Design by Elle

Introduction

Newsvine is a Seattle-based news website that provides a different means to read, write and interact with the news, with respect to established journalism while empowering the individual at the same time. Newsvine does that by syndicating mainstream news from major news outlets such as Associated Press, ESPN and New Scientist and letting users submit their own stories.

Business Model

Newsvine’s business model is a combination of advertising, community and infomediary model.

As in an advertising model, Newsvine’s pages display advertising messages and banners by Federated Media Publishing. This type of model is dependent on a high volume of viewer traffic or high-specialised viewing audiences (Rappa). Mike Davidson (2006) says: “we want to point you to ESPN.com (and any other site for that matter) whenever there is a great article to be read over there.” Newsvine’s objective is to position itself as the chosen medium for users to read their news or venture from. This objective is reinforced by providing continuous breaking news to maximise traffic with focus on quality content as well as an interactive networking environment.

By utilising citizen journalism, Newsvine is creating a community model, which relies on the loyalty and contributions of its users (Rappa). Newsvine members can create their own blog-style columns to write on what they believe is valuable. Newsvine provides social networking services where members can share their opinions and interact with each other.

Ad earnings are based on traffic to members’ column pages and are distributed amongst the members. Contributors receive 90% of the ad revenue from their pages plus 10% from referrals. Any ad revenue generated from pages, which are not generated by users goes to Newsvine.

A few of the features that are utilised by Newsvine to collect data include user columns, the Watchlist and Conversation Tracker. The statistics from these features are a very valuable tool for Newsvine to be able to target marketing campaigns and constitutes the basis for the infomediary model.

Features and Value-Added Services

Newsvine is a robust community news site offering many value-added services.

Automation

Newsvine automates the process of news publishing and editing. Newsvine presents a clear overview of news headlines in two distinct channels: the Wire for major accredited sources and the Vine for the user-submitted content such as original stories or “seeds” that link to external articles (Benzinger, 2006). Placement of stories is automated and determined by a ranking algorithm using a multitude of factors including freshness, popularity, reputation, page views and view duration (Junnarkar 2006).

Editorial oversight is left to the community using a user-driven policing and reporting system.
Newsvine believes that “the balanced judgement of the many should outweigh the fanatical judgement of the few and prevent any obvious attempts to inflate undeserving and inaccurate articles” (Information World Review, 2006).

Consumer Services

Newsvine has three levels of user interaction and contribution:

1. Reading the news is the most basic level. Readers can take advantage of tags and feeds. Users have flexibility in subscribing to tags, columns and categories’ feeds.
2. Interacting with Newsvine’s community is the next level where members can vote, tag, comment and report an article if inappropriate, chat with other members, create watchlists and use the Conversation Tracker. Members can also create and/or join Newsvine’s groups to participate in discussions with others who share the same interests.
3. Writing and seeding is the highest level of user contribution. This is where users own a column and publish stories. They can create friends’ lists, view their account history and statistics, and can be contacted by their readers.

Newsvine Backyard

Newsvine’s backyard section includes links to in-site specific issues and operations:

• Leaderboard—top writers list.
• Greenhouse—a section where new users are featured for the community to discover and endorse.
• Wall of Vineness—recognition for exceptional moments of greatness within the community.
• Newsvine Tools—applications for user’s benefit. Examples include bookmarklet to simplify seeding and tagging, widgets to be able to keep up-to-date with news on different platforms and a script to display Newsvine headlines on any site.

URL Structure and Local News

Newsvine URL structure simplifies the process of reaching content. Any tag used on Newsvine can be accessed by adding a forward slash and the tag word to Newsvine’s URL. Contributor’s columns are available as a subdomain (i.e. writer.newsvine.com). Moreover, Newsvine provides local news using a similar URL structure (i.e. fiji.newsvine.com).

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

Newsvine has many advantages due to its hybrid model:

• Automation of traditional major news broadcasting with community-based editorial judgement and user generated content leading to low overheads of staff and minimal productions costs (Tooth, 2006).
• Dynamic news publishing and feature-rich community site allow high levels of users’ interaction and customisation to personal tastes.
• Provision of local news with local community insight.
• User-friendly interface—uncluttered with advertising—and simple link structure aid quick content retrieval (Information World Review, 2006).
• Differentiation—there aren’t many news or community websites that provide the same mix of content.
• Continuous innovations—new modules, Newsvine Live and news in pictures are enhancements introduced on Newsvine recently (Davidson, 2007).

Weaknesses

• Scalability—if Newsvine grows bigger, it might become a challenge to keep Newsvine organised and free of illegitimate users. The “Code of Honour” may not be followed by all. Newsvine might need to increase their staff base to ensure quality of content as well as rethink its organisational structure.
• Newsvine caters to international locations but is still very U.S. orientated. Furthermore, Newsvine is currently offered in one language only: English.
• Newsvine’s audience is mainly young male tech-savvy users with the majority of contributors publishing their own blog (Federated Media Publishing). This might hinder versatility, influence top story ranking, and with no editorial oversight, a possible outcome might be biased news.
• Search engines give precedence to established news contenders. A quick search on Google for “Top World News” revealed Newsvine on page 21 of the search results.

