Now, I’m personally biased towards the Hindustan Times. I discovered the newspaper a year or so ago, and have been completely overwhelmed with the quality of news. Unlike a lot of other publications which have swung the tabloid way, the newspaper has retained its freshness. The quality of editorials is also to be commended. It’s one of the first newspapers to have actively embraced it’s website so well as to promote it brightly on the front page. I have noticed few newspapers do that, if at all.
Their brand makeover months back was also quite commendable, the new layout is far more attractive. It has also has a Facebook fan page and an active Twitter account.
Of course, this piece is not to rant on about the fandom HT follows. The point is that it’s one of the few newspapers (in my opinion) to have embraced new media properly. Hence, when I read this news piece about HTTweets.com, I was hopeful for something more than a content aggregator.
HTTweets.com is merely another content aggregator from various sources. HT Media has tied up with Cliqz.com, a Germany based website, to launch HTtweets.com, a news content aggregation website.
In an interview to afaqs!, a spokesperson from HT Media said that there was no content syndication deal between publishers. Cliqz.com, which runs several news aggregation websites across the world will provide the technology to crawl across the Internet and aggregate the latest news.
Currently, the site has three categories, Headlines, Bollywood and Cricket, though more categories will be added soon. It also has a separate section for news from Hindustan Times. Now, Hindustan Times has two Twitter accounts, both of which seem to be active. One is @htTweets, which is actively promoted on their website. The other is @hindustan_times, which is either a remnant of a bygone era, though it’s feeds are also quite active and are all the latest Hindustan Times news articles.
One would assume httweets.com was related to it’s Twitter account. However, the spokesperson mentioned earlier also said “Although the site has no relation with Twitter.com or tweets, the name HTtweets.com will let the consumers think about short format news articles and headlines, which when clicked lead to other websites.” The site does not restrict its competitors or give more importnace to its own material (except on the start page).
On clicking each individual category, a host of news stories are provided. Each story is supplemented by the same from other sources with other related stories.
The entire article will be available only on the parent website. HT’s monetization plan is restricted to ads, though as of now, there is only one banner ad (Google) on the site. The site competes against other news aggregators like in.com. If the plan is to make a one-stop destination for news or a very good landing page, it also competes with yahoo.com, especially sincethe new portal allows you to add the sources you like to the site.
On comparison to www.in.com:
- www. in.com definitely has more content.
- The offset is that htTweets is focused on news and nothing else
- Though both have options of viewing other sources and popularity, the interface of htTweets is simpler and easier to use.
- www.in.com allows you to create RSS feeds, vote for your favourite stories (most top-rated stories get 1-2 votes only), or suggest a story.
Overall, I am yet to understand the reason for HTtweets.com. Why a content aggregation site which leads users to the content of competitors? A plan to eventually lead users to HT through it? Evil plan to confuse people with the word tweetsand lead them to plain boring news?
