Congrats to Canadian entrepreneurs Leonard Brody and Michael Tippett, co-founders of Vancouver-based NowPublic.com, which has just been named one of the top 10 news and information sites by Time Magazine.
As readers of my PROFIT Magazine article "The Ultimate Newsroom" read earlier this year, NowPublic brings together "citizen journalism" with web 2.0 interactivity to create a new, independent source of news. With 97,000 members, it is now partnering with "mainstream" media outlets such as Associated Press to bring news to the world from where it happens, as soon as it happens. (Click here to read my original article.)
Time's figure of 97,000 members represents a 75% increase over the 60,000 I reported in February, so there's something viral going on here.
(UPDATE: A promo box on NowPublic's site claims 110,000 members.)
"Nowhere are the merits of citizen journalism more apparent than at NowPublic," says Time. "At this 'participatory news network,' a.k.a. bastion of 'crowd-powered media,' anyone can write a story, or upload images, audio or video. Whatever gets the most votes from the reading masses—the site gets about 1 million unique vistiors per month—ends up as the lead story."
It also quotes Brody: "We wanted to build a next-generation wire service that counted for the accidental bystanders, the storm chasers... And with digital capturing devices now in the average person's hand, they can be first when there's breaking news."
Personally, I still find the site a little heavy on trivia, but I'll let you be the judge. Visit NowPublic at http://www.nowpublic.com/
Its top stories at this hour:
Tucson kids go public with personal stories
Discovered! The 8th Wonder of the World
Photography Banned in Downtown Rockville, ...
Judges OK warrantless monitoring of Web use
Canada tokes at 4 times world average: UN
1 comment:
Hey Rick...thanks for thinking of us...great piece!!! Now, when are you going to report for us on NowPublic? :)
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