Tracking friends, idols across the Web with ease

Eli Kozminsky, who just finished his freshman year at Harvard University and knows Varon casually, said he checks the site every day for updates about his friends, basketball star LeBron James, and some well-known academics.

“It’s like following a news feed with your friends in it,’’ said Kozminsky, of State College, Pa., who said he has found articles his friends have written and sports successes they were too modest to mention.

It’s basically like setting up a Google alert about each of your friends, Varon said, but rather than having to manually set up each one, you can let newsle track everyone on your list of contacts from Facebook or LinkedIn. And instead of filling your inbox as Google alerts for so many people would, newsle lets you check all of them in one place, as often — or as rarely — as you like.

“There’s definitely a bit of a stalker vibe to what we’re doing,’’ Varon, of San Francisco, said. But since all the information is public record already, all newsle is doing, he said, is making that search easier.

The people you follow don’t know you’re following them unless you tell them.

“One of the funnest things’’ about starting the site, Varon said, “has been to hear stories from people who have found crazy information about their friends. One user told us he got an article about his friend who had been arrested after biking around naked. And people have told us they found out about high school buddies who opened restaurants — all sorts of cool things.’’

Dharmesh Shah, founder and chief technology officer of the Internet marketing firm HubSpot and a popular blogger on Internet start-ups, said newsle has an easy-to-understand focus. While social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn will continue to get better at showing users news about their friends, newsle will be able to work across these systems, Shah said.