Newsvine

Last updated

Newsvine
Newsvine logo.png
Type of site
Online newspaper
Available inEnglish
Dissolved October 1, 2017;6 years ago (2017-10-01)
Owner NBC News
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional
LaunchedMarch 1, 2006;18 years ago (2006-03-01)
Current statusDefunct

Newsvine was a community-powered, collaborative journalism online newspaper which drew content from its users and syndicated content from mainstream sources such as The Associated Press. Users could write articles, "seed" links to external content, and discuss news items in an online forum. These news items were submitted by both users and professional journalists. Newsvine, the company, was not a news bureau and exercised no editorial voice, but provided social news platform for the online community which had grown around it. Members decided with their online actions what news articles stay on the site and what news is removed. Newsvine was named the Top News Site of 2006 and one of the 50 Best Websites of 2007 by Time magazine. [1]

Contents

History

Seattle-based Newsvine, Inc. was founded in the spring of 2005 by Mike Davidson, Calvin Tang, Lance Anderson and Mark Budos. Josh Yockey joined the company shortly after it opened its offices, with Tom Laramee and Tyler Adams being hired later. The development team consisted of several veterans from the Walt Disney Internet Group and ESPN. The company moved into its offices near downtown Seattle on August 1, 2005, and launched newsvine.com into a private "alpha" version on December 1, 2005. On January 5, 2006, the site went into private beta version, and then opened to the public on March 1, 2006. On October 7, 2007, Newsvine announced its acquisition by the news website msnbc.com, effective October 5, 2007. Since the acquisition, Newsvine has continued to run as a separate website and brand from msnbc.com, operating out of its original headquarters in Seattle. On July 16, 2012, msnbc.com was rebranded as NBCNews.com. On October 1, 2017; NBCNEWS closed Newsvine and redirected the Newsvine website to the NBCNEWS web page. Other than a notice on Newsvine; very little coverage indicated the shutdown. [2]

Features

Seeding

Newsvine allowed users to "seed," or post weblinks for others to view. Seeds usually contained a short description of the source article or a direct quotation from the linked article. With the "Newsvine Button," users could select "Seed Newsvine" from their bookmarks and a "seeding" dialog would appear. Seeds allowed for all of the same options as articles, except the ability to insert photographs and/or polls.

Articles

One of the key features of Newsvine is the ability for users to write their own articles. Commonly known as citizen journalism, this allows users to express their opinions for public discussion or even report on events in a journalistic manner. The most popular articles for top tags appear in the "Featured Writers" section, where article writers can receive extra publicity. While writing articles, users can upload their own photographs or choose from a list of Flickr photos registered under a Creative Commons license for addition to the post. Captions can be written to clarify the meaning of the photographs.

Voting

Another common feature among social bookmarking websites is the ability to vote for content. Users who enjoy reading an article/seed or agree with its content are encouraged to vote for the content. Articles and seeds with the most votes appear in the "Top Wire," "Top Seeds," or "Top of the Vine" sections of the site. Newsvine also allows for users to vote for user comments that they enjoyed reading. When a comment receives at least five votes, a green star is placed in the upper right-hand corner, signifying that enough users enjoyed or agreed with the comment. Clicking the star will lead viewers to the next highly rated comment. Negative votes are also registered, and a comment that receives too many negative votes will often be collapsed, so that it can only be viewed by deliberately opening it. This limits discussion under that comment, since new comments under it will not be seen automatically.

Commenting

The ability to comment on seeds and articles allows for extra discussions regarding the content. While debates are welcome, useless, insulting, and self-promoting comments are not. If a comment receives enough reports, that comment will be collapsed and its contents can only be shown by choosing to expand it. The Newsvine comment system also allows for semi-threaded comments, easing the confusion of comment direction. Users can edit but not delete their own comments. Writers are allowed to delete comments about their own content. Unregistered users are also allowed to have their say, but comments by unregistered users are not made public until that user creates a registered account.

