Newsvine Launches

I have been invited to try the private beta of Newsvine, a news aggregation/citizen journalism hybrid. Newsvine features the full text of articles from AP, Reuters and other wires as well as links to stories on other news sites. The stories are ranked by the number of votes they get from fellow users. In addition, you can tag stories which are then aggregated onto distinct pages.

The most notable feature of Newsvine, however, is the ability to contribute and aggregate your own news articles at your own personal URL (e.g. steverubel.newsvine.com) and then monetize it. All contributed articles are clearly delineated from the rest of the content. Contributors collect 90% of the ad revenue generated through traffic to their personal domain. The other 10% goes to the person who referred you to join the site.

Newsvine should draw immediate comparisons to Topix.net, which is taking a similar approach. Topix goes beyond Newsvine in that they index blogs while opening pages up to contributors and comments. They also feature many many more categories and sources. (Disclaimer: I am an advisor to Topix.net and they are a client of CooperKatz.)

I like Newsvine, but I think it's going to run into some trouble. One appeal of these sites is in how they aggregate news. Most consumers will want see the news in some sort of hierarchy of import, rather than by popularity. This is how Topix ranks its articles. For all of the value the community provides, it can also leave us blind to some important stories that may not be too popular. Still, Newsvine is certainly a site to watch.

Technorati Tags: Newsvine, Topix, Topix.net

Comments

[Ian Fenn]

My email said it was a private beta, not a public one!

[Tom]

Right on about how Topix differs from Newsvine, but what I think Newsvine has that Topix doesn't is the Digg-ification of stories. Based on the traffic that Digg sends to content right now for "front page" stories, it's pretty clear that people in some communities have begun to "trust" others to point out things of interest within certain tags/categories.

Your statement of "hierarchy of import" maintains that what the community could put together wouldn't show a true level of importance, should it reach critical mass, doesn't it? Right now, stories coming in off the AP wire are just that - straight off the wire. Whether or not they "stay" on the front page is based on how important they are, based on "votes," or when the next story of note comes through - just as you might choose to make a "hits of Steve Rubel" part of the sidebar with the top posts on your site based on traffic. People love that stuff - just like folks like seeing the "Recently commented on" post links on sites, too.

For people with huge news appetites, I've got to say that both Topix and Newsvine will be important stops on a regular basis during the day because of the volume of news and information that passes through them - and the way they're sorted.

[Ken Yarmosh]

Steve, fyi...I believe Newsvine is in "privte" and not "public" beta.

[bing]

Looks like AP is the newswire not "articles from AP, Reuters and other wires"

[Russell]

I have invites. See my link for details.

[alireza]

woud u invit me?

[jm]

any idea whenever topix plan to develop business in europe/france?