Ask HN: Aggregator intended for a certain market niche?

[naf]

Reddit, digg, ... all focus on several interests (f.e. technology, fun, news, music, video, ...). Would it be wise to build an aggregator that is solely intended for a certain market niche (f.e. technology)?

[iKnowKungFoo]

Sure. Ray Camden wrote an aggregator called ColdFusionBloggers.org as an exercise and it's been the go to site for ColdFusion programmers for years. He created jquerybloggers.com recently using the same code base, but it's not nearly as popular (yet?).

Of course, you have to let people know the site exists, you can't rely on SEO alone. But they can also be a good way to pick up some ad revenue.

[eth]

Of course. That's kind of what HN is, right? Same with Techmeme and their associated properties.

I am a huge fan of niche focused aggregators. Reddit is cool, but there are so many subs and it's easy to get distracted by jumping around. Any specific niche you are thinking about?

[naf]

I'm actually thinking about a celebrity/gossip niche. It would be fun to just read articles and watch pictures/videos of a certain celebrity, without visiting multiple websites. I just don't have a clue how an aggregator is build. Do I have to build a crawler or can I just use the RSS feeds of certain websites?

[iKnowKungFoo]

The sites I mentioned just aggregate the RSS feeds from other sites.