Personalized News Service Tested

In a competitive parry against Google, MSN is beta testing a service that aggregates news headlines and stories from multiple sources and arranges them based on their likely relevance to the user. The service hints at how future MSN sites and services might enable a more personalized experience for Internet users.

Competing with Google

The MSN NewsBot, which is being beta tested on MSN sites in France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, gathers stories from more than 4,000 sources, then arranges them in categories such as “World,” “Business,” and “Entertainment.” The order of headlines within each category is determined by factors such as how recently the story was posted, the number of users who have previously accessed it, and the number of news sources covering that same story. If users have signed in with a Passport ID, MSN NewsBot can also factor other personal information, such as a user’s postal code or a particular news source that has been frequently selected, into the ordering algorithm, according to the NewsBot FAQ.