An aggressive start-up from New York called inform.com is making some pretty large claims, throwing down the gaunlet that it can do things that Yahoo news and Google News cannot.

But Inform goes further, scanning every news article from hundreds of well-known publications (and some blogs), then creating an index of important elements in the article. So as a user reads a WashingtonPost.com article about Sandra Day O’Connor, for example, Inform offers a short list of related stories about the justice and other people, places, organizations, topics, industries and products mentioned in the text.

Upon visiting inform for the first time I saw where they say “what you’re about to use is a true ‘beta’” and that to get the most out of the site IE is required. That’s bound to be unpopular with the Firefox faithful.

My first thoughts on Inform
Bummer, it launches in a popup window. Not a good start. I don’t like popup menus that take away navigation features!

Thought I’d start with a story that was popular over the week: blogspot splogs. I used the keyword “blogspot” in the search. Since it’s in a popup window, there is no way for me to link this search for you readers — bad for inform traffic, bad for readers.

This blogspot thing is a pretty specialized story but there were what looked like links Chris Pirillo’s recent follow up complaints about blogspot splogs as well as links to other regulars commenting on the situation likeTechdirt. But grrr, I can’t link up those (easily that I see either) without opening a new browser window and going to those because when you click on the link inside inform the website is opened in the same roped-off javascript popup window. WTF?

On a positive note, the ads are all on the far right side at 1280×768 resolution and were cut off by the sidebar (see above screenshot), so ad intrusiveness in the User Interface (UI) was pretty minimal. If I were one of the advertisers though, I’d probably be upset with this arrangement. Going to have very small clickthru ratio from this model.

I decided at this point to stop and take inform’s “Quick Tutorial” and see if maybe my first attempt to run through the site had me going about this thing all wrong. Turns out clicking that button popped yet another window, this one smaller, and it didn’t fit the content either. At least if you are going to create windows, make sure the freaking content fits and doesn’t require excessive scrolling.

I didn’t bother registering or logging in to see what happens next. Maybe I’m missing a ton of good stuff here but I couldn’t take the interface or design. The fact that it makes it (intentionally?) difficult for me to link to anything I find means that I’d never use this service in its current state.

exit;

Bottom line: this ain’t no picnic
Now back to inform’s gaunlet throwing that started this piece.

We’ve seen this type of hype before and IMO, it rather predictably ends up as a pebble thrown into the ocean instead of the anticipated big splash. 99% of the time I read startups comparing themselves to anybody or anything as significant and popular as Yahoo or Google are these days, I’m disappointed. It’s probably more like 1 in 1,000 that can make wild claims and actually deliver.

Word of advice: always deliver more than promised.

Naturally, inform.com has a few bloggers talking about them — and I’ll be one more — but probably not in the way they had hoped our readers would be informed, including Techcrunch’s descriptive and honest title: Inform.com Doesn’t:

I honestly can’t figure out what it is, even after reading the Times fluff piece. They say its an RSS Reader but adding feeds is anything but easy. Newbies need simplicity. Oldbies want something that handles a ton of feeds efficiently. This does neither.

Rafat Ali doesn’t mince any words with his headline: Inform.com? Not Really…:

55-person NYC-based news search startup, launched in beta today, and NYT covers it. The company has been formed by Neal Goldman, the former founder and CEO of CapitalIQ (which got bought out by McGraw-Hill last year for $225 million). The CEO e-mailed me last week to offer a test-drive before the formal launch, so I’ll try to be nice:
It fails miserably. It is the Bloglines-envy syndrome, as I call it.

55 people to do … this? Yikes, that speaks for itself. I resisted the urge to use the following headlines:

55 try to inform how to screw in a newsworthy lightbulb
Inform can’t drive 55

The flowery piece in the New York Times aside, inform needs some serious work. Yes, I realize it’s beta and the whole idea is to get beta feedback. So strip away any hyperbole above and use what can be used. In the meantime, my brief stint as an ant, an inform-ant is now over. Ditch the windows, make it link-friendly, stop the BS hype.

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