Newsvine 19 January 2006

A few days ago, I was delighted to receive a private beta invite to join Newsvine, a new service that is somewhere between a news website, a blog and a mass chat-room.

“Basically, Newsvine.com is a way for the average citizen to gain readership and to be on an even footing with professionals from the mainstream media. It is also a way for journalists and writers to publish their material on the web without the constraints of deadlines and editors.
Contributions by all users are ranked by the community based on popularity and usefulness, rather than by an editor sitting in an armchair somewhere. Every person has his/her own domain at Newsvine.com and can write about whatever they want, whenever they want. The icing on the cake is that Newsvine is not only free, but you keep 90% of the earnings generated by ad revenue from your own column.”
Co-Founder Calvin Tang

It looks very cool, and I can see this becoming a site that I will have in a permanent tab. As the blurb says;

“Why shouldn’t you, as a reader, be able to comment on every single article you read? After all, you may have information the original author did not have. How about chat? If 20 people are reading an article at the same time, why shouldn’t they be able to discuss it amongst themselves afterwards?”
Newsvine

This is one of the reasons I have been quiet these last few days. Newsvine is going to change the way we read news on the web. I have never enjoyed reading the news as much as I do now using Newsvine. I have 20 invites that I can use, so if you are interested let me know. Anyone interested in journalism, this is something you should be aware of.