I’m going to agree with Mike Arrington’s take on this one: Newspond, the new Digg-style news aggregator that just launched, is pretty much all eye-candy at the moment. Paul Glazowski at Mashable seems to think that’s enough — in fact, his review borders on gushing — but I would have to disagree. While it’s true that the site is nice-looking and well-designed, I don’t think that’s enough to give it a lock on success (whatever that means), and as my friend Tony Hung says at Deep Jive Interests, cool design can even be a detriment for a news aggregator.
I found Newspond pretty slick, but I think a lot of the Ajaxy on-hover effects and layout actually make it harder to skim or pull information out of when compared with Techmeme or Digg. And there’s no question that, as Mike notes, the site’s pumped-up rhetoric is pretty over the top. The most advanced news site on the planet? Right. It’s nice to set your goals high, but less talk and more delivering would be nice. I certainly don’t think Techmeme has anything to fear. But then, as Mark Evans points out, news aggregator fans are a tough crowd to please.