Yahoo! Uses Search Queries to Source the People’s News

Just a few days after America celebrated Independence Day, Yahoo! will roll out the latest in niche news sites, sourced entirely by internet users’ search queries, according to The New York Times. Called The Upshot, it will display stories researched and written by Yahoo! news staffers. But those stories will address what really seems to matter to internet users, namely, the stories behind the stories.

This isn’t news, per se, but it is good business sense. While it flies in the face of good, hard journalism, the site ostensibly gives “the people” what they want—or are looking for, anyway. There is ample fodder for The Upshot, since searching for news and information is one of the most popular activities for US internet users. Among the many studies that report this information is one from Accenture.

In fact, news aggregators such as Yahoo! are a strong second behind major US TV news sites, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

News that comes from the people, created (virtually) by the people and delivered for the people might actually stand a chance in the crowded online news business. The success of crowdsourced sites such as About.com, Diggit.com, HowStuffWorks.com and Wikipedia demonstrate there is an interest in knowledge aggregation. Yahoo!’s Upshot will test whether algorithms make better news editors than real people.