Newsvine has gone into public beta and I’ve been playing with it a little bit today (Here’s a look at it).
Like many such apps, it’s an amalgam of other tools. del.icio.us meets digg meets google news meets weblog software. It’s got tagging, a user reward and moderation scheme, community interaction, rss feeds, and its own set of buzz words (you don’t post, you seed). It’s a solid, well designed app that’s going to grow fast. There are some issues with the interface and data organization, but those should be worked out during the beta.
The problem is that as more of such applications pop up, saturating the market, the less useful each individual one becomes. The more social services there are, the smaller the social network for each one gets; the more services that I use, the less control I have of my data.
I already use del.icio.us to bookmark and tag links. Some of those can be classified as “news.” Using newsvine would either segment those links between the two services or it would cause an overlap (cross posting). Either way, it means that more of my generated content is being seeded across the web across various services. I lose control of it. I lose the data. In the end, they lose their usefulness.
As I try it out, you can find me at n0wak.newsvine.com. I posted hockey stories there because I don’t post any of that elsewhere. More game commentary would border on redundant.
Regardless, if you want to try it out and want an invite, tell me.
would love an invite to Newsvine. Thanks!
PS, enjoy reading your insights.