Newsvine:A Web 2.0

Newsvine: A Web 2.0

Newsvine was launched in March of 2006 by a group of colleagues with one objective in mind: "to build a perfectly different, perfectly efficient way to read, write, and interact with the news". Their mission is "to bring together big and little media in a way which respects established journalism and empowers the individual at the same time”.
What differentiates Newsvine from other sites like CNN or Yahoo is that they have incorporated the entire Associated Press wire into their web service. This allows users access to articles that would not have, otherwise, been available to them. Chris Anderson refers to this as "the long tail," meaning that by having the entire Associated Press wire available, Newsvine is able to take advantage of the “collective power” of the other smaller newspapers, news sites and the like which, for the most part, when combined makes up for a huge proportion of news content. Other news sites, such as the ones mentioned above, have editors that choose which sites or articles they prefer the most.
Furthermore, Newsvine allows users to personally "vote" on the articles they read moving it higher up in the line. The web-based platform is also designed in such a manner that it only gets better the more people use it. When the user reads an article they really like or that they think is important, all they have to do is click on a grey arrow up button and the article will be "voted up". The more "vote up's" the more recognition it will get within the community.
Collective intelligence is a big part of this website. They have a process called "Seeding Newsvine" and it allows users to post other news articles from other websites to the Newsvine website. By allowing others to contribute to the service Newsvine is constantly operating in a real-time environment. The users aid in the constant updating of the news and the website. It is the users that add value to the service being provided and to the community of users using the site, all key principle attributes to the Web 2.0 era.
All in all, the website is extremely interactive. Users can chat live to one another, post comments about the articles, report bugs to the company, you can even have your own personal webpage where you can write your own articles or choose the articles that you like the most. Really, they have combined, a My Space, Facebook, Instant Messenger, Blogger etc.
In short, Newsvine has developed a website that's services are supported by many of the key principles of what defines a Web 2.0. Their users are "treated as co-developers, they want and expect their users to add value to their service, they have a system of collective intelligence, their website is constantly updated in real-time, and the more the people use it the better the system gets.