Google新闻昨天开始进行一项全新的测试，允许新闻事件中的“当事人”（participant）对对相关新闻报道提供自己的评论，并将经过身份验证的新闻事件当事人的评论贴在新闻报道边上。其
官方博客上的公告如下：
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
10:32 PM
Posted by Dan Meredith and Andy Golding, Software Engineers, News Team
We
wanted to give you a heads-up on a new, experimental feature we'll be
trying out on the Google News home page. Starting this week, we'll be
displaying reader comments on stories in Google News, but with a bit of
a twist...
We'll be trying out a mechanism for publishing
comments from a special subset of readers: those people or
organizations who were actual participants in the story in question.
Our long-term vision is that any participant will be able to send in
their comments, and we'll show them next to the articles about the
story. Comments will be published in full, without any edits, but
marked as "comments" so readers know it's the individual's perspective,
rather than part of a journalist's report.
As always, Google
News will direct readers to the professionally-written articles and
news sources our algorithms have determined are relevant for a topic.
From bloggers to mainstream journalists, the journalists who help
create the news we read every day occupy a critical place in the
information age. But we're hoping that by adding this feature, we can
help enhance the news experience for readers, testing the hypothesis
that -- whether they're penguin researchers or presidential
candidates-- a personal view can sometimes add a whole new dimension to
the story.
We're beginning this only in the US and then, based
on how things go, we'll work to expand it to other languages and
editions. We're excited about the possibilities of this new feature and
we hope you are too, so if you've been covered in a news article please
send us your comments and we'll work with you to post it on Google News.
尽管存在
一些技术性的疑问（英文），但是，
人们已开始意识到（英文），这一新功能将为企业提供一个新的沟通和传播渠道。
我简单看了几篇相关评论，包括Google新闻官方博客的公告，基本上都赞同一个观点，就是不同的、多维度视角的引入，将使新闻事件的画面更完整，也更接近事实本身，从而能帮助读者作充分了解和良好判断。
传统广告之所以在消费者心目中可信度低，主要原因就是其所提供的信息严重缺失。消费者口碑则相反，不仅有关于产品服务优点的推介，也有许多关于产品服务缺点方面的批评，弥补了传统广告所缺少的另外一半，所以更能获得人们的信赖。
但是，进一步思考，消费者口碑还是存在同样的问题。Google新闻早就针对同一新闻事件提供不同媒体的不同角度的分析报道，实现了视角的多元化，而现在提供的“新闻当事人评论”功能，又把这种多维度的视角大大加以扩展。消费者口碑尽管有了（针对某个产品服务的）正反两方面的信息，但是，限于技术、参与度、个人经验和偏见等等各种因素，这种大大提高了的“客观性”仍有可能出现偏差甚至很大的谬误。举个例子，大众点评网的餐饮评论，参加评论的人很多，受大数定律的支配，一般来说，消费者对某个餐馆的点评汇集起来，总是比较符合餐馆实际情况的，但也有不少例外 - 总体评价不错的餐馆，实际上很不怎么样，或者相反，评价不好的餐厅，实际上在平均水平之上甚至还停不错的。
企业只能做到尽可能提供关于产品服务的正面信息，消费者只能提供基于个人经验的信息，所以，使信息（不论是新闻还是产品信息）更全面更客观的责任，应该落在第三方，也就是类似与Google这样的媒体平台或内容制造者的手里。