Microsoft launches msnNOW for Twitter, Facebook and breaking news buzz

Microsoft, via its MSN portal, has launched a new social reader called msnNOW. The website aggregates breaking news stories and hot topics from social media sites including Facebook and Twitter and highlights rising search trends.

Microsoft, via its MSN portal, has launched a new social reader called msnNOW. The website aggregates breaking news stories and hot topics from social media sites including Facebook and Twitter and highlights rising search trends.

The

http://now.msn.com/

website is built for young digital consumers (with short attention spans); people that want to know what's happening now but don't want to spend hours searching the web or reading hundreds of articles for the latest info. 

Trending news items on msnNOW are fed to readers in bite-sized pieces. "In a hundred words or less, we summarize trends, arming you with what you need to know about the topics you want to talk about with your friends," said Bob Visse, General Manager, MSN.

"We're using technology we built that analyzes all the social signals from Twitter, Facebook and the Web as well as search signals that come from Bing," added Visse who will lead the new service's overall direction. 

MsnNOW spans sporting events, fashion, technology products and even political stories, but it has its feet firmly rooted in celebrity gossip, entertainment reports and lifestyle news. 

It also features a "Biggest Movers" leader board of real-time trends, similar Twitter's trending topics list.

News aggregation sites -- especially those which marry computer algorithms with human curatorial skills to bubble up the best of the web -- are springing up all over the place as readers try and wade through the insurmountable jumble of social and web content available to them. 

In December Google launched a mobile app called Google Currents to rival news aggregation mobile apps such as Flipboard and Summify (which was recently acquired by Twitter).

Users can grab an "infosnack" now by visiting msnNOW on the web, via the msnNOW Facebook app, or on Twitter.