Zite incident shows why publishers need to enable personalization

From Poynter
by Damon Kiesow Published Mar. 31, 2011 6:18 pm Updated Mar. 31, 2011 6:20 pm 
In an era of free, frictionless content distribution, how can creators of that content be paid for their work? The question was highlighted on Wednesday as 11 major media organizations — from Dow Jones Co. to Time — sent a letter to news aggregator Zite ordering the company to stop what the news outlets characterized as pervasive copyright infringement.
Zite pulls Web content from a wide variety of sites, reformats it, and displays it — without the ads — within its app. No one can argue about the infringement; Zite has already changed the way it presents the complainants’ content.
But presentation is not the reason consumers downloaded the iPad app 120,000 times in the first week. The real value of the app is its ability to predict which stories will appeal to each user.
For publishers, the problem is that Zite is really, really good at personalization and filtering. In my use of the app over the past few weeks, I’ve consistently found that the app shows me headlines I want to click on – and that’s the test that really matters.
We in media should think about what led us to this place, where major news outlets are targeting a company that is creating something they should create: an innovative, personalized news source.
What efforts have major media companies made to build or enable their own innovative news consumption products?
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/media-lab/mobile-media/126062/zite-incident-shows-why-publishers-need-to-create-automatic-methods-of-content-distribution