The Washington Post Company is venturing into the social-media business with the launch of Trove (www.trove.com), a free, personalized site that aggregates news across subjects of interest and important headlines of the day. "Trove offers a place of first resort for your news, whether it is information you want to know or should know. Because Trove is all about the individual user, the experience is customized and different for everyone," said Vijay Ravindran, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer of The Washington Post Company. "We believe launching Trove is a good step toward understanding what the future of news could look like. And we're pleased to have Ford on board to support our development of personalized news and our experimentation with new approaches toward online advertising."

The site takes advantage of Facebook Connect to pull in a user's interests as outlined by his or her Facebook profile to help jump start personalization. The Washington Post Company plans to add more features in the coming months, allowing readers to see more social media features and site capabilities with Facebook Connect.

Beyond algorithms, an editorial team selects news of the day-- "Editors' Picks"--to feature on Trove. Trove's editors also create subject-based channels that feature recommended sources. And users can create their own channels to capture news about a personal interest that may not already exist on Trove.

Trove, which has been in private beta since mid-February, is available on the desktop, Android and Blackberry.