Agnostic, relatively unbiased search parameters to monitor the web for hidden news is the big idea behind Vocativ, which launches today. (Vocativ has been in not-so-stealth mode, with a different site design, for much of the year.) Employees of the digital news agency come from Vice, Huffington Post, ABC, The New York Daily News, and more, and they speak a wide variety of languages. Vocativ is based in New York with outposts around the world. One of its big goals is to use the deep web as a primary source.
The "deep web" consists of all the things available on the Internet that standard search engines overlook—things like spreadsheets and Word documents, subscription-only journals and pages with dynamic content. Vocativ's principals claim they can use the deep web, combined with monitoring of social media in a host of foreign languages, to find news stories other agencies can't. Their search technology is similar to that used by law enforcement to detect terrorist chatter, hedge funds to find hidden financial information, and by intelligence agencies to gauge sentiment and collect intelligence.
Bookmarks