In Gary’s post about “The Wisdom of Crowds” he referenced Newsvine, a social news site that was in private Beta mode at the time. Well, it went live Thursday and it looks very promising.

The site’s news is fueled by wire feeds such as AP, but also allows users to “seed” the site by posting links to stories from other sources (online newspaper sites, blogs, etc.). Newsvine users can vote on which articles should be given the most prominence and comment on what they read. Most importantly, Newsvine allows users to set up their own mini-Newsvine site – bivings.newsvine.com – where they can post their own articles and opinion pieces. Citizen as journalist.

The one thing that would make this great idea even better is a feature that shows which blogs are discussing Newsvine articles, similar to the feature recently rolled out by the Washington Post. But that’s being picky – Newsvine has fantastic potential and it will be fascinating to watch how it develops.

Prediction: I think its inevitable that a lot of sites like Newsvine will pop up that serve different types of people. Inevitably, Newsvine will take on a personality that will attract some and turn off others. Competing sites will pop up to fill the void. As an example, if Newsvine takes on a liberal bent, a conservative competitor will pop up.
Technorati Tags: Newsvine Media Web 2.0 News Journalism