A new source of news: Newsvine

I got an invitation to join the beta of Newsvine last week, but didn't get around to trying it out until this weekend. And now eight posts and two seeds later, I have only one reaction: I'm hooked.

For those who aren't familiar with it, Newsvine is sort of like Google News, but rather than just being an aggregation of stories, it also allows commenting and voting on stories like at del.icio.us, and allows members to write their own stories and posts, like at Gather.com. The design is simple and uncluttered, and so far, the content seems to be very timely and remarkably rich (no surprise there, since they get feeds from the Associated Press and ESPN).

The challenge in any Internet news site today is not how to gather information, but more how to edit and distill it, so your readers don't recoil from the tyranny of too much. Newsvine (I always want to write Newswire) seems to have struck a near unique balance so far, resulting in just enough detail for me. It will be fun to see how the community and the business evolve. But I believe that Newsvine is going to be a winner -- big time.

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