Hoping to revitalize its news portal, Google News will, starting this week, include reader comments on news stories featured in the portal. But these reader comments are not just your ordinary comments that anyone can post like in blogs.
To make the experimental feature a little different, Google will feature only those comments from readers who were actually featured in the news stories. These includes individuals and organizations who were actual participants in the news. The news comments will appear along side the articles and will be labeled as “comments”.
By putting these comments, Google is hoping to generate more buzz about the news stories and ergo, more page views on the news portal. On the other hand, this might also open up a barrage of comments and initiate a debate between the news reporters and those that were being reported.
Although, Google still has full control of the comments that will appear on the news portal since readers will have to submit their comments to Google news editors, Google could face some problems later on as regards to which comment to publish.
The Google News team also said that they will publish the whole text of the comment without edits. What it doesn’t say however is whether they will publish comments with harsh remarks and insulting statements.
We will see in the coming days how this new feature will bring in some good stats for Google News portal. In the meantime, better watch out for the news stories and get ready to send in your comments should some of the news stories feature you or your company.
