Google Alerts

I like Google Alerts.  I don’t use them that often, but the ones that I have spent some time crafting are rather useful.  I’m curious if they are starting to get a bit archaic though now, with more and more content aggregators with daily/weekly newsletters on the rise?

In case you haven’t heard of them, head to www.google.com/alerts and see for yourself how easy they are to set up.  I think the one benefit of these alerts versus traditional industry reports/newsletters is they allow an even deeper level of customization.  Let’s say I am interested in mergers and acquisitions within the European high technology and communication space.  I don’t know of any of my newsletters off hand that may hit that, but if I build the right query in Google Alerts, I’ll get an email almost immediately (or however infrequently I’d like) once a search result with that specific string pops up.

So which side are you on?  Managing your own content acquisition or letting someone (or something) else do it for you?  If you’ve got good newsletter subscriptions, what are they?

A couple of my favorite companies/sites with daily newsletter/event subscriptions across a few different industries: Tech Crunch (technology), IT Business Edge (IT/business), Hubspot (marketing), AdAge (advertising).

Til Next Time,

Michael