DailyMe Blog

Mark your calendars – the DailyMe Official Launch Party is right around the corner. Come enjoy a night of cocktails, hors d‘oeuvres, and maybe even a little dancing.

Saturday, August 2, 2008, 7:00 PM
Opium Garden
136 Collins Ave
Miami Beach, Florida

Tickets are limited and have just been released on Eventbrite.

We are looking forward to meeting everyone & toasting this milestone!

- Lisa
http://DailyMe.com

We’ve just thrown the switch on the next step in the evolution of DailyMe – our DailyMe.com news destination.

This user-centric web destination brings the DailyMe experience to an even broader audience through three distinct editions:

• DailyMe, our original, personalized service;
• DailyWe, where stories are ranked by the community; and
• Top News, selected by our DailyMe editorial team.

All three editions include the robust content, both licensed and user-generated, that users of our DailyMe service have enjoyed for some time. They also bring together many of the technology components we’ve built: our personalization application, delivery platform, advanced news search, rules and processes for importing and classifying content, and RSS feeds. And, of course, users can continue to read licensed news stories without ever leaving DailyMe.

The three editions can be selected via tabs on the DailyMe homepage, where Top News will be the default. (Of course, existing users will continue to receive their DailyMe personalized edition without interruption across all delivery options.)

We’ve been working on this launch for some time and are very excited about the new site. So please test out our new editions and do let us know how you like them.

- Eduardo Hauser

CEO, DailyMe, Inc.

http://DailyMe.com

I don’t think you need to be an investigative reporter to unearth the reason I’m on a panel at this week’s IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) conference but not in the printed program.
The answer is in the location: Miami.

When another panelist canceled and they needed a fill-in, I think they decided it would be easier to get a South Florida-based online newsman as a last-minute replacement. Of course, I probably do have something to say on the topic: “Catching them in your Web: Making investigations viral.” In fact, I think DailyMe is part of the equation for getting great journalist work out to a wider audience by matching user interests with top-quality content.

-Neil Budde
President, DailyMe

We think it's high time we celebrated the launch of DailyMe's public Beta.

So, DailyMe is teaming with Mashable’s US Summer Tour 2008 to put on the official DailyMe Launch Party. The event will held on Saturday, Aug. 2 from 7-10 pm at the Opium Garden at 136 Collins Ave, Miami Beach, FL. We'll be at South Beach’s hottest club with drinks, appetizers, models and, of course, what would a Miami party be without the beach!

If you're going to be in South Florida that week, please join us. You'll have an opportunity to meet with the DailyMe team -- including Eduardo, Neil & me - as well as others whose names you might not know yet but whose efforts have been critical to the successful launch and development of DailyMe.

So stop by and celebrate with us! Information on how to get tickets will be made available over the next several weeks.

It was great to catch up with so many people last week at the Interactive Media conference in Las Vegas. Panels on the need for better metrics and “are we bold enough?” were among those I found energizing, and seeing the quality work showcased in the Eppy awards was inspiring. But, as usual, it was the hallway and exhibit floor conversations that were most interesting, especially because it gave me the chance to share with many editors and publishers what DailyMe is doing and how we work with news sites.

One topic that arose occasionally is how we license content for DailyMe. It’s a question we’re happy to discuss with news producers, because we believe the approach we take at DailyMe benefits both the creators of content as well as the users of DailyMe, and in the process increases the audience for good journalism.

Unlike the numerous aggregator sites that scrape original news sites and offer their publishers little in return except the occasional click back, DailyMe pays for content it licenses through consolidators and wire services. Much of the license fee we pay flows back to the original publishers, providing them with an additional revenue stream from their content. In most cases, the user reading a story on DailyMe would not have gone to the publisher’s site and found that story, so the publisher is not losing traffic that might otherwise have gone to its own site.

DailyMe users benefit because they can discover and consume some of the best news reporting available all in one easy-to-use interface that can be personalized to their interests. Our users can even have their DailyMe digest printed in a convenient format.

I’m looking forward to finding even more ways to work with top news publishers as DailyMe expands.

Eduardo and I are here at Yahoo’s headquarters in Silicon Valley at the NewsTools conference, which brings journalists, journalism students and professors together with the technology companies – like DailyMe – that bring news and content to end users. We’re a day into the conference and already we’ve engaged in many discussions and panels about the role of journalism both today and in the future. Lots of food for thought and lots of interesting points of view.

