A news feed is a continuous, structured stream of articles delivered to a platform or system as content is published, indexed, and processed.
In a B2B context, a news feed is the data pipeline that carries structured news content from a provider’s infrastructure into a downstream application, workflow, or database.
The term is used loosely. In consumer products, a “feed” is a scrollable list of content curated for a single user. In data infrastructure, a news feed is a programmatic delivery mechanism that moves machine-readable article data at volume, in real time, with metadata attached.
What is a news firehose?
A news firehose is a high-volume news feed that delivers the full stream of indexed content without filtering by topic, entity, or keyword. Every article a provider indexes is delivered to the recipient as it is processed. The term reflects the volume and speed of delivery: the full output of a global news indexing operation arriving continuously at your endpoint.
Firehose delivery is designed for platforms and infrastructure teams that need the complete article universe and apply their own filtering downstream. Opoint’s SafeFeed operates as a configurable firehose: the full feed of 3.5M+ articles per day is available, with optional filters by country, language, topic code, or Boolean keyword applied at the provider level to reduce volume before delivery.
What is the difference between push and pull delivery?
Push and pull describe how articles move from the provider’s systems to yours.
Pull delivery means your system requests articles from the provider on a schedule. You send a query, the provider returns matching articles published since your last request, and you repeat the cycle at whatever interval suits your infrastructure. Pull is query-driven: you define what you want, and you retrieve it on demand.
Push delivery means the provider sends articles to your endpoint as they are indexed, without your system needing to request them. Matching articles arrive at your infrastructure in real time, triggered by the provider’s indexing process rather than your polling schedule.
The practical difference is latency and infrastructure load. Pull delivery adds your polling interval to the provider’s processing time, so a system that polls every five minutes can miss articles by up to five minutes, no matter how fast the provider indexes them. Push delivery removes that gap: articles arrive as soon as they are processed.
Which delivery method should you use?
The right choice depends on your use case and infrastructure.
Pull suits: integration testing and development, retrospective search and historical queries, lower-volume use cases where polling overhead is acceptable, and workflows that run on a scheduled rather than continuous basis.
Push suits: real-time monitoring and alerting, compliance and risk workflows where latency matters, high-volume ingestion into continuous pipelines, and any use case where the speed between publication and your system receiving the article is operationally significant.
Most providers support both. For production monitoring and risk applications, push is the appropriate default. For development, retrospective analysis, and ad hoc queries, pull is more convenient.
Opoint’s SafeFeed supports both push and pull delivery. StoredSearch, which delivers articles matching registered search profiles, can be pulled from the API on your schedule or pushed directly to your systems as matches arrive.
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FAQ
What is the difference between a news feed and a news API?
What is the difference between a firehose and a filtered feed?
A firehose delivers the full volume of indexed content without provider-level filtering. A filtered feed applies criteria at the provider level, country, language, topic code, or keyword, so only matching articles are delivered. A firehose gives you the complete universe and lets you filter downstream. A filtered feed reduces volume before delivery, lowering ingestion overhead but requiring you to define your filtering criteria in advance. Both approaches are valid; the right choice depends on whether you need the full article universe or a defined subset.
How does push delivery work technically?
In push delivery, the provider sends article data to a webhook or endpoint you specify as articles are indexed. Your system receives a POST request containing the article payload, including full text and metadata, and processes it as it arrives. This eliminates the polling cycle and produces lower, more consistent latency than pull delivery. Most providers supporting push delivery will require you to confirm your endpoint can handle the inbound volume before enabling full push delivery.
