Comments on: ‘Daylife’ news startup launches: give us your review

By: thelosangeleschannel

thelosangeleschannel — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 16:06:30 +0000

i’ll go with col. tom parker (elvis’ manager) on this one who said them talkin’ bout ya’, whether good or bad, is all that matters.

they’ll get it right, or wind up “in the ghetto”

By: baker

baker — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 15:03:00 +0000

i think this is more evidence that there isn’t a single decent URL left on the planet. gotta get me some of that…”day…life.” oye.

seems odd to have any editorial picks at all, considering the site is run by some serious “power to the people” types. and then to turn that feature into the homepage splash? i was jonesing for a “skip intro” link. they should deliver people to the “my world” page immediately and pimp the tools, present and forthcoming. if they want to editorialize, why wouldn’t they create their own individual or collective “my world” page(s)? if we want to know what *they* think is important, we’ll add them as “a friend” and keep an eye on their world.

i’ll give it time, because JJ and Newmark are heroes of mine, but so far, so meh.

By: Hussman

Hussman — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:57:39 +0000

“Much buzzed about”? First time I ever heard about this site.

Buzz is relative.

By: Vinny

Vinny — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:22:16 +0000

BTW: Mike Arrington really nails it (as he usually does):

What makes Daylife stand out is not so much what it does well, but what’s been left out. There are no RSS feeds, even for your bookmarked stuff. Even worse, there’s no ability for users to leave comments on articles, a feature that has been wildly successful at NewsVine and Topix. And the fact that the front page news is gathered by humans, instead of the algorithmically determined news at Digg, means the company will always have a higher cost of doing business.

By: Vinny

Vinny — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:21:07 +0000

I like Jeff as much as the next guy, but really this looks like Google News without the RSS and with a much better interface. How someone can launch a website with an information-centric theme in the year 2007 and not include RSS is beyond me. That’s not just an oversight, it’s a mistake.

Cory made a great point. NO user generated angle whatsoever on the site.

I would think that Jeff “the internet is a conversation” Jarvis would be so far ahead of that. I know he only consulted and I don’t blame it on him per se, but Daylife seems the polar opposite of everything he stands for which strikes me as weird.

By: Cory

Cory — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 07:18:16 +0000

Perhaps I’m falling victim to anticipointment, due to all the pre-launch hype, but Daylife is surprisingly underwhelming. Or perhaps they launched too early.

First, why would I want the default home page to be these big cover images? Sure, it’s cool, but we online news consumers like to quickly scan our news, not have one story dominate the page to make scanning difficult. (Sure, you can move through the little bar at the bottom, but that requires work. On MSNBC.com or Digg or Google News or whatever, I can tell you what’s going on instantly by scanning the stories above the fold.)

Second, what’s the advantage here? If it’s a social news site, make it social. Why would I add a story to \”My World\” if I can’t make it available to my friends? Or be alerted when my friends digg, oops, add a story to \”My World\”? And plus, why is there no commenting? Is there any user-generated component here? Is this just editors and bots re-arranging the news that’s already out there?

On the positive side, I like the idea of establishing connections to other topics and stories. The focus on images will help drive pageviews. The timeline feature is cool. And the Daylife API, which allows bloggers to draw headlines into their own sites, is promising.

But overall, two thumbs down. Digg and Newsvine are decades ahead. Let’s hope new features are coming soon.