NewsCloud's Community Starter Blog

Good Reads: Why Our Startup Decided Not To Target the Newspaper Industry

"As the co-founder of a technology startup that once considered the news industry as a source of partnerships and revenue, I agree with Wilson that startups should look elsewhere. However, the reason they should do so is not because the media industry lacks problems that need to be solved. If anything, the media industry has problems that span every sector of the industry and every segment of the value chain. Rather, the reason why startups should look for other opportunities is many industry problems are so intractable, and the chance for making a successful business is so slim, that it simply doesn't make sense to target it." Read the full article

 

Surfshare adds tipping and payment options

Update: Get the new plugin for your WordPress blog

We've added payment options to our experimental Surfshare service for bloggers and news sites. 

Tipping: If you visit a page you really enjoy, you can tip the blogger a small amount e.g. 25 cents to $5.00. Your tips will be aggregated on a regular billing statement. In fact, if you like this post, click the Leave a tip link in the right sidebar below Your Site Activity.

Larger contributions and Surfshare micropayments:

If you visit a Surfshare-enabled site regularly enough, you'll occasionally be reminded to support the site. View the popup shown below. Or, you can trigger the popup by visiting a number of pages on this site - or just click this link, or here or here.

There are essentially three options:

1) You can authorize the site to be included in your Surfshare bill. Currently, one cent will be added to your bill for each story you read (unique stories, not visits). 

2) You can choose to make a larger contribution to the site e.g. $5 - $100. 

Both of these kinds of payments will be aggregated in the same monthly statement mentioned above.

3) You can choose to keep reading for free ... and we'll remind me you again at a later date.

Our goal is to give the user as much control over the process as possible. Users can cancel tips, donations and micropayments any time before paying their first bill. We hope to add more account and privacy options soon.

You can add Surfshare to your blog or news site here. There is no cost to use the service. Learn more about SurfShare from here.

Disclaimers: Surfshare is an experimental service, still in alpha. We do not intend to collect any revenue from this service until 2010. Readers will have a chance to reset their balances up until we commence billing.

Effect of New York Times Sharing Feature on Facebook, Digg and Newsvine

Since December 11th, 2006 when the New York Times announced it's sharing feature, Facebook traffic has risen rapidly but Digg and Newsvine have gradually declined in traffic. These statistics are based on Alexa, so take them with a grain of salt. Does anyone know what might have triggered Facebook's rise in traffic other than the New York Times integration?

Technorati Tags: digg, facebook, new york times, new york times sharing, newsvine

Digg Team vs. the NewsCloud team

Note: I think Digg has added more people since this photo was taken. Also, there have been interns and contractors involved at different times in NewsCloud.

Working alone has both helped NewsCloud but also hurt it in some ways (not enough benefits from collaboration). However, it took some time to experiment with NewsCloud and get the formula right, I think the approach of starting up alone on a tight budget has been right. One person startups are a bit of a dying breed and NewsCloud will probably have to grow soon too.

Technorati Tags: david vs. goliath, digg team, digg team photo, jeff reifman, kevin rose, newscloud, startups, team photos

iCommunity.TV beta - Mash up of YouTube and Geomapping

As I've mentioned before, we try to promote interesting new journalism efforts here ... we know how hard it is to get the word out about great new sites. I received this note from Chris at eParticipation about his new site:

iCommunity.TV is a collaborative broadcast network for local news, built with the intention to promote video as a media for citizen reporting. As an aggregation platform iCommunity.TV ties into the popular video-sharing service Youtube.com, extends its offering by letting a broad audience georeference and sort video clips in news categories and offers multiple convenient ways to watch and subscribe to these custom channels (e.g. “Politics in Berlin, Germany”). iCommunity.TV is a service of eParticipation.com.

Technorati Tags: icommunity, eparticipation

Post links to your new media projects here

As someone working without venture funding on an open source project, it can be hard to get the word out and attract people to your site. If you are working on a new media project that you'd like to tell people about, email me and I'll probably be willing to post a link to it here.

Projects should have some social benefit. They should not be funded by venture capital - those projects can buy their own marketing. Please email me the link and a 3 sentence description of what's cool about your work.

Note: I may post links in summary form rather than individual postings.

Good luck in your efforts.

Email projects to me here or post them as comments below.

Technorati Tags: new media, citizen journalism, marketing

NewsCloud Founder Jeff Reifman interviewed by NPost

Earlier this month, I did an interview with NPost.com, a site that talks to entrepreneurs.

NPost took out my comments about the corrupt Republican Congress but they should be available in the audio file.

UPDATED LINK: Listen to the original audio (uncensored) interview here

Censored interview transcript is here

Technorati Tags: interviews, jeff reifman, npost

NewsCloud Coverage in the Seattle Times Today

Blogging still personal

Blogs have long been a home for personal essays and observations, but they're also a key tool for citizen journalists. Some of the best-known citizen journalism sites started off as blogs, but have since acquired a more professional sheen. A notable example is Talking Points Memo, a well-read, three-employee political blog that its creator says is profitable.

"What's powerful about what the Web has done is it allowed a lot more voices and information to make it to the surface than ever before," said Jeff Reifman, a Seattle software developer who worked at Microsoft for eight years. Reifman recently redesigned his news-aggregator site and changed its name from CommonTimes to NewsCloud.

But writing is difficult, he said, and it takes time and expertise to cover a "beat."

Generally, people who write blogs are not in it to break news. A recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life project said that only a third of the 12 million American adults who keep a blog consider them to be journalism.

Try out NewsCloud.com here

Technorati Tags: citizen journalism, jeff reifman, kim peterson, newscloud, newsvine, reifman, seattle, seattle times

Our Yahoo! partnership fell through

Just a quick note to let you know that we had been working on a deal with Yahoo! which would have allowed us to expand our efforts in the social news space - but it fell through last month due to budgetary changes (perhaps related to Yahoo! not meeting their earnings). So, for now, we're continuing as a self-funded venture with our limited resources.

Technorati Tags: venture-capital, entrepreneurial, Yahoo!

Thinking about our mission and vision

We've accomplished a lot with very few resources at CommonTimes - but we need to do more. So, right now we're thinking a lot about what we want to be when we grow up.

It's easy to get caught up in feature wars in terms of what our numerous and well-funded competition is doing, but lately, I've tried to isolate myself and think of the big picture. What is the problem we're trying to solve for our readers? What values do we have?

With that in mind, we're thinking about the world, media, community and our readers.

I came across Craig's manifesto on community. It's short and simple - but makes some good points.

I will definitely have more thoughts for you soon.

Technorati Tags: entrepreneurial, media, mission