Sometimes you just want to read the news, dig?

Alright all you cool cats. You’ve got your Google News coming in via Email. You’ve got your RSS feeds bustin’ out news from sources you’re monitoring (hopefully via Netvibes, but if you’re using Internet Explorer 7 or something then hey, that’s…cool, I guess). In other words…Your. Clients. Are. Covered.

Now what about you? I ask this because sometimes we get so wrapped up in keeping track of who is saying what about whom that we neglect ourselves. I’m talking about anything from celebrity gossip to sports news, world events to horoscopes. Today, I’m going to introduce you to a Website that will bring your reading into modern times.

Spotback
Spotback is a news site. You can get all sorts of news from Spotback, just like any source. But the beauty of the service is how it tailors itself to suit your interests. Each news item on Spotback includes a slider, set to the number 0, that you can slide to the left (towards -5) or the right (towards +5) to indicate your interest in a particular story. Through this slider you’re telling Spotback what you’d like to see more of or less of. In my experience, Spotback was nicely trained within just a couple of days of casual voting.

Other Goodies
Spotback, of course, has a number of other tools that can be useful to a PR professional. Take a look at the top of the page — NewsSnacks is essentially an RSS reader that has Spotback’s sliders built in. You can also track specific keywords.