Newsvine

What is newsvine.com and what is its reason for living, what’s it there for?

Newsvine is a combination of both a blogging community as well as a news website that works to publish articles from both citizen journalists and from mainstream sources such as The Associated Press. By doing this Newsvine is able to give an accurate and up to date reflection of what the world is talking about at any given moment.

Who was it founded by and what was the idea at the start?

Founders Mike Davidson, Calvin Tang, Lance Anderson and Mark Budos, and Josh Yockey, Tom Laramee came together in spring of 2005. On March 1, 2006, the site was launched to the public. The initial goal of the blog was “to build a perfectly different, perfectly efficient way to read, write, and interact with the news” (newsvine.com).

Who owns it now and how is it organized, business-wise?

On October 5, 2007 Newsvine.com became a wholly-owned subsidiary of MSNBC Interactive News. The company was bought for an “undisclosed sum” and was the first acquisition that MSNBC.com has made in 11 years.

What’s the business model, as far as you can determine?

The business runs simply as an open source news service; there are no editors to filter content. Newsvine makes it’s money through advertising in and around AP and other wire content, as well as the content of its users.

Who is the target audience, in the old fashioned sense: the likely consumer of the site’s content?

The sites demographic consists of 88% male, 78% 18 – 39 year olds, 30% household income above 75k, and 54% of whom publish their own blog.  But regardless of their actual audience their target audience is anyone who wants to write, read, discuss and learn about current events and the news.

What can users do at newsvine.com? What are their powers, so to speak?

In terms of power over other stories, users have the power to vote on stories, which helps determine the placement of story around Newsvine as well as influences the author’s reputation level on Newsvine. You can also comment on people’s stories and engage in discussion with others.

In terms of power over ones own activity, users of Newsvine can register to their own column where they have to the ability to write their own stories. Also you can “seed” to other outside sources which essentially means posting links for others to view.

Who are the ideal users of the site, the ones newsvine.com is truly made for?

Founder Mike Davidson has repeatedly emphasized that Newsvine is not a personal blog and it should not be treated as such. It was made as a platform to talk, share and learn about the news for people who want to have an intelligent and meaningful discussions.

What do the most active users–the power users, the super-contributors- tend to do at the site?

The “super contributors” of this site are easy to find because they are the users with the most “vineacity” which means that have higher reputation levels and ratings (for more information on “vineacity” see below). These users have a certain number of votes and comments on each of their articles and they may also be on other users “watch lists” which will inform users on the activity of that certain person on newsvine (i.e alerts when they right articles etc.)

How does that differ from what more casual users would do?

As previously mentioned newsvine is not a personal blog. More casual users would be more apt to miss the goal of the blog and submit more trivial articles. As said by Mike Davidson at the Media Management Center’s Digital Strategies seminar “Anyone who has ever taken a casual stroll through the blogosphere knows how many ‘I just walked my dog!’ stories there are out there. There’s a place for that—and its your personal blog. Its not for Newsvine.”

Anything especially nifty or extremely effective about the technology available at the site?

One of the most technologically innovative aspects of Newsvine is a feature called “Newsvis”. Newsvis is a visual representation of the activity of the most recent content on Newsvine. It appears as a spectrum bar ranging from green to blue to red. Articles are represented by a column within this bar. The more votes an article receives the thicker the column becomes. The color of the columns refers to how recently the article was posted (green being the newest and red being the oldest). Newsvis is helpful because it a quick and easy way to find out which articles are getting to most attention on the site.

How about any features of the site that work really really well?

One thing that is interesting about the commenting feature of Newsvine is that they it’s ordered chronologically, older posts appearing in front of the newer posts. This is important because it fosters discussion based on what others said (since you have to scroll through everyone’s comments to be able to make your own) instead of simply reactionary comments, which ignores comment history and inhibit discussion.

What do the Newsvine community standards say?

Newsvine has a code of honor which focuses on five main community standards.  These include respecting other users, prohibiting self promotion, relating story headlines to the story content, writing stories responsibly, and following the code of honor and user agreement. For further information regarding the Code of Conduct you can visit:

http://www.newsvine.com/_cms/help/faq_honor

How active would you say the users are in communally enforcing those standards?

Generally users are strict in enforcing theses previously mentioned community standards.  Inappropriate comments and articles are reported and deleted from the site accordingly. There is also community incentive to follow the rules in order to increase ones “vinacity” (see below for more details regarding “vinacity”).

Divison of labor:  What work does the Newsvine professional staff do to make the site “go?”

Newsvine staff tries to have as little involvement as possible in controlling the site. There is no editorial voice of Newsvine, so the staff’s contributions are limited to making sure the site is running properly and evolving accordingly in order to keep Newsvine a good platform for its users to discuss the news.

As distinct from… What work does the user community do that makes the site go?

In order to keep Newvine running efficiently users must uphold the Code of Honor, as well as be active in the site by voting, commenting, writing stories and seeding links. Without the participation of the users the site would lose much of its content as well as its ranking and filtering system.

What kind of reputation system is there for contributors to the site?

Newsvine prides itself on having a particularly thorough reputation system known as “Vineacity”. Vineacity is a measure of one’s overall level of contribution to Newsvine. It is used to display the relative productivity and credibility of Newsvine users. By using Newsvine regularly and responsibly, your Vineacity should will over time naturally. For more information clink on the “vineacity” link on http://www.newsvine.com/_cms/help/faq_yourcolumn

What other mechanisms are there for creating trust at the site and how do they work?

As another method of community building, Newsvine allows user to join certain “groups”. These groups are meant for users to collect in a smaller, more specific setting and engage with others who share commen interests. These groupa can be either open for all to join or they can be private and only open to those who are invited.

What do you think binds the user community together?

The main unifier among the users of Newsvine is that they all share the common goal of distributing and receiving the news. Because of this shared purpose there is a sense of comradery that exists amount users who are all interested in spread and sharing intelligent information and discussion.

Why do you think people come back to newsvine.com? What are they getting by returning?

What keeps users of Newsvine coming back is it’s ability to produce legitimate journalism in an online medium. Newsvine is free from frivolous blog posts that other sights, especially more casual blog sites, may contain. It is this high quality of citizen journalism, this legitimate news source blended with online blogging community, that keeps newsvine so popular.

Finally, is the community at newsvine.com capable of doing actual journalism?

Journalism is simply the process of collecting, writing, editing, and publishing news. In this sense Newsvine is certainly able to produce actual journalism. In a more “traditional” sense of the word, Newsvine contributors consistently meet standards of reporting that you find at any major newspaper.

Is it capable of doing great journalism?

Great journalism can be defined as the process of collecting, writing, editing, and publishing news that is factual, original, pertinent and informative. Is Newsvine capable of this? That is up to its users. As long as the users of Newsvine keep using the site responsibly, following the code of honor and the purpose of the site, then there is no reason that great journalism could not be produced.