[Sigia-l] Google Needs People

[Jan C. Wright]

Well, let me try to reconstruct my news-looking behaviors...
I gave up looking at google news because:

I tried it for a few days...
I wanted to know what the current state of US policies on Iraq were...
The US category top stories were not about it, even though it was heavily 
in the news...
The World category stories were not about it...
I drilled down in World to see more stories, and it wasn't on that next 
page either...
I backed up and drilled down in US to see more stories, and there weren't 
any there either....
I didn't use search. I didn't notice it on the page... duh, and here I use 
the google toolbar for all my searches. But searching for news on Iraq as 
opposed to being presented with news on Iraq, therein lies the difference, 
I guess. I don't expect to have to search for news... that it is pushed to 
me. I initiate search on other topics, but usually not on news topics.

So the scent of information was gone at that point, and I went back to my 
usual news gathering ways.

To me, it was a "top story," it was on NPR every morning, it seemed big 
enough to be out there in the front runners, but it wasn't in the higher 
levels of googlenews. So I decided as a user that googlenews wasn't a good 
collector of news that mattered to me, or identifier of important news.

http://www.intellnet.org/news/ is one news source I go to when I need news. 
Plus I have CNN pushing its "Breaking News" via email. I have Wired News 
pushing its email listing, and often read the stories it pushes. I also set 
the local newspaper up as my main page, so that I see local stories every 
morning, but I rarely go searching in it for anything not on the top page. 
Pushed, not searched. Is this something about news, that I as a user want 
it pushed, not have to search for it?

jan

  At 01:05 PM 10/15/2002 -0400, Drop, Daniel wrote:
>                 Jan wrote: I was looking for Iraq stuff. I checked off and
>on for a few days after it first went up, and then since it wasn't giving me
>what I wanted, I stopped.
>
>This comment interested me.  Jan gave up on Google News because Iraq stuff
>wasn't in the headlines. I wasn't certain why they gave up or what they gave
>up on.
>
>-       Did they give up looking because they couldn't find the news? Google
>News has a search facility (prominently on top)?  Maybe with the headlines
>listed on the front page, people start expecting their important news to be
>there.  If not, there is no news on the subject
>-       Or, Did they give up on Google as a good collector of news since a
>perceived important topic was not in the headlines?
>-       Or, did they give up for some other reason?
>
>The answers may be interesting in how people use news sites.