Among the big social news websites - Digg, Reddit, Netscape - Newsvine was always the somewhat shy newcomer, offering much to its users but at the same time putting them off with a somewhat cold and clinical design and the overal feel of the site.

Today, with a release called “Evergreen” (thematically related to site’s theme, which revolves around greenery and growth, hence the “vine” in the “Newsvine”) they partly rectify this by offering every user the possibility to customize the front page of the site as they please. This is done by separating various content sections into AJAX-based draggable boxes - modules, if you will - which enable the user to get rid of the parts they don’t need and put emphasis on the features he/she finds useful.

This alone would be enough for a new release, however the Newsvine team decided to really let go this time, adding several more interesting features to the mix.

First and foremost, they’ve added the ability to add external feeds to Newsvine’s homepage. This means that Newsvine now positions itself somewhere between Digg and Netvibes, which is an interesting novelty which no other big social media site has tried so far.

Furthermore, Newsvine has followed Digg’s footsteps by adding two interesting “tools” - Newsvine live and Newsis. Tools such as this aren’t kill features that make or break the overall product but they give the users a couple of new things to tinker with.

Also, Newsvine has really done a great job when it comes to different ways to organize the content. You can now group the content by source, by interest groups, or you can simply browse the news in pictures.

Finally, features like locallized weather info and the support for super widescreen resolutions show how much effort has been put into this new release.

All in all, I have to congratulate Newsvine for their effort; they’ve definitely managed to profile themselves as a true social news site – as opposed to social content or social media sites. Although the site is now very customizable, it still achieves what the folks at Newsvine have obviously set to do from the beginning: it’s still a social media site with the “pro” look of a mainstream news publication. This is both a good and a bad thing: Newsvine offers a lot to the user; maybe even more than any of its competitors, but it feels just a tiny bit unfriendly for a social site. Users who can get used to Newsvine’s look and feel will find plenty to enjoy in the new version of the site.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 8:29 am and is filed under Reviews, Web, Web 2.0, Features, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.