The very concept of DailyMe always brings about it’s own discussion. The crux of the issue is this: Individuals choosing their own content and the sources it comes from shifts power and control away from editors and publishers and into the hands of their audiences. Not everyone likes this approach. We, of course, think it is essential and represents the future of news.

Eduardo spoke after today’s conference lunch about DailyMe – what it is, why we created it and how it works. We also gave a sneak preview of some of the new features we’ll be incorporating in the upcoming weeks. The NewsTools group was very engaged and interested in our business model, and there was an active Q&A following Eduardo’s presentation. (And after lunch there was a DailyMe birthday-ish cake for dessert.)

Immediately following the presentation, we spent time meeting with Guy Kawasaki to continue the discussion of news aggregation and where it is headed. I’m not sure we resolved that issue but the conversation and company were good.

And now, we are headed back tonight after a whirlwind day with much accomplished.

http://DailyMe.com

I'm very pleased to announce that Neil Budde, former VP and editor-in-chief of Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Sports, has joined DailyMe as our new President, Chief Product Officer.

This is important for a number of reasons:

• As DailyMe continues to evolve, we are very focused on providing you, our users, with the news you want the way you want it. Neil brought Yahoo! News to No. 1 in the online news space and before that developed the concept for The Wall Street Journal Online and then built and ran that pioneering news site. He is the perfect person to guide our continued product development efforts.

• As a visionary in the online news space, Neil's decision to move across country to Florida and join our team underscores my belief that the news aggregation space is one of the most exciting out there. We know from your feedback just what you are looking for in news, and we are more convinced than ever that our direction is the way to the future.

• Lastly, as you'll see personally over the coming weeks and months, Neil is a terrific guy with a great eye for news and innovation. I'm sure you'll soon begin to feel his presence in the DailyMe community.

If you'd like to find out more about Neil, please take a look at his bio http://www.neilbudde.com.

We've got a lot of exciting plans for DailyMe and I'll bring them to you as soon as I can. For today, please join me in welcoming Neil to our DailyMe community.

http://www.DailyMe.com

On the heels of a fascinating We Media conference, DailyMe is taking to the road to attend the upcoming Journalism That Matters - Silicon Valley: NewsTools2008 event in Sunnyvale, Calif. (April 30-May 3)

Eduardo Hauser, our CEO, will be speaking at the conference on Thursday, May 1st. This event is particularly interesting to us, as it is one of the few dedicated exclusively to online news and the tools being developed to support it. A great mix of entrepreneurs, technologists and journalists are planning to attend.

For those who can't be there, I'm intending to post about the event. So please stay in touch. If you'd like to find out more about the conference, here's the link . DailyMe will be a sponsor of this event.

http://www.DailyMe.com

Once again, the 2-day We Media Conference proved to be inspirational and enlightening.

We Media happens to be one of my favorite conferences, mostly because I share lecture halls  with a passionate journalism & media crowd who engage in debate and discussion on panels, in the audience, and even the hallways outside the sessions.

I am always intrigued by the caliber of the participants at the conference.  Participants range  from editors-in-chief and publishers of major newspapers to representatives of non-profit organizations who undertake interesting projects like providing platforms, publishing opportunities and education to journalists in less developed countries. 

My takeaway from the conference? That the driver in the future of news media consumption continues to shift away from traditional publishers and into the hands of end users  End users are choosing the news they consume, including from where they obtain it (sources) and when. 

A few key factors that have made this possible are the social media movement, the growing demand for personalization, and advances in technology.  It’s hard to say which of these forces have led the way, but it is clear that the media landscape is a very different game than we experienced even a year ago.

So I walked away from We Media with continued confidence in DailyMe’s vision of where news media is headed and feel inspired about the changes in the news media space. 

2008 will be a big year for DailyMe in terms of new features, a new user interface and more sources. 

RSS feeds are now available for DailyMe, providing an exciting addition to the licensed news content we offer subscribers.

This feature allows DailyMe subscribers to select any content carried by RSS feed -- such as blog posts -- and incorporate it into their personalized DailyMe digests. 

The RSS feed feature is significant because it exponentially increases the amount and types of news and information from which subscribers can assemble their DailyMe personalized digests. Importantly, they can enjoy this content through the DailyMe platform, allowing them to read it online, receive it by email, or print it out.

We had been planning this feature for some time but decided to push it out quickly based on requests from the DailyMe community. Please do give it try and keep the feedback coming.

www.DailyMe.com