The problem with magazines is that they are so very expensive to produce. All those writers, editors, photographers, and designers cost money. Even original news sites require a lot of resources to run. That is why Hearst is taking a different approach with a new site launching today called LMK (Let Me Know). It brings in a river of news and photos on 2.3 million people and topics from authoritative sources. In other words, Hearst is getting into the news aggregation game, but with its own high-design twist.
Each page, whether it’s about a celebrity, athlete, or company, pulls in news feeds and photos from the AP and Getty about that topic. LMK is licensing semantic filtering technology from Evri, which parses through the feeds and photos to help create the automated topic pages.
But LMK will also have specially curated pages which will have its own freelance editor and designers. The first enhanced topic page it will be launching is for U.S. college football. Bob Roe, a former assistant managing editor at Sports Illustrated, is the sports expert who will be overseeing the sports pages. Once the best sources for stories about each team, player, and coach are selected from both major news sites to fan blogs, Evri’s technology does the rest.
Whenever there is game against another team, LMK will also show the most authoritative news sources for that team in a “behind Enemy Lines” column. Each page will also show stats, photo galleries, and interactive data modules which illustrate information such as which starting players have injuries. Just mouse over their position, and you can see if they are scheduled to play and what injuries they have. Or check out the “big fat number,” which compares the total weight of each team’s offensive line.
The site also lets you drill down into individual player or coach pages, which again show a feed of the most authoritative news about that person and fun stats such as how much more each college football coach makes in salary than the head of the school where he works.
LMK is the first business to come out of Hearst Entertainment’s new digital incubator under deputy group head George Kliavkoff (formerly the chief digital officer at NBC, where he helped create Hulu). Hearst Entertainment manages the company’s stakes in various cable channels, but is also now incubating and investing in startups. Kliavkoff boasts that LMK has only one full-time employee. “There is no variable cost in this business.” LMK will launch other channels around reality TV, financial news, medicine, and more.
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Mmm, curious about the site, I gave http://www.lmk.com a try: HTTP 500 Server Error. Oops…
interesting concept
The link (http://www.lmk.com/collegefootball) isn’t working, as the site hasn’t launched publicely yet.
Isn’t Evri affiliated with Paul Allen?
HTTP 500. Seems to work just as well as his projects did at NBC.
And, why would we need them? DO they not think that Google and blogs would do it better, faster and cheaper? Nothing like moving to a low margin business!
Frankly, I like magazines but much of their usefulness is being eaten by the web. Case in point, Saveur that I buy is about information that I cannot get anywhere else on authentic food. Gourmet is a list of recipes with an article or two. Hmmm, one of those things is not necessary in the web world. I can spend an awful lot of time and not repeat the Saveur experience.
Magazines will move to tablets. They will be more like print than the web. I believe this, and built a CMS to support the concept. Catalogs will be similarly visual with the web functionality — purchasing — that we expect. It is a time for new models but this is not the model.
The site is live (www.lmk.com).
They should patent this product.
Seriously though, why dont the links go anywhere? The product should be working before it being news worthy
Seems to be working now..
http://www.lmk.com/collegefootball/california
Interesting, but kinda of a 1 trick pony at this point. And, creating a college football site is easier then say the news just because of the stats nature of sports.
They forgot to change their favicon. Drupal site!
This must be a joke, it looks like an alpha I’d show a VC (who would laugh at me)
Even better:
http://www.lmk.be/Engels/index.htm
So it appears LMK is attempting to be the next generation of AllTop/PopURLs. I recently launched a similar aggregation site about college football:
College Football Observer
http://collegefootballobeserver.com