I find it a little odd that no decent news recommenders have emerged (I expect they will eventually). Possible reasons:

- The recommendation problem is very hard (or the solution-space is very large)

- Good recommendations require lots of user data, leading to a chicken-and-egg problem

- Not enough people care enough about it

The answer is probably a bit of all three. But it is suprising that such an obvious opportunity hasn't been done right yet.

Good luck to all the people working on it!