Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Clipping Services

Author:Mark Nottingham
Posted:9/2/1999; 9:12:18 PM
Topic:Automated deep linking
Msg #:10489 (In response to 10485)
Prev/Next:10488 / 10490

This reminds me of another analogy;

As a user of information, I want as many rights as possible to access it, within reason.

However, as a producer of information, I understand the reluctance of 'letting go' that a lot of content owners show. I used to be in the newspaper business (a photojournalist). I (and the paper I worked for) would not have appreciated someone reproducing a photograph in another publication. It's just not done.

But wait -- there's more. A very common (and well established) phenomenon is the 'Clipping Service' - a company that will, for a fee, look through all the newspapers every day and send you, by fax or in the post, any articles about the subject you're interested in. It could be your company, or a general subject. It could be an entire front page's content, if it's relevent.

The Clipping Services don't represent themselves as the creators of that content; that would be foolhardy, both legally and in a business sense; they're providing a service to (here it comes) aggregate content.

This is, of course, just an analogy, but I found it thought-provoking. Some will say that the Clipping Service is more like a search engine, but I don't think so; it may not be a perfect match with present aggregation technology, but I think it's in the direction it's going.

To see a real-world (vs. cyber) Clipping Service, have a look at http://www.mediamonitors.com.au/

Searches on Google and Yahoo also turn up some interesting stuff. http://www.google.com/search?q=clipping+service http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=clipping




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