[UK] London-based Fingertips.net lets users create their own personalised online newspaper “from the publications they want”. Or at least that’s the claim.
The reality is that the RSS-driven service isn’t nearly as customisable as its many competitors, such as start page Netvibes or more similar aggregators like Meehive. Instead, Fingertips only enables users to pick from around 300 sources (50,000 articles) from publications such as The Times or Heat magazine, divided into traditional sections based on subject – news, sport, travel etc.
However, if users don’t find what they’re looking for they can submit other sources for consideration, according to the site’s FAQs, but to be accepted there will need to be significant demand from other users and the content must meet Fingertips’ editorial criteria, whatever that might be. That doesn’t scale.
There’s a social element to Fingertips too. Users can share articles with others in their Fingertips social network which then show up in a designated area on their personalised page, a feature called News Buddies.
Unfortunately I can’t see anyone caring that much about this social network. It’s neither a real social network nor something obsessive, like HubDub which turns sharing news into a game.
