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April 2, 2007

News aggregator service Topix.com (previously known as Topix.net) has now transformed itself into a Web 2.0 local news portal.

A year and a half ago, the site added forums and, according to Topix, more than 1 million people posted 5.5 million comments, adding more than 30,000 comments a day.

Topix says many of the most passionate discussions were happening at the local level.

The company says “however, even with 50,000 news sources, there just wasn’t enough local news. What little news there was couldn’t be tuned finely enough with algorithms alone. So now we decided to open up our site, and give anyone the power to fleely discuss, edit and share the news that really matters to them.”

Overall, Topix now asks readers to become Topix editors for their own city or community. Editors are responsible for deciding which submitted photos and articles are to be included or excluded.

They can even write their own articles if they wish to do it.

For spots were there isn't a local editor, Topix lets its automatic RoboBlogger do the editing.

The new Topix is the idea of Rich Skrenta and Chris Tolles, the people behind the Open Directory — a volunteer-based Internet directory and one of the very first social sites one the Web.

Based on their own experience, they have probably decided that it's possible to trust volunteers to do some sensible editing. We’ll see how they cope with the high spam levels.

Can you use Topix to follow news on a particular topic or area on a national or world level?

Yes; for instance there is still a Top Stories page, the Search Engine News page and RSS feed is still available, although it's not that easy to find.

Tip: use the Site Map to find your favorite topic.

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Source: Pandia