Weird news gathered in one spot
Where to find it: Fark
– www.fark.com
Who runs the site: A guy named Drew Curtis purchased the domain
name for Fark in 1997, but he didn’t actually launch the site until
1999. He decided to create a site that would post news that is not
actually news
– he describes it as what the news media reports when they are
out of real news. The site got 50,000 pages views in its first
year, and was up to a million in its second year.
Who is likely to use the site: People who are interested in
weird, out-there news that comes from a variety of sources from
major cable network news stations to small, local community
newspapers.
Weird news gathered in one spot
Where to find it: Fark – www.fark.com
Who runs the site: A guy named Drew Curtis purchased the domain name for Fark in 1997, but he didn’t actually launch the site until 1999. He decided to create a site that would post news that is not actually news – he describes it as what the news media reports when they are out of real news. The site got 50,000 pages views in its first year, and was up to a million in its second year.
Who is likely to use the site: People who are interested in weird, out-there news that comes from a variety of sources from major cable network news stations to small, local community newspapers.
Pros: Visitors to the site can see postings of about 50 links per day of news that ranges from the weird to just stuff on dumb people. On the main page visitors find a sentence or two summary of a story, the news source and an icon that tells them whether the story is “amusing,” “scary,” “weird” or any number of other descriptives. There are links at the top of the page so that users can chose the category of content such as sports, business, showbiz or politics.
Those without an account can only access some of Fark’s daily links. Users can sign up for a paid subscription that gives them access to all the links submitted each day, close to 2,000. Users can also post links when they have an account and participate in photoshop contests.
Cons: The site is a little hard to navigate since so many of the sections are accessible just to users with a paid subscription. Users can probably find and read most of the articles posted for free if they did their own web searchers.
