News site Spotback has created a new widget that lets blogs and other sites gather user ratings on each piece of content. The product has launched on a few test sites, and will be available for anyone who wants to use it soon. The original Spotback, like the ill fated Findory, is a customized news site that pushes stories to you based on what you’ve clicked on (and rated) previously. Stories That service is still available at news.spotback.com. The new product, however, brings the Spotback ratings and other features directly to blogs and other sites, with the goal of generating more user interaction with the site. Publishers include the widget code on their site, which has a number of options. There is a ratings slider very similar to the Spotback news site, as well as the ability for readers to tag the story. These tags generate linked lists of related articles on the site based on those tags. See the screenshot below to see how it looks. This isn’t just for blogs, either. Photo sharing sites, for example, could include the widget to allow for photo ratings and tagging. Spotback is centralizing user feedback as well. The first time a user rates or tags a story, that data is stored on a dedicated profile page for them back at Spotback. That page will also recommend content to them from other sites based on those ratings. There are plenty of WordPress and other plugins that do this as well, although none of them have the centralized profile page for users to keep track of their rated content. If enough blogs add this to their site, Spotback could reach the critical mass needed to be successful. I plan on adding this to TechCrunch as a test when the service is stable. To see an example of a site that has included the functionality now during the alpha stage, see here and here. Sign up on the Spotback home page to be notified of a general launch. → Read More

Israeli personalized news site Spotback released upgrades to its interface and a couple of new features. If you missed our initial review back in May, this is a good time to check out the site. As a personalized news page, Spotback learns from your clicks and ratings to automatically prioritize news sources and items over time. It competes primarily with Findory on personalization and a long list of Ajax start pages for news. The first feature in the upgrade is the new landing page, which asks what your interests described in single words and gives snide responses to each entry. Those tags then make up the basis for your basic news. Spotback is all about news search, something the other competitors emphasize far less. Mike Arrington thinks this mandatory screen asking you about your interests is deeply annoying, but I think he’s wrong. It’s a perfectly logical way to populate a news page, though it might be nice to have the option to skip it for people like Mike! The second new feature is keyword alerts. New keyword search results can be delivered by email or RSS at a frequency of your choice. The alerts function is awkward right now but sounds like a good idea if the company can make it as usable as the rest of the site. Search results can be added directly to your startpage, and this is important. When you enter search terms you’re able to narrow your query through two layers of categories – great for reducing junk results. Finally, in addition to the standard drag and drop layout of modules, you’re also able to configure multiple viewing profiles. A single click can switch between them. So I might have one group of headlines I want to see at the top of my page first thing in the morning, but another configuration for the weekends – business and pleasure. That’s a very nice feature. In as much as it competes with startpages, Spotback is in an incredibly crowded space online. The two leaders are probably Paris and London based Netvibes (who recieved $15 million more in venture funding two weeks ago) and Germany’s Pageflakes, another venture backed startpage company. There are quite a few others as well. None the less, Spotback is particularly smart, functional and appealing vs the startpages, and that’s what I’d use it for if anything. Most of the other services → Read More

Israeli startup Spotback, which I’ve been tracking for a while, will launch tonight (Monday) at 10 PM PST. Spotback is a personalized news portal that learns from user behavior over time to deliver the news that’s just right for them. Web 2.0 news sites usually fall into one of two categories. Sites like Digg and Newsvine take user feedback and actions to affect what the entire community sees. Personalized sites like Findory change what they present to a single user based on his or her actions over time. Spotback falls into the latter category – a personalized news site that changes for each user over time based on what they like and don’t like (although they also have a Top Stories tab with the most highly rated news from all users). Each news item on Spotback can be rated by a user, saved, and/or emailed to others (click on image to right for larger view). Users may comment on any story. The source of the news item can also be marked, to tell Spotback to include more news like this, or to block items like it (or from that source). Finally, users can also customize the page to include whatever news categories they like (business, sports, etc.) or an RSS reader widget, which allows a user to add any news source that may not already be included in the Spotback index. Here’s what I like best about Spotback – there is no requirement to set up a user account, you can simply access the site (personalized via cookie) if you choose to. If you do create a user account, you can rate other users and receive personalized news based on what they like and dislike, too. → Read More