Excite Unveils Free News Clipping Service

July 5th, 2007

Excite is now in the news clipping business with a new product called NewsTracker.

The artificial intelligence tool, which offers searches from 300 publications online, looks for news items in categories that users choose.

Joe Kraus, Excite’s senior vice president for business development, said NewsTracker is targeted at a broad-purpose audience. Typically corporations have had to pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for this type of service, but the Web has changed all that.

Excite does not plan to charge for NewsTracker, which was introduced Monday.

Publications on NewsTracker include The Washington Post, Family PC, Forbes ASAP, and Computer World as well as the Web-based Golf Web Online and Mr. Showbiz.

The left-hand column of NewsTracker’s home page has links to the latest headlines Excite’s editors selected for specific categories (Top Stories, Sports, Entertainment, Sci-Tech, Nation, World, and Lifestyle). The service also lets you create your own topics.

NewsTracker is competing with more expensive subscription clipping services such as Lexis-Nexis, Individual, and others. NewsTracker’s business model relies on advertising revenue.

NewsTracker is at http://nt.excite.com/.

Entry Filed under: News