User Columns

Newsvine also has a social networking aspect, as each registered Newsvine user has user columns. These user columns can be used to manage and share their articles, seeds, online friends, recommendations, and other statistical information. Every user has a user column, and each is given their own subdomain to access it (<user>.newsvine.com). User columns are customizable: aspects of the layouts can be moved or hidden, a user photo and biography can be added, a header (such as a welcome message) can be added, friends can be invited to Newsvine or added to the user's friends list, recommendations (such as favorite books, bands, blogs, etc.) can be shown, and comments and feedback from other users can be managed. Also, through user columns, members have the ability to add other users to their watchlist and friend list. Newsvine also has a social media aspect, as users can send other users a chat invitation, to see if the other user wants to chat online.

Earnings

Until 2013, Newsvine allowed users to receive 90% of the revenue from advertisements posted on their personal Newsvine pages. These earnings were "based on traffic to your articles and seeds," but it is unclear exactly how Newsvine calculates earnings. The remaining 10% goes to whoever referred the user to Newsvine, or it goes to the website for site maintenance if there was no referrer. Newsvine does not publish the amount of revenue that has gone to users.

Conversation Tracker

Much like the Watchlist, the Conversation Tracker allows users to track other members' activities online on the site. However, the Conversation Tracker is a notifier of new comments. There are three sections to the Conversation Tracker: new comments from a user's Newsvine column, new comments from articles that a user has commented on, and new comments from an article a user's friend has commented on. If a user has added members to the friend list that share a common interest in content, the Conversation Tracker can act as a list of recommended articles.

Friends List

The Friends List was a feature that existed prior to 2013, which gave users the ability to meet new people and find others with common interests, but there are no requirements in doing so. Creating a populated friends list gives users the ability to find interesting new articles through the Conversation Tracker. Once a user adds a friend to the list, the added friend receives a notification and is given the ability to accept or decline the offer.

Vineacity

"Vineacity" was a measure of six elements that contribute to a Newsvine user's overall rating as a positive influence to the Newsvine community. It was retired in 2013.[ citation needed ] It was earned as 'branches' on a Newsvine logo icon displayed next to the user's name. The six areas of excellence include:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LiveJournal</span> Russian social networking service

LiveJournal, stylised as LiVEJOURNAL, is a Russian-owned social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal on April 15, 1999, as a way of keeping his high school friends updated on his activities. In January 2005, American blogging software company Six Apart purchased Danga Interactive, the company that operated LiveJournal, from Fitzpatrick.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MSN</span> Collection of Internet sites

MSN is an American web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95.

Social software, also known as social apps or social platform includes communications and interactive tools that are often based on the Internet. Communication tools typically handle capturing, storing and presenting communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a pair or group of users. They focus on establishing and maintaining a connection among users, facilitating the mechanics of conversation and talk. Social software generally refers to software that makes collaborative behaviour, the organisation and moulding of communities, self-expression, social interaction and feedback possible for individuals. Another element of the existing definition of social software is that it allows for the structured mediation of opinion between people, in a centralized or self-regulating manner. The most improved area for social software is that Web 2.0 applications can all promote co-operation between people and the creation of online communities more than ever before. The opportunities offered by social software are instant connections and opportunities to learn.An additional defining feature of social software is that apart from interaction and collaboration, it aggregates the collective behaviour of its users, allowing not only crowds to learn from an individual but individuals to learn from the crowds as well. Hence, the interactions enabled by social software can be one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet forum</span> Online discussion site

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes publicly visible.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NBCNews.com</span> NBC News website

NBCNews.com, formerly known as msnbc.com, is a news website owned and operated by NBCUniversal as the online arm of NBC News. Along with original and wire reporting, it features content from NBC shows such as Today, NBC Nightly News, Meet The Press, and Dateline NBC, the MSNBC cable channel, and partners such as The New York Times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection</span> Former online multiplayer gaming service

The Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection is a defunct online multiplayer gaming service run by Nintendo to provide free online play in compatible Nintendo DS and Wii games. The service included the company's Wii Shop Channel and DSi Shop game download services. It also ran features for the Wii and Nintendo DS systems.

An anonymous post, is an entry on a textboard, anonymous bulletin board system, or other discussion forums like Internet forum, without a screen name or more commonly by using a non-identifiable pseudonym. Some online forums such as Slashdot do not allow such posts, requiring users to be registered either under their real name or utilizing a pseudonym. Others like JuicyCampus, AutoAdmit, 2channel, and other Futaba-based imageboards thrive on anonymity. Users of 4chan, in particular, interact in an anonymous and ephemeral environment that facilitates rapid generation of new trends.

