There has been a lot of talk on what the ideal news Web site should look like. Is it the New York Times? Is it a personalized site that allows users to select their news categories of interest? Even after all of the debate, the exact recipe for success in online aggregated news usership has yet to be morph itself. But regardless of what that winning recipe may be, a group called Fwix has what we feel is the best display yet.

Fwix is an online news aggregated site that allows users to find news related to a specific city. As with any geo related site, their treatment of smaller cities is not yet present, but my Fwix experience, being from Toronto, was far better than on any other site that claims they have local news information, pertinent to me. The algorithm used by Fwix is proprietary and therefore not clearly described on the Web, but from what I can tell, it looks like they are scouring the net and specific sources, to find recent and geographically relevant news information that applies to the user’s city search.

Through doing a city news search, a user is served with uber recent news stories, stories that are categorized by what are the most popular categories searched on news sites, photos and a mini-directory. It really is a decently complete view of what newsworthy activity is happening in your city. When a user clicks on a headline of interest, they are taken to an iFrame that keeps the Fwix header, but shows the source site, still allowing advertisers of that source site to get the presence they require.

For publishers who see Fwix as another competitor that they have to compete with online, they are right. Fwix, themselves, have spoken to their mission to transform the way news is delivered on the Web:

Our goal is much more far-reaching than simply to “aggregate news”.  We have serendipitously stumbled upon an opportunity to bring independent journalists real readers. People constantly ask me “well, what’s so great about news” or “why did you select to do Fwix over idea x or y” and I always reply with “well, news is the only way we can make informed decisions about what to do next”.  If one entity or a set of powerful entities controls the distribution of news, we will only be more susceptible to making uninformed decisions.  (Taken from the Fwix blog)

Fwix has recently scored a relationship with the New York Times. The details of the partnership are not completely clear, but the synergies are blatantly obvious.