It appears as though everyone is clamouring to achieve what Ashley Friedlein of E-consultancy refers to as ‘atomisation’ – where users no longer go to the original web page for content but get the content fed into their own amalgamated home page full of gizmos, gadgets, widgets, tools and tricks with everything the individual wants to know about on one page – that they have selected. iGoogle for instance is very close for this solution – you can make up your own home page to suit your interests and tastes. So even if you are an F1 fan, a mother, and like skydiving – now you can get all the info in one spot, including the weather wherever you set it to, ratings on your competitor and own company’s website, a currency converter, your horoscope and much much more.

So bringing themselves closer to the ‘atomisation’ solution Myspace have launched a news section that allows users to tag the news. Rather like on the BBC where you are presented with a list of the most forwarded stories at any one time, this will also show what’s hot and what’s not. Someone recently suggested that perhaps our home pages with news will no longer read of the national and international headlines but present truly local and hugely specific news – e.g. what the neighbours are doing or your local supermarket. Specific to you (meaning me or you at an individual level).

Officially myspace have included the news rating (1 to 5: hated it, didn’t like it, liked it, really liked it, and loved it) to mature and increase their audience levels and rake in the advertising revenue (according to Tech.blorge.com) so it’s launched to get older users, staying longer and returning more frequently. Already they say that last year ½ the audience used to be older than 25 years of age and a year later, now, two thirds of the audience is over the age of 25 years. The news is categorised (movies, business, environmental etc) and localised (but for US audiences at this stage in major cities e.g. NY, LA, Chicago and the like). There is advertising taking up premium eyeball attention too. Basically Myspace News feeds in the heading and intro paragraph and then you click through to see the news in it’s original site with a Myspace News beta voting banner at the top - to rate the news - and then you can scroll through the whole category to catch up on the rest of the buzz.

So we wait to see what is happening in the news arena! Just how local will it get for you and how soon? In the mean time bring it on; read, tag, bookmark away.