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Chris Tolles, VP Sales and Marketing for Topix.net, spoke extensively about the Internet's largest news site and its views on keeping informed in an age where instantaneous global communication has changed how people want to be informed.

Part 2 of Mike McDonald's interview continues below; Part 1 can be found here.

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"We can build something that's not just a place to read your news, but a place for you to create interactive news. That's going to be the place where we're likely to succeed," Tolles said.

It's a place where users can develop and annotate news. One can almost imagine a Wiki-type approach to the problem. Tolles isn't ready to discuss specifics of the solution they have in mind yet. He does identify just how much more work readers need to do to keep informed.

"It's not enough to read Business Week," Tolles said. "It's not enough even to read Battelle. You have to read the comments on Battelle to get an idea of what the community is saying."

And for those trying to concentrate on a niche like search engines it's even more critical. Tolles doesn't think anyone can call himself or herself an industry expert without following the comments on blogs, which comment on blog entries, which comment on the mainstream media.

"Who's succeeding right now? MySpace, Facebook, Digg," said Tolles.

User-generated content creates thousands of page views for Topix.net, which was Tolles' reason for citing those examples as sites that drive people to read news. Tolles wouldn't mind seeing Topix.net become the MySpace of news, getting 10 million page views. "We think adding these (technologies) on top of the stuff we have would be really good."

In discussing the potential for building Topix as a brand, Tolles noted that they have a lot of work to do to get there. Becoming the brand for online news could be the reward.

"There is no brand on the web for news. Google' means search, eBay' means online auctions, Craigslist' means classifieds. We can do it better than Google or Yahoo," Tolles said, despite those two powerhouses having well-established branding.

"Newspapers are realizing they want more inventory and more participation, just like we do."

The three big newspaper publishers in the US, Gannett, Tribune, and Knight-Ridder, each picked up a 25 percent stake in Topix.net in March. Tolles effused on the relationship with the trio during the interview. Most importantly, that deal got Topix placement on 177 news sites.

When asked about how reporters feel about Topix, Tolles pointed out the dynamics of the newspaper industry in response. "News companies are not run by reporters, they're run by ad/sales people. This Chinese wall' means that the public face of a newspaper is all about journalism, but the business side is all about business."

How will they satisfy that business? Tolles said they would be ready to get into specifics on Monday, and we're looking forward to hearing more from him.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.