Creating a global social news platform: news and people

We at Newstin believe there is much in the world that might bind us together – if we could bring it to light. If we could find that common ground, then we could overcome the differences that threaten to drive us apart. At Newstin we’ve set out to organize the world of information into topic categories. Through topics Internet readers can find what they are looking for and then connect with others who share their interests. But we want people to feel they can reach out beyond their own language, too – we want them to understand and share their thoughts without language barriers. That’s our ambition and how we want news to connect people and create a global social news platform. So read on if you want to know:
what we stand for,
the challenges we face, and
how we plan to create a global social news platform.

What we stand for: the Newstin mission

At Newstin we see it as our mission to make the world a better place by providing a platform where people can connect. Our mantra – “all the news, for all the world” – means that we aspire to depth of coverage and diversity of sources across languages. There are three forces at work in the world of Internet news we at Newstin must aim to achieve this: tabloidization, ghettoization, and unilateralism.

Tabloidization

Overwhelmed by the chaos of information on the Internet, many news readers settle on the tabloid presentation of top stories. We at Newstin organize the news into more than 710,000 (the number is growing everyday) categories in an easy-to-navigate NewstinMap. We guarantee that in the 30 seconds you might spend reading headlines you’re only half interested in on your usual news site, you’ll be able to find detailed information on a subject of interest to you at Newstin.com, bookmark it and be reading an article that interests you on a much deeper level in no time. After all, once you have a map, it makes it a lot easier to find what you’re looking for – you can go straight to where you want to be and avoid wandering around aimlessly. We think when you try using the NewstinMap to navigate around the news universe, you’ll find it’s a real eye-opener.

And what about keyword searching for the news you need? Well, it can be pretty hard considering that, by its very nature, news isn’t something you look for with pinpoint precision. News is truly part of the semantic Web, where navigating replaces searching and where organizing according to the context of an article replaces the less effective keyword search that is useful only when you know what you are looking for. That is why our multi-lingual taxonomy center – one of the largest in the world – organizes the news based on the way you think: according to the topic categories that interest you. If you want to make sure we do it right, you too can become an editor for a specific category or make comments. And we hope your participation will last longer than the lifespan of a news article; we hope it’ll be the beginning of a journey of discovery with others brought together in that community of interest.

Ghettoization

How could we fulfill our ambition to provide you with the long tail of news if we didn’t enable you to access to everything, regardless of language? With our patent technology, we have sought to challenge the ghettoization of news by creating truly global communities of interest. Once you’ve identified your topic, you can read – in your own native tongue – what the press is saying in 10 other languages on that same topic.

Whether you’re in business and looking to get that critical edge by unearthing the innovation your competition is working on in another part of the world, or you’re doing research and want to be truly comprehensive, or perhaps you’re just one of the world’s 750 million regular Internet news readers wanting a better perspective on another part of the world, we invite you to expand your horizons and experience our cross-language navigation. If you are a polyglot, you might make do the multi-language tools that are out there and operate in a variety of language ghettos. But for those of us who know one or only a handful of languages, having the ability to actually navigate cross-language is essential for reading what will soon be a predominance of non-English language Internet news.

Unilateralism

Unilateralism threatens peace even more than ghettoization because it attempts to impose a single view of the world. We often don’t realize how much we’re subject to news-source hegemony. The reality is that the Internet news is more unilateral than it should be, when we consider our ability to access so many different sources. It’s as if we kept going to the biggest bookstore in the universe and buying books by the same author. And even if we had the time to constantly look up new sources, who could cull through them all? That’s why we at Newstin have created the one-stop news shop. Think of Newstin.com as the Amazon or iTunes of news, the long tail. It gives you a chance to experience the diversity of views that the world has to offer, not just the brashest of the media titans’ offerings, though we’ve got plenty of that too if you want it.

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The Challenges

We’ve set ourselves a gargantuan task and there are many stumbling blocks to deal with. We’ve overcome some of them through years of development, and others are ahead of us in some areas. Providing an alternative approach to news, blogs and social networks means there will be entrenched interests combating against us. Here are the weapons we use in our battles, the limits they have and how you can help us.

The weapon against tabloidization: Taxonomy

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The weapon against ghettoization: Cross-language Navigation

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The weapon against unilateralism: Source Discovery

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The Global Social News Platform

By creating a map of the news we’re trying to create a map of the world of ideas. Like any map that is fresh and new our efforts can show people places to both explore and inhabit. When people explored new worlds in the last millennium they created communities based on shared interests. In the same way we’re inviting people to found communities of interest around shared ideas. To explore the world of ideas, free of barriers. Newstin is about news and people. It’s a platform for people around the world to connect through news. Not all our social features are available yet but since we’re a platform we’re not planning to be the only means of transport in your explorations. We’re looking to create strategic relationships with the various networks that are already well-suited means of travel for the Internet globe-trotter. We're not so concerned how you get there, we just want to call your attention to all the other people you haven’t yet met who share your interests.