Encyclopedia of Public Relations

Aggregator News Search

Contributors: Kathy Keltner-Previs

Edited by: Robert L. Heath
Book Title: Encyclopedia of Public Relations
Chapter Title: "Aggregator News Search"
Pub. Date: 2013
Access Date: March 12, 2017
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9781452240794
Online ISBN: 9781452276236
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452276236.n14
Print page: 25
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This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of
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An aggregator, or reader, is a website or software program that continuously searches

multiple websites, including news sites, blogs, and podcasts, for new content. When fresh
information is located, it is aggregated or summarized into one reader page. The aggregator
program illustrates a summary of that material, providing a link to each webpage. This link
prevents users from having to constantly visit favorite websites for new information. While
there are dozens of aggregators, the most common in 2012 include BuzzFeed, Spokeo,
TweetMeMe, Digg, FriendFeed, Google Reader, iGoogle, myYahoo!, Reddit, Stumbleupon,
and Yelp. Of the several types of aggregators, the most widely used is a news aggregator that
collects news from various news sites. These tools are used extensively by public relations
practitioners for environmental scanning and monitoring and to gather information about
specific organizations and topics. Examples include Google News, World News Network,
Huffington Post, and the Drudge Report. Similarly, search aggregators gather results from
multiple search engines based on specified topics selected by users, then filter and organize
the information based on user parameters.

Aggregators are also called feed readers, news readers, and RSS readers. Perhaps the most
widely known aggregate is RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, which allows users to
automatically subscribe to content, such as blogs, news headlines, audio and video, through
a single document or feed. Web syndication benefits the creator of news in that content is
distributed automatically, quickly, and economically. It benefits users because the aggregation
is free and requires only one step to have information automatically delivered from a plethora
of sources.

While aggregators are growing in popularity due to time-saving utility, they are not a new
technology. The first known aggregator was Open-Search, which is still used today it was
developed by http://Amazon.com in 2005 to enable users to easily read search engine results.
It follows the format of popular feed services, such as RSS and Atom.

Social network aggregators fetch and deliver content from various social media networks,
such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others. Examples of these aggregators include
Bottlenose, Doozly, Hootsuite, Sociagg, TweetDeck, Postling, Social-TALK, and Alternion.
Public relations practitioners, such as Nicole Van Scoten, a public relations specialist at Pyxl,
use social network aggregators for reputation monitoring across social media sites.

With the growing popularity of YouTube and other video sites, literally millions of videos are
placed on the Internet daily. Thus, an emerging trend is to use video aggregators that enable
users to organize parts or whole segments of videos from Internet video sites. Popular video
aggregators include Aggrega, The Daily Feed, Feedbeat, PikSpot, uVouch, VodPod, and
WeShow.

Other types of aggregators include email aggregators that combine users email accounts and
can act as social networking platforms. Top email aggregators include Fuser, Goowy, Jubii,
Orgoo, TopicR, and Zembe. Data aggregators search databases and compile data to sell to
other organizations for marketing purposes. Poll aggregators search for and provide polling
data, while review aggregators combine movie, product, or service reviews. Each of these
aggregators makes gathering and distributing public relations materials more efficient to
target audiences.

Kathy Keltner-Previs
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452276236.n14
See also

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Really Simple Syndication

Further Readings
AppAppeal. (n.d.). The most popular aggregator app per country. Retrieved August 10, 2012,
from http://www.appappeal.com/the-most-popular-app-per-country/aggregator
Ningthoujam, P. (2008). 6 online email aggregators that do more than just aggregate.
Retrieved August 10,
2012, from http://mashable.com/2008/08/18/email-aggregators
Safko, L. (2010). Social media bible: Tactics, tools & strategies for business success (
2nd ed.
). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Schroeder, S. (2007). 7 online video aggregators reviewed. Retrieved August 10, 2012, from
http://mashable.com/2007/07/12/online-video-aggregators
Swallow, E. (2010). The future of public relations and social media. Retrieved August 12,
2012, from http://mashable.com/2010/08/16/pr-social-media-future

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