Social media optimization (SMO) is the use of a number of outlets and communities to generate publicity to increase the awareness of a product, service brand or event. Types of social media involved include RSS feeds, social news, bookmarking sites, and social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, video sharing websites, and blogging sites. SMO is similar to search engine optimization (SEO) in that the goal is to generate web traffic and increase awareness for a website. SMO's focal point is on gaining organic links to social media content. In contrast, SEO's core is about reaching the top of the search engine hierarchy. In general, social media optimization refers to optimizing a website and its content to encourage more users to use and share links to the website across social media and networking sites.

A social news website is a website that features user-posted stories. Such stories are ranked based on popularity, as voted on by other users of the site or by website administrators. Users typically comment online on the news posts and these comments may also be ranked in popularity. Since their emergence with the birth of Web 2.0, social news sites have been used to link many types of information, including news, humor, support, and discussion. All such websites allow the users to submit content and each site differs in how the content is moderated. On the Slashdot and Fark websites, administrators decide which articles are selected for the front page. On Reddit and Digg, the articles that get the most votes from the community of users will make it to the front page. Many social news websites also feature an online comment system, where users discuss the issues raised in an article. Some of these sites have also applied their voting system to the comments, so that the most popular comments are displayed first. Some social news websites also have a social networking service, in that users can set up a user profile and follow other users' online activity on the website.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Odnoklassniki</span> Social networking service

Odnoklassniki, abbreviated as OK or OK.ru, is a social network service used mainly in Russia and former Soviet Republics. The site was launched on March 4, 2006 by Albert Popkov and is currently owned by VK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paywall</span> System that prevents Internet users from accessing webpage content without a paid subscription

A paywall is a method of restricting access to content, with a purchase or a paid subscription, especially news. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their websites as a way to increase revenue after years of decline in paid print readership and advertising revenue, partly due to the use of ad blockers. In academics, research papers are often subject to a paywall and are available via academic libraries that subscribe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Everything2</span> Web-based community

Everything2 is a collaborative online community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. E2 is moderated for quality, but has no formal policy on subject matter. Writing on E2 covers a wide range of topics and genres, including encyclopedic articles, diary entries, poetry, humor, and fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FetLife</span> Social networking website

FetLife is a social networking website that serves people interested in BDSM, fetishism, and kink. On its homepage, FetLife describes itself as "Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me." The "Fet" in the name refers to "fetish". FetLife distinguishes itself from competitors by emphasizing itself as a social network rather than a dating site. It is on principle supportive of fringe sexual practices.

Courtney Brooke Hazlett is the supervising entertainment editor for NBC News' digital properties, NBCNews.com and TODAY.com. Prior to that she was a columnist and Celebrity Correspondent for todayshow.com, the official site for NBC's The Today Show. She is the author of "The Scoop" blog and column, featured on the todayshow.com, msnbc.com, and Newsvine websites. Hazlett also provides on-air commentary for The Today Show and MSNBC programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norton Family</span> Cloud-based parental control service by NortonLifeLock

Norton Family is an American cloud-based parental control service. Norton Family is aimed at "fostering communication" involving parents and their children's online activities. Computer activities are monitored by the software client, and reports are published online.

Moment.me was a web service and application that collected all of the pics, videos and tweets from everyone at a single event to allow users to see a complete panoramic view of what happened at that event, from multiple points of view, and in real time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moments (social networking)</span>

Moments is a function of the smartphone app WeChat, launched on 19 April 2012 in the WeChat version 4.0. It serves new social-networking functions for Wechat users. The Chinese translation of Moment is known as “Friends' circle”, which means users can share and get access to accepted WeChat friends' information, creating an intimate and private communicating circle within the users' choice of close friends.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TV Time</span> Free TV series tracking service

TV Time is a tracking platform and social television network for TV and movies, available in app and desktop forms. Using TheTVDB as a data source, it allows users to store information about their media consumption and leave reviews.

References

  1. "50 Best Websites 2007". Time. July 8, 2007. Archived from the original on July 12, 2007. Retrieved May 20, 2010.
  2. "Newsvine.com shutting down October 1, 2017" . Retrieved 27 June 2018.