Opportunities

Some of Newsvine’s weaknesses can be transformed into business opportunities:

• Providing languages other than English for the site can open Newsvine to a larger audience base.
• A growing niche market that Newsvine could take advantage of is mobile Internet access, by developing tools to enable user interaction from their mobiles, PDA devices, etc.
• Alternatively, working together with other news or community sites to reach a wider audience is another area that could be developed. An example of how this could be accomplished is Newsvine’s recent collaboration with the New York Times (Newsvine Blog, 2006). With faster Internet connections, Newsvine could team up with television outlets to provide multimedia broadcasts.
• Research shows that users visit newspaper sites firstly for local content, weather, classified ads and sometimes even as city guides (Schiff, 2003, Dibean & Garrison). Newsvine could identify users location by their IP address to provide a module on the home page with localised news. Newsvine already displays weather information on location pages but could offer localised classified ads and city guides as well. Advantages are additional revenue option and an additional reason for repeat visits.

Threats

• News aggregation sites that offer the same functionality (examples: newscloud.com and backfence.com).
• Blogging is still a personal activity that might lead to lack of quality content. According to Stephen Bryant (2006), “If Newsvine is to be successful news organization—not just a technology company—then they will need to invest in columnists, editors and personalities. And they will need to tend their garden of contributors very, very closely.”
• Sites that offer earnings for user contributions might deter bloggers from contributing on sites with lower revenue income (Milchman, 2006).

Summary

Newsvine’s hybrid model provides a high quantity of quality content coupled with value-added services to generate repeat users’ visits. However, its value proposition doesn’t end there. Newsvine aims to build a community with the spirit of conversation. People are looking for more than just information when they go online and as Schwartz says, “It’s not mass media; it’s personal” (1997). Newsvine does just that, making the news personal.

My Choice

There are many news media websites as well as community websites, yet, not many constitute both. By combining mainstream news with citizen journalism, Newsvine is able to provide a different angle to what is portrayed in conventional news. Newsvine is a new breed of news media with innovative approach. My choice for Newsvine as a case study is best summarised by Kim Peterson (2006),“What’s clear is that the Internet is emerging as a news medium of its own. And the journalism establishment, by choice or not, is feeling the effect of the masses.”

Resources:

Benzinger, B., (2006), Newsvine—Seeding the Vine. First Look!, on Solution Watch (Accessed on July 1, 2007)

Bryant, S., (2006), Journalism 2.1? A new site tweaks the grassroots formula, USC Annenberg School for Communication, Online Journalism Review Web Site, (Accessed on June 27, 2007)

Davidson, M., (2006), Get Ready for Newsvine, (Accessed on June 24, 2007)

Davidson, M., (2007), Newsvine Relaunches… Introducing Evergreen, (Accessed on July 1, 2007)

Dibean, W., Garrison, B., Market Types and Daily Newspapers: Use of World Wide Web Technologies, MIT Communication Forum, (Accessed July 2, 2007)

Federated Media Publishing, Newsvine, (Accessed on July 1, 2007)

Information World Review, (2006), Podcasting & News Aggregation Tools, Oxford: Dec 2006, Iss. 230; pg. 40

Junnarkar, S., (2006), What’s the future for news personalization?, USC Annenberg School for Communication, Online Journalism Review Web Site, (Accessed on June 27, 2007)

Milchman, E., (2006), Blog for Netscape, Earn Big Bucks, Wired Magazine, (Accessed on July 1, 2007)

Newsvine, About Newsvine, (Accessed June 27, 2007)

Newsvine, Newsvine Help, (Accessed on June 27, 2007)

Newsvine, Newsvine Privacy Policy, (Accessed June 30, 2007)

Newsvine, Newsvine Tools, (Accessed on June 24, 2007)

Newsvine, Writing on Newsvine, (Accessed on June 27, 2007)

Newsvine Blog, (2006), Newsvine and The New York Times Share the Love, (Accessed on July 1, 2007)

Peterson, K., (2006), News brought to you by the average Joe, Seattle Times, Business and Technology section, (Accessed on July 1, 2007)

Rappa, M., Managing the Digital Enterprise: Business Models, (Accessed June 30, 2007)

Schiff, F., (2003), Business models of news Web sites: A survey of empirical trends and expert opinion, First Monday, vol. 8, n. 6, (Accessed July 1, 2007)

Schwartz, E. I., (1997), The Quantity of People Visiting Your Site Is Less Important Than the Quality of Their Experience, Webonomics: None Essential Principles for Growing Your Business on the World Wide Web, New York Broadway Books, Ch 1, pg, 21-46

Tooth, G., (2006), The Media Report: 16 February 2006—NewsVine, ABC Radio National, (Accessed on July 1, 2007)