Most Readers Don't Like Customized News

An anonymous reader writes "Despite the push by organizations such as Google and Yahoo!, a recent study found not everyone is a fan of web-based customization for news. The researchers defined customization as when the user gets to choose specific topics to read on a daily basis. Instead, some prefer personalization. This is when the system chooses content based on a reader's past choices. 'The obvious assumption is people would like more control over what they read,' Sundar said. 'We found when it came to evaluating new stories and quality of content, customization was the preferred method for power users. If you were not a power user, you wanted the system to tailor the news for you.'"

Comments

Re:I disliked it when Google changed up

[arth1]

With customization I am never sure what I miss.

This is exactly why I don't want customization nor personalization.
Just because I'm interested in Tech and World news doesn't mean that I want news there to push aside a piece of news I'd be interested in on a topic I don't normally read.

Re:I disliked it when Google changed up

[Kjella]

Well, there's always more news than there's time. Usually most people do it by reading some general sources and some specialized sources in the topics that interest them, what these customs news are trying to offer is to be your one-stop shop for all your needs. Reading a specialist source like "news for nerds" instead of reading more general news that might have interested you is also a form of "pushing them aside".

What I find annoying is that the filters tend to be too absolute. Its fine that I have preferences, but even if I'm not huge on sports I might like to catch some headlines. I'm not into celebs but it might be nice to not have the deer-in-headlights look saying "Paris who?". Even though I don't need to hear of every bowel movement on the stock market I like to know where the economy is going. For me to really use it, there's have to be a less/more slider with articles getting ranked by importance. I imagine that is why the "guessing" algorithm is better, I bet it's not so absolute as most crude checkbox selections I've seen.