A year ago, the FT launched “a next generation search tool for business professionals”. Powered by Endeca, it was called Newssift and aimed to “enable users to string together a query that can provide insight into the relationship between people, organizations, geography, and business theme, which ultimately facilitates more informed business decisions”.
But Newssift is no more; the site has since gone offline.
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Why? An FT Group spokesperson tells paidContent:UK: “It
It’s amazingly hard to find any reasons concerning the Newssift shutdown. Anyone?
Have you looked at FirstRain? http://research.firstrain.com – it’s not a free tool, and isn’t based on advert model AFAIK. It does have a similar faceted search paradigm.
Shame, it was showcasing some clever stuff
It was indeed an interesting site. I am surprised they shut it down while it was only months old and still in beta. Juster, how do you expect a site to gain traction within a few months of a beta launch and no promotion?
I don’t dispute quality of the site but I seriously doubt that the ad market had anything to do with its demise, that’s all. If they had a ton of traffic they would find a way to monetize.
I don’t know if Juster tried using NewsSift or not, but I found that it was an interesting tool to play around with. I’m not sure who the target audience was, but I thought it was a fascinating way to dissect the news stream. It’s unclear to me whether they would built traction over time or not, but I still think it’s a shame that it’s gone.
This is complete SPIN and BS. The advertising slowdown has NOTHING to do with the fact that no one wanted to use the site. They didn’t get any traction or users, which is why it got shut down imho.