More than a year ago MySpace News launched as a feeble aggregator, a Digg clone that I (and everyone) called a squandered opportunity. The last thing the web needed (then or now) was another generic news filter - as Scott Karp points out, publishing and republishing the same news story in thousands of different publications and filters merely serves to diminish the marginal value of each version.
What MySpace has always needed to do is tap its vast, unique resource of user-generated content and turn that content into a coherent news channel. I am, therefore, very impressed with Screen Junkie, their celeb site/channel that launched in the UK this week.
As Jeff and others have been arguing for really quite a while now, what news outlets really need is to deliver genuinely unique news and comment rather than rehashed wire copy or generic reviews of the same national or global phenomena; they need original material and unique sources; and they need authentic voices rather than allegedly neutral, balanced anchors. With Screen Junkie MySpace seems to have cracked the puzzle that has eluded a lot of respected, veteran news outlets. By tapping the real, unique benefits that its vast army of daily content-creators provide, MySpace takes the concept of news content creation in the information age a pretty considerable leap forward.
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