The Best News Aggregation Sites

posted by Christina DesMarais on July 17, 2011 in , Guides & Reviews, Fab Websites, Time Savers, Organization :: 8 comments

As a tech writer, my livelihood depends on keeping up with the abundance of technology news getting churned out by the minute. Chances are it's the same for you, regardless of your employment field, area of expertise or passions. Successful people are knowledgeable people, and that means staying abreast of what's going on in the world.

But how's a girl supposed to stay on top of her information game?

Using a news aggregator is a good start. Spend just a few minutes a day scanning headlines relevant to only the topics you care about and you'll be well on your way to taking information overload by the horns, and to being your most knowledgeable best.

Individurls

If you have a handful of specific news sites you like to check regularly but don’t want to take the time to visit separately, this one’s for you. You can follow up to nine different sources which Individurls will display with a clean listing of headlines from each. Float over each headline to get a quick summary. I appreciate Individurls’ simplicity and use it every day.

Google Reader and Feedly

These two also let you follow news sources of your choice. Unlike Individurls, Google Reader lets you follow as many sites as you want and displays summaries directly on the front page (which, in my opinion, takes up space and slows the process, considering the headlines alone usually tell me if I want to read more).

Feedly uses your Google Reader settings to provide news in a nice interface that lets you interact with others about what you’re reading via social media channels. Feedly also does an excellent job of suggesting sources you may not have considered.

Popurls

This site features very robust news content fed by scads of hot news sources. It also has a “Recommended” area that is populated automatically after you start reading stories.

Google News

While you can have Google feed you news from the sources you choose (similar to Google Reader), what’s cool about its News service is it’s highly customizable to not only give you the latest news on a topic, but tell you which news stories are most often cited by other sites or which stories offer in-depth coverage. You can also use its advanced personalization settings to create custom subjects and designate which search terms Google will use to find your results.

Yahoo! News and Bing News

Like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft both offer news services that are rich with content from all over the Web, although not as customizable as Google News.

Reddit

At this social news site you can read what’s new and trending online and vote on links that you like or dislike, thereby helping to decide what’s considered popular. Have a blog or site of your own? You can submit your posts to Reddit and see how many votes you get. Reddit is very similar to the once-popular but in-decline Digg.

Fark

Sick of straight-up news? Fark is a social news network that receives 2,000 submissions every day from which its editors pick the weirdest, funniest and most interesting pieces. Fark’s motto: “We don’t make news. We mock it.”

If your favorite method of staying on top of the news didn’t make my list, please let me know in the comments. I’d love some new ideas!