Calling it a “Pandora for news,” Washington Post has launched Trove.com, a personalized news site that’s powered in part off your Facebook profile. Once I connected with Facebook, the site populated stories about my interests, some of which apparently I haven’t updated in a long time (Lou Dobbs?)
Beyond Facebook, you can also choose to follow people, places, things, and any of the 10,000 content sources coming into the Trove experience. Click a story, and you’re taken to the source. Editors, too, are selecting content “to inject the latest news” into site, explains Donald E. Graham, Chairman of the Washington Post Company.
“Trove is, by its nature, a social experience,” Graham said. “You can share your channels with your friends, engage with fellow site users using the conversation boards featured on every channel, and interact with Trove on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.” Trove has launched an Android app, with iPhone, iPad and Blackberry coming soon.
Trove isn’t the only one in this space — Flipboard has a big head start in the tablet space, and a collaboration between Bit.ly and New York Times will be launching soon on iPad. Called News.me (above), it takes a bit of a different approach by showing “not just what your friends are sharing, but what they are reading as well.” News.me is powered primarily via Twitter, and it will display full content in the app — for .99 cents a week in subscription fees. You can learn more about News.me on its FAQ page here.
The big question: will standalone “personal news” experiences like these succeed, or will they just ultimately become a part of existing branded destinations? Time will tell…