As far as “Social News” websites go, Newsvine is by far the most professionally designed, intuitive and elegant website in the plethora of available communities. Whereas Digg is by far the most popular and driven by it’s fanatical Linux and Macintosh user base, Reddit is designed for simplicity and is easy to load in your browser, NewVine is the best looking, slickest and most professional of all the Social News/Social Bookmarking sites. Newsvine has a significant number of enhancments that make the interface completely customizable for the end user. The layout is organized and has dynamic features which make Newsvine a truly unique content aggregator. Here is a basic screenshot of the Newsvine interface:
I particularly like the “Newsvine live” feature on the right hand side that scrolls the incoming stories. The move rather quickly but there is always something interesting scrolling past every few minutes. The site allows users to close panels, arrange them how you want and totally customize the interface. I’ve submitted a few stories to Newsvine recently and I did get a decent amount hits, not as many as Reddit or Digg, but it was still worth the half a minute it took to submit.
As with most Social News or Social Bookmarking sites, members can submit sites, vote or comment on articles, add friends to their profile, join groups and other social activities. Members create and maintain their own Newsvine column by writing articles or just pointing to existing ones. One of the most interesting aspects of Newsvine is that you actually get paid for your article submissions. Here’s how it works:
| Newsvine works hard to sell advertising around the site so that everyone can benefit from contributing. You will receive 90% of the display advertising earnings from your own domain (e.g. “yourname.newsvine.com”). Ad earnings are based on traffic to your articles and seeds. The other 10% will go to whoever referred you to Newsvine. If no one referred you to Newsvine, the other 10% will be used to offset the cost of bandwidth, upkeep, and improvements to the site. The revenue you earn will be proportional to the following you acquire. Our philosophy is that where you add value to Newsvine, you should receive value in return. |
Now that’s a real twist and a leg up on competitors like Digg, Reddit and Fark.
Drop by Newsvine and check it out.
If you’d like to discuss Newsvine, here’s a new forum thread I created for discussing it.
NewsVine - Elegant Social Bookmark and News Site
Happy Publishing.
