Today sees the launch of Quickish, a near-realtime micro-news recommendation service founded by former Associated Content Vice President and ESPN.com ‘Daily Quickie’ writer Dan Shanoff.
Considering Shanoff’s background, it’s no surprise that the first category Quickish is launched for today is sports.
News recommendation services are plenty, and they all try to crack a similar nut: getting news updates more rapidly in front of people who are likely to be interested in them. Quickish is no different, yet, as the name implies, recommendations for online news items are shared quickly but decidedly not instantaneously.
That’s because Quickish shuns automated systems and relies on editor-vetted news recommendations, which are nonetheless delivered at modern media consumption speed.
In Shanoff’s words:
“People have made it clear how they want to stay updated: fast. Quick to know something happened, quick to access the best of what is being said, quick to consume, quick to recognize if something is worth their time. Quickish is built for them.”
Quickish is built on editor-curated quick bits of news, analysis and insight, generally referred to as “tips”. As topics surface (a relevant one right now would be bcs but it could be anything that’s trending), all incoming stories are evaluated by Quickish editors prior to publication.
The actual source of relevant news items can be anything from someone on Twitter to TV, to Tumblr, to talk-radio, including user referrals and original content, and content is swiftly published into an easy-to-follow stream. It looks great on mobile phones and tablets, fwiw.
Unlike news aggregators such as Techmeme, the stream of news is chronological and only links to a single news source instead of multiple, which would let people discover different takes on a topic. Like Techmeme however, people can tip Quickish on stories on Twitter or by email and get credited for the heads up on the site.
As mentioned earlier, Quickish is kicking things off today with sports but plans to expand into more categories in the second half of 2011.
