submit articles to us

tools for companies to easily incorporate Contextify results on their own pages

API access for developers to query our database on the go

there are revenue opportunities, starting with:

possibilities for Contextifycontextual advertising — AdSense $1.2bn

sponsorships + partnerships charges for heavy API use — Twitter etc

possibilities for publishersincreased visibility/ad opportunities

traffic to paywalled material

Competition

Google News

NewserRewriting news, $2.5m

ZemantaFocused on bloggers, $5.3m

ApturePublisher-centric, $4.6m

DaylifeSmart topic pages, $12.3m

OneSpotPersonalisation, $4.9m

but they’re not doing it all. So how do we get there?

smart, knowledgeable adviserssmall, agile, experienced team

estimated first year staff + costs = $450,000

competing for $400,000 from Knight News Challenge

1 monthfully operational prototype

3 monthsbeta testing aggregator

6 monthsbeta testing tools

12 monthsplatform release

Contextify will have revolutionised the way people understand the news

Contextify will generate revenue for itself and publishers

After that?The sky’s the limit

contextify.org

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contextify