Is there an English language equivalent of Toutiao? If not, why?
（头）Tou = Head; （条）Tiao = Line
A strip (条) of news is works better than A line (线) of news in Chinese.
Eg: Hacker News, Google News, Business Insider, Buzzfeed, Reddit, Huffington Post, Drudgereport, Digg, Flipboard, Techmeme, Redef and about 57 others. Some of them mix original content with blatantly regurgitated content, some are pure play aggregation. They're all playing in or right around the Toutiao neighborhood.
The established players, and how well known they are, makes it far more difficult to build super valuable aggregators. If you want business news, you likely already know about Bloomberg, CNBC, etc. and they're going to cover most stories that matter.