It is amazing to see the trends existing in phones and publishing.
We can contrast windows mobile to Apple IPhone. Windows gives the options to build over their infrastructure and customize its offerings which often results in a bad interface for the user. In contrast Apple makes the smartest choices for the users and provide them a single product which most of them love
According to Steve Jobs the customers pay him to make choices for them.
Google news is coming up with ways of collecting more information from the web and bombarding the users with all the news. The newspaper in contrast restricts the user to the type of information they think is relevant. I think we can compare newspaper to the traditional phones and Google news to smart phones with a bad interface.
Clearly the next logical step is to come up with a news portal that does not restrict the user from options but provide a much better interface and also does suggest them the best articles to read.
A probable solution is for an expert to constantly evaluate the different news portals existing currently and prepare and provide the best articles on each relevant topic according to his choice and according to the choice of the crowd. The user should then have the option of drilling down to other stories which are linked to the topic. The users should also have the option of customizing the newspaper to ensure that he does not get the sections which he is not interested in.
I like your idea and I believe that this trend is coming not only for the publishing industry but also cross-industry. Companies are becoming better and better in collecting data but have just started in the process of making that data relevant to the customer. Certainly leading companies as Google are creating this personalized experience but I believe in the future most businesses will need to catter their products not segments but to individuals. For instance, I imagine that OnStar will be able to analyze driving patterns of their consumers to suggest future purchases and add-ons, and this would be just a very simple use. A data driven market has arrived, whoever is ready for the challenge will succeed.
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