Silobreaker is a different news search service. It aims to deliver meaning and relevance, not just aggregate and rank news. This is done by providing relational analysis and explanatory graphics to give you contextual insight into news stories and current events.

[Updated Mar 5 2008]

Silobreaker pulls content on global issues, science, technology and business from approximately 10,000 news, blog, research and multimedia sources. It recognizes people, companies, topics, places and keywords. It understands how they relate to each other, and puts them in context.

At first glance, the Silobreaker home page can look a little intimidating — there are many options and a lot of content. But do a search and things become clearer.

The main part of the browser window lists fresh news stories on the subject. It has the look and feel of a newspaper. Instead of searching, you can also use one of several drop-down menus on the top of the page, which give instant access to news in the categories global issues, science & technology, business and world.

Each category has sub categories of newsworthy topics like terrorism, environmental science, social & humanitarian issues and much more.

The right pane provides a set of visual aids or tools to help you quickly and easily understand connections, trends and topics or navigate deeper into the most relevant stories. The tools are clickable and allow you to drill down or switch focus.

Let’s take a look at the elements and tools of Silobreaker.

Video content

If there is video content available for your query, it appears at the top of the right pane. Searching for the fledgling state of Kosovo we get:

• An Al Jazeera report about Serbian reactions to Europe’s newest, predominantly Muslim state.
• Russia Today’s story on Kosovo’s choice.
• CNN’s corespondent in Pristina the night before the declaration of independence.
• A report by the Belgrade based broadcasting company B92, unfortunately in Serbian.

Silobreaker provides refreshing alternative perspectives on news stories.

Article volume

A box with a column chart gives a column chart of article volume for your query: Articles, audio/video and blogs. This can be useful if you want to know what kind of interest a particular subject is raising.

In Focus

The box labeled In Focus gives you a lost of people, businesses, organizations, places and more, all related to your query. Point your mouse to a name and a pop-up appears with more info. In the Kosovo example Hashim Thaci Add Hashim Thaci to Page Filter, Boris TadicAdd Boris Tadic to Page Filter, Fatmir SejdiuAdd Fatmir Sejdiu to Page Filter are suggested as relevant people. I can click any name or related topic to narrow my search (clicking Hashim Thaci gives only Kosovo related news that mention him).

Network

The Network tool extracts and visualizes relationships or associations found in your search results. Click the network image and a larger image appears, which allows you to see beyond your original focus: The levers above the network image enables you to change the composition or number of nodes. By hovering over the midpoint of any relationship you can easily see the articles that explain the association.

Hot Spots

This is a map showing auto-generated geo-mapping of news events: Spots which mark recent activity related to your search. My map shows recent Kosovo related events in Pristina, Belgrade, Brussels, Berlin and Quebec. The size of the spot indicates the size of the news story in terms of article volume. Hovering over a spot brings up a short annotation, clicking it provides further analysis.

Trends

This tool is an interactive graph, providing what Silobreaker calls “media attention trends� based on news coverage. You can compare people, companies or products to see who or what attracts most media attention or study what political issues a candidate seem to be most associated with in an upcoming election.

In the trends page I did a search for Barack Obama. A pull-down menu offers to compare persons, companies, organizations, cities, key phrases and countries. When I select key phrases, Silobreaker suggests a number of phrases and allows me to add phrases of my own. In mere seconds, I have found that the interest in Obama’s views on health care are is far greater than his positions on African Americans, Hispanics and even foreign policy.

Perks for registered users

If you register (it’s free), you get access to all content whereas you will get only the last 30 days if you’re not logged in.

What’s more, behind the tab My Page, you can set up tabs within Silobreaker with content that custom made for you. You can drag and drop content boxes to control the screen layout. I like the predefined tabs for the US presidential election and would love for the knowledgeable folks at Silobreaker to offer more predefined tabs. I’ve set up my own tab for SEO news, which looks promising.

Is it any good?
There are still some problems with Silobreaker. Not every search brings excellent results and the filtering doesn’t always work as expected (the predefined filters definitely work best). Yet this is an amazing resource with a wide array of very useful tools for researching news related topics and persons. This is a research tool for professionals which is so easy to use that anyone can benefit.

Visit Silobreaker