Today, Google launched Living Stories, an experimental new feature that is aimed to make your online reading take on a whole new level.
Teaming up with two media partners to start, the search giant gives users fresh news stories, editorials, updates and various multimedia that focuses on specific topics – all in one single page.
Each Living Story has a permanent URL with new stories and updates posted as it becomes available, making it easier for uses to keep track and follow. It also keeps track of each user’s activity, alerting them for updates they haven’t seen yet and graying out those that were already read. Each topic also has its own accessible timeline displaying historical view of the topic.
At present, Google has partnered with The New York Times and The Washington Post and they decide which topics appear on their own Living Story pages. Google however, has plans of creating open-source tools for other outlets to be given a chance to create their own Living Stories too.
According to the Times, if this experiment catches the fancy of people, it will give publishers another source of income as they can sell ads on their own pages. The NY Times is also very optimistic in this new partnership.
“It’s an experiment with a different way of telling stories,” Martin A. Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations of The New York Times Company, said in a statement.
“I think in it, you can see the germ of something quite interesting.”
