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Do you all ever sit around and go, "Hey. We created the Open Directory Project?" (Three out of the five guys on the Topix management team helped put together the ODP.)
Actually, we use a lot of what we learned in building and running Newhoo (later the ODP and Netscape search) on the community and technology side. Understanding the economic and cultural issues about community involvement, automation and intellectual property are a big leg up for the team here. Of course, we also think about the ODP when someone tries to cold call us on search engine marketing services....
What kind of advertising opportunities exist on Topix?
For local merchants or people interested in connecting to a very specific audience, Topix.net provides an easy self service system to purchase a text based advertisement on a specific Topix.net page. Also, for larger advertisers, we provide an ability to reach local users across the US, or categorized adverting to large scale industry segments.
What are the top three reasons that you would suggest someone should use Topix?
Truly local news, best breadth of sources, and news about hard to search for subjects like Blogging, Search Engines and RSS.
How about news personalization? Can I create breaking news alerts,personalized Topix home page, etc?
You can create news alerts via email for any of our news pages as well as being able to both news pages and search results via RSS. We also have quite a bit of passive personalization built into the site. For example, if you go to a local page, that local page will be highlighted in the navigation should you visit other areas of the site,or return to the site later. This is also an area we're going to bedoing a lot of work moving forward, as well.
Do you plan on possibly branching out from just news into other areas?
Never say never -- but there's a lot that still remains to be done in the area of news; for now we're excited about providing people with a really great news experience on the web.
What are Topix's goals for the next year? Any breaking developments?
Well, yes...You'll have to check back with us on some of what we're doing, but the fact that we've received recent validation from Tribune,Knight Ridder and Gannett (who each invested in us earlier this year),as well as our recent deal with Earthlink to power local news on their myEarthlink pages and the rollout of Canadian localities are the big news from us over the past summer.
Finally, what makes it fun to come to work every day right now?
We have a tremendous opportunity to capitalize on the momentum of people moving their media experience online -- 62% of Internet users are most interested in news, as the reason to go online, in a recent BURST!Survey, and combined with the growth of users, is a potent combination. Building the best news site on the web is a really worthy goal, with a huge upside as well. So -- between a team that's been working together for 10 years, a gigundus opportunity, investment from the biggest newspaper companies in the US, and a great head start, it's a lot of fun working here. I haven't been bored since joining Topix.net.
