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Newspond leaves me dry

by Tris Hussey on February 20th, 2008

Newspond is the latest of the “Techmeme/Digg Killers” to appear on the scene and I’m frankly just not impressed.  A first glance at the homepage (so the default is All news and most popular now) gave me an “eh” feeling.  Nothing jumped out as “news” to me.

Fine, let’s try Tech.  Pretty much the same.  It wasn’t until I chose Tech, Most Recent, that I got any headlines that I found even remotely interesting.  This is not a good sign for a purported Techmeme/Digg killer.

Arr Ess Ess?
The other glaring omission is RSS.  It just isn’t there.  Huh?  I’m not going to visit this several times a day, I’m sorry.  Look, even though I do visit Techmeme often, I also subscribe to both its main and firehose RSS and Twitter feeds.  I can just catch up quickly via RSS.  I visit Techmeme to catch the breaking new just on the cusp.  Techmeme and Digg might not be perfect, but at least they have RSS!

I’m not even going to bother creating an account right now.  Maybe I’m being too harsh on them on their first day, but really launching like this?  Sorry, not a good move.

Now if you don’t want to just take my word for it, here are some other posts that say similar things:

• Is Newspond a Techmeme killer? - Download Squad
• newspond (Mashable)
• Deep Jive Interests » Newspond: Saccharine, Misbegotten Child Of Digg And Techmeme?
• Introducing The Most Advanced News Site On The Planet (TechCrunch)

I might not be as harsh as Tony or Mike, but wow, this is just a potentially great idea that has totally missed the mark.

Newspond, now, the question will be: Are you ready to step up and fix this site and make it a destination for us?

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