Topix.net, Owned by Gannet, Knight-Ridder and Tribune, Relaunches (GCI, KRI, TRB)

This blog gets hits from Google, Yahoo, Technorati, etc. and of course, depending on the search term, we can tell if the searcher actually found something they were looking for. Obviously, it's hit or miss. An exception to this, as we've stated before, is hits we get from new-aggregator service Topix.net, which always categorizes our posts on target. The company, which is owned by a group of newspaper companies (Gannett, Knight-Ridder, Tribune) just launched a major redesign, and it's getting good reviews (Alarm:Clock):

We've always been big fans of Topix.net, but we wondered if they went soft after getting investments from some big papers. Not the case. Topix today relaunched its site. We expected the UI to be better and it is. But the company has also jumped into the news community fray. Other news community startups like Digg, Newsvine and Memeorandum are looking to expand beyond tech and politics to other subjects, but with this relaunch Topix has become a surprise competitor. While Digg has an extensive community base, it must expand beyond its single subject. Meanwhile Topix has 360,000 topics but must develop communities for these. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for Topix' reader commentary to become vibrant - pretty fast we suspect.

We'll be watching the relaunch, and the success of its community news aspirations. If they're successful, it will become an increasingly valuable asset to its owners.