New Hearst e-magazine weaves tales from Internet

Hearst described LMK, an acronym of Let Me Know, as a new digital service that "curates, designs and delivers the most authoritative content on any important person, place or thing."

LMK pulls in facts, stories, pictures and even tweets from microblogging service Twitter and then customizes the information on Web pages devoted to individual topics.

LMK debuted with an "enhanced channel" devoted to US college football, but home page "hot topics" included freshly-anointed Nobel Peace Prize winner US President Barack Obama.

"We built a next-generation platform for the aggregation, presentation and syndication of authoritative content that will be used to power other pages, sites and services," said Hearst Entertainment executive vice president George Kliavkoff.

"LMK.com's goal is to curate for customers the most authoritative content on any topic for which they have an affinity and deliver that dynamically-updated information in a beautiful, user-friendly, intuitive layout."

The service will also deliver "topic-specific" email messages to people that subscribe, according to Hearst.

LMK.com is a "digital company incubated" by Hearst and headed by media veteran Michael Gutkowski.

Hearst owns the San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle and other papers as well as magazines including such titles as Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and Esquire.

(c) 2009 AFP