Huffington Post: news aggregator or content thief?

22Dec08

From Wired blog: The Huffington Post, a venture-capital-backed new media site that mixes links to other sites content with hundreds of celebrity and volunteer blogger posts, is being accused of slimy business practices by a handful of smaller publications who say the site is unfairly copying and publishing their content. …. link-voting sites like Digg and Reddit, Google News and Slashdot, rely on small excerpts or user submitted summaries of online content in order to create lists of the best new content on the web. … But none of those aggregation sites, uses as much of a percentage of copyrighted content as The Huffington Post does. … The Huffington Post, which launched in May 2005, drew 19 million unique visitors in November through the efforts of 27 editorial staff members, according to a spokesman. The company just closed a $25 million funding round a few weeks ago. … “In other words: professional newsgathering organizations have paid professional writers to do professional work, and then Arianna comes in, creates links to their creations, and sells ads on her own page. How progressive.” (Read full article).

Filed under: attualità, culture, we-media, web 2.0   |  1 Comment
Tags: Huffington Post