Google Releases Living Stories News Plugin On WordPress

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Google’s software engineer, Eric Zhang, announced on Google’s blog today that the experimental project, Living Stories, is now available as a plugin for WordPress. When published, the reader can gain an overview of an ongoing event on a single dynamic page.

Living Stories began as Google’s “experimental format for displaying news coverage.” Google partnered with New York Times and Washington Post last year for a trial. It successfully covered news such as the war in Afghanistan and the Redskins’ football season. Earlier this year, Living Stories became open-source and offered any news organization to use the application on their site.

As Eric Zhang explains on Google’s blog:

We first showcased Living Stories in December through a two-month-long experiment with the New York Times and Washington Post. We got great feedback from both readers and publishers. Our next step was to open-source the Living Stories format, allowing publishers to build on it using Google?s AppEngine infrastructure. We then released a version of the code that runs independent of our infrastructure. Since then, a number of publications have shared their ideas for ways we can offer additional tools to help them create Living Stories.

Living Stories provides a convenient way for the reader to keep up-to-date with a developing news story. Rather than trying to track down every incremental article on the topic, the application ensures that all articles of the topic can be accessed in a single place. New updated stories are highlighted each time you return and older news are summarized. It’s like a personalized RSS reader to focus on a specific topic rather than a website or blog.

Now Living Stories is available as a plugin for any keen WordPress user who wishes to give it a try. It’s easy to setup with its plug-and-play feature.

If you’ve installed Living Stories on your blog, let us know how that’s working out for you. Is it helpful or just another space-wasting widget?