Congoo.com is a news aggregation site with a few extra sorting and social features. Some of these features include building a news circle, getting news briefings, and a service they call Netpass. It uses a couple of features that I like and can’t help comparing it to other sites. Congoo pulls news from 25,000 news sources and categorizes them for you. Some of the content includes premium content. Let me just write some quick explanations of the features.
Build a News Circle
A news circle consists of a group of people with similar interests. In effect, if you see an article that you like, you can share it with people in your group. You could, for example, have a focus on Social Media and only recommend articles that fit within that topic. Your friends can then count on the knowledge that the articles you recommend relate to Social Media. It works as a sort of personal brand within the site. I like how you can give an article the thumbs up or down in the way StumbleUpon does. It goes a bit further by giving you a page that shows all your news, like a newsletter, for visitors. You can see a sample News Circle for Acme Chemical.
Get News Briefings
Based on the news topics you select, your Congoo account will show you news items that relate to those interests. Best of all, instead of having one story at a time, the stories are listed on your page and include links to the full text article where the item was originally posted.
Netpass
The way Netpass works is that it allows you to see premium content for articles. Congoo has a deal that allows users to view a certain number of premium articles per month. This could save you money to keep you from subscribing to multiple sites. It also allows you to sample their articles before you put money into a subscription. If you find yourself coming back to the same news site repeatedly and max out the freebies, then you know that a subscription would be worthwhile. Congoo does not charge you, you subscribe directly to each publisher.
In my case, I get most of my news from blogs and talk radio, so there is no cost savings for me as all of what I read is free. If my job or interests required reading news from media sites, then Congoo would be the best site to do this, especially for the premium content access. If you are a blog reader like me, rather than a mainstream news consumer, then Confoo may not be for you. Everybody has tools that suit them best. Maybe Congoo will work for you.
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