Sparks looks like the preemptive avenue for sponsored content. Reminds me of an AOL suggested content sinkhole. It's an insult, really. At least back when people were dialing up there wasn't much in the form of federated content so it was in AOL's interest to prime the customer with bland reading matter to keep them interested. This Sparks thing, I dunno.
I think at this point since they have all the early adopters already locked in and providing feedback, they should think of suspending any new signups until they have the circle matrix figured out, like Twitter did.
That would be great. It seems like Google has the brainpower to figure out a way to use up and down votes to target ads better as well. I would love to see ads based on things that I am actually interested in.
Isn't it essentially just Google Alerts, as if a search term with "only the best results" "as it happens" "deliver to Google Reader" set, except instead of to reader, to the sparks page?
I think at this point since they have all the early adopters already locked in and providing feedback, they should think of suspending any new signups until they have the circle matrix figured out, like Twitter did.