Publish2, the stealth Digg-Clone-For-Journalists that announced a fundraising this morning, is being very quiet about exactly what their product is and how it works. In an interview last week they told me only friends and family were testing it.
Well, it turns out “friends and family” is fairly expansive term in their book, and includes a lot of people who are quite willing to talk about it. As we said, Publish2 is a Digg-like site where anyone can submit links but only journalists can vote those links up and down. It also has a private research feature that lets journalists bookmark items without sharing them. “It’s like Delicious,” said one person testing the service, adding “I would never use the public part of the service, I’m too competitive to share my research with other journalists.”
So Publish2 looks to be a little like Digg and a little like Delicious. The only problem is that it may not be as good as either of those products.
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2.7 million for that????
yes, apparently.
I like it. To me its a little HuffingtonPost meets Digg.
@TechCrunch staff, offtopic here but do you need a special invite to join your forums? I tried to register twice and didnt get an email, so cant join.
thanks. Feel free to delete this part of my comment. Didnt know any othe way to reach you.
I’m sure some of the money went into harnessing the support of the journalists they claim will make all these votes….
Dang. What a rip of the digg look.
Harry “pot calling the kettle black” Wang
2.7 millions for a pligg based system backed by journalists? wtf?
…exclusively for journalists… hmmm.. how many journalists are there in the world?… and, english-centric…
So they cloned PLIGG ?
Someone tell me this is not pligg - please, restore any faith I may have had in this industry, and tell me that they did not get 2.7M in funding to produce a pligg site. I shall check back regularly.
@Paul: is Pligg with the default theme slightly modified. Just have a look at the avatars
only tens of thousands?… hmmm… but if “anyone can submit”, what does this “exclusively for journalists” mean? (verbatim as it says on the publish2 frontpage)…
So - does this count as Web 2.5? Or is this Web 3.0?
Maybe we should just call it “Web 2.7″
Digg Variants..
@TechCrunch staff, offtopic here but do you need a special invite to join your forums? I tried to register twice and didnt get an email, so cant join.
thanks. Feel free to delete this part of my comment. Didnt know any othe way to reach you.
Marco is right. Its not working at all. I did not receive any mail yet.
i like it i love it it will be my homepage site.
but whaz the ratio of journalist : news?
1: 2000?
how is it gonna work, it will be a full time job to vote up and down.
We’re in a bubble. If Slide didn’t confirm that, this sure as hell does. I will never look to most current web “companies” for inspiration, because they’re doing it all wrong.
I once was inspired by what we call “Web 2.0″, but it has become depressingly lame.
Web 2.0 is fine.. only what’s lame from Web 2.0 is lame…
[doesn't mean to say whether publish2 is lame, or not lame]
I really don’t get it… I’ve had really high hopes for Publish2, but this looks disappointing. However, it is just stealth family and friends, so perhaps they deserve the benefit of the doubt? Let’s hope they are just testing the foundation, and are building the house on top for the public launch.
*slaps forehead* It’s April Fools! Of course.
would you believe Web 2.0005
/maxwell smart voice
A little bit like Digg and a little bit like Delicious = coRank
You are right Paul, it looks like April Fools unless it has some kind of automated filtering of related news but isn’t there already Keegy with something similar? I guess the money is for the commitment of the journalists…
Stealth? As much as Scott has written about it, especially some of the experiments we run with Publish2 in Rockford, plus what Knoxnews.com has done? All of that is pretty extensively documented in Scott’s blog. In fact, if you dig around (or just pay attention) you can find out quite a bit about P2.
You know what the irony is here — I’m always complaining about how uninformed MSM reporters are when covering things I know about — the lake of real knowledge, or seeming need to find fault for the mere chance to find fault, the lack of thoughtful examination … .
And in my own blog, I’m endlessly pointing to TechCrunch as an example of where journalism going.
Ah, the irony.