Like we need another memetracker. Buzz Newsroom came out of beta today to aggregate blogger-moderated headlines and article summaries for entertainment, politics, tech, sports, and geek news. The site describes itself as a mix between the Drudge Report and Huffington Post, but that is purely aspirational. It is more like a Digg-style Techmeme, with photos and more editorial content. (The founders used to work at Digg and Reddit).
All of the headlines are submitted by readers/bloggers, and can be voted up or down. The headlines at this point are not any better than you can find on TechMeme, Digg, Yahoo Buzz, Blog Runner or any of the countless other memetrackers out there.
What is noteworthy about Buzz Newsroom, however, is that it is a collaborative memetracker. You sign in with Facebook Connect, and then can not only vote up or down any story, but write your own entry.
Buzz Newsroom is a big Wordpress blog (in fact, it looks like it might be based on Wordpress MU, which supports multiple users). You start off as a contributor, which means you can author posts but not publish them. Buzz Newsroom editors review the entries and publish them. Once you become a trusted contributor, your status may be upgraded to “author,” which means you can publish directly.
Each article is its own blog post, even if it only summarizes and links to another blog post or news article. Prizes such as iPods are offered for submitting stories. Buzz Newsroom will only ever be as good as its best contributors. But not everyone can be a buzz hunter. And there is already a lot of competition out there for the best ones.
I haven’t used BuzzNewsroom yet so I can’t speak to how good or bad it is as a service.
But, what I will say is that I’m burned out on these Digg, Yahoo Buzz, Reddit and so on and on and on type sites that have you voting stories up and down.
People aren’t voting on stories, they are voting on headlines and it’s incredibly frustrating to know that quality content doesn’t mean anything in that space because it’s all about grabbing people with the headlines.
i hate using sites like these cause they always center around celebs
http://cashcratereview.com
I couldn’t disagree with you more Jason. I personally love social news and media and find it more engaging than top-down media organizations like CNN and such. I truly believe that more web users will embrace the community approach to news aggregation and bookmarking.
What I’ve tried to do with my company and our websites is build our technology around small communities, like New England Sports and get the rabid fans involved to help spread the awareness of writers like Over The Monster and Celtics 247, and others that don’t have a big podium like MSNBC or NYTimes to broadcast from. It is for reasons like these, that I visit social news websites and develop NESblotter.com for — readers that want the best and most interesting content available, not just the AP wires passed along from one newspaper website to the next.
Yeah… somewhere in the midst of that brilliantly shameless self-promotion you missed Jason’s point entirely – current voting systems have certain inherent flaws (like headline bias) that can prevent quality content from hitting the front page.
You’re certainly entitled to disagree but at least have the courtesy to address the issue at hand.
Sites all right I guess but that main page is a mess. Letter spacing on the headlines are so tight and there is so much content stuffed in there it looks like a big jumble. I think it needs some more thought on organization and design.
I really like the approach of a collaborative news blog (a real blog, not just one line posts like reddit). ive had my fill of techmeme and i likewise; its good to have real editors picking stuff.
what i liked about the site was that – unlike reddit/digg – it’s not just a ‘thumbs up, thumbs down’ thing. that buries too much good stuff. This site let’s you vote, but it’s not really essential. and it’s not about just getting an article high on the listings. it’s like the nerds who like to put in ‘first’ on a message board – who cares? if the article interests you, power to you.
i also like the idea that you can actually write an aticle – not just submit one.
It is an art to know how to set-up your titles.
It doesn’t appear to be WordPress MU… just regular old WordPress. The sections (e.g. “Entertainment”) are created as categories, which is a great way of making a single WordPress blog appear like a multi-section portal.
I’m a big fan and supporter of community driven social news/bookmarking websites. I’m actually liking Buzz Newsroom, but there are other social news sites that allow visitors to write an article. Our blotters (i.e. social news websites) let users write articles, just click the Blog Post check box on the submission page.
cool site – why are so many new sites copying my contributor driven ideas? i guess i will go to buzz newsroom for all of the non-solar power news.
scott
http://www.solarfeeds,.com
hi scott,
that coma in your smap-url FAILS
I felt this was a pretty cool site. A bit of attitude, a bit of news, movies, girls, sports, offbeat stuff. Kind of goofy.
I’m not of fan of voting sites – to often interest groups set up shop and dominate things. Looks like they have editors overseeing the contributors, which is probably a good idea.
I agree. I’m using Digg less and less; it’s all about the front page, hard to get to stuff. If someone can create a Drudge thats powered by contributors, more power to them.
It’s kind of similar to StartupBuzz.com except that it is only for startups. Anyone can post news about startup trends and reviews.
What’s a “memetracker”?
It’s a site that helps egomaniacs track all stories about “me! me!”.
Sounds like clockwork playa
Cool
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Not sure why more people don