Newgie wants to be new guy in feed aggregation

In a sign of the explosion of Web media companies, a two-person company, Newgie, will launch a beta next month of a site that combines aggregated news feeds and end user recommendations.

The co-founders, Jason Windebank and Jacob Rheuban, have no prior media experience. But while developing an unrelated real-estate venture, they found they had trouble collecting news on niche topics.

Earlier this year, the put up the site Newgie.com, which aggregates syndicated news feeds. Where they seek to set themselves apart is letting users delve down into different categories, rank stories, and create communities around topics of their choosing.

Like well-known Web media properties YouTube and Digg.com, the details on the revenue model are still being worked out, said Rheuban.

"Our philosophy has been all along is if we have a Web site that has traffic, there will be opportunities to make money, either with ad space or premium services," he said.