AllVoices blends traditional media, citizen journalism
Erik Sundelof, an engineer who oversaw the building of the AllVoices platform, chats with Amra Tareen, founder of the citizen media site.
(Credit: Hanna Sistek/CNET News)Citizen media start-up AllVoices, a global community that lets users contribute news and commentary by cell phone or online, moves from beta to the public newsroom on Thursday.
"My goal is to create the first true people's media company, where 6 billion people on the planet can share their news from wherever they are," said Amra Tareen, founder of San Francisco-based AllVoices.
The overshadowing feature on the AllVoices site is a world map that shows red, clickable dots on the location of an "event," as AllVoices calls a news report. The map allows users to see what's going on, for instance, in a particular region, country, or city. Visitors can also search for news by type: politics, business, conflict and tragedy, science and technology, sports, and entertainment.
And they can search on people. Clicking on a person's name yields a short biography of him or her, a link to a Wikipedia entry, and related content on the Web, such as articles, blog posts, videos, photos, and public comments. Users can share news, images, videos, and opinions from their cell phone via SMS or MMS, or go to the Web site itself.
AllVoices ranks news events based on the activity they are generating on the Web at large.
Tareen said AllVoices' technological platform is based on a set of patent-pending algorithms and utilizes more than 3,500 mainstream feeds in English. As a comparison, Google News includes articles from more than 10,000 news sources in 20 languages; 4,500 of those sources are in English.
In launching, AllVoices joins other competitors such as 3-year-old Associated Content, Vancouver-based NowPublic, and Harvard-founded GlobalVoices.
AllVoices is a global community that lets users contribute news, videos, images, and opinions tied to news events and people. It calls itself the first true people's media.
But AllVoices differs in some ways. When clicking on a story in Google News, the aggregator will direct you to the original source. In AllVoices, users can read the initial 250 characters of the piece before having to click through, plus all the related content.
Another feature in AllVoices is the "filter by news source," which allows readers to view stories from the news media in a specific country, neighboring countries, or region, or get a global news perspective.
Founder Tareen is a 39-year-old former venture capitalist at Sevin Rosen Funds, where she invested in IT and telecom. She holds an undergraduate degree in electronics and computer science engineering from the University of New South Wales in Australia, and an MBA from Harvard.
She incorporated the company in April 2007 and raised $4.5 million in a series A round of funding from VantagePoint Venture Partners.
Tareen got the idea for AllVoices when she traveled to Pakistan to volunteer after a massive earthquake rocked the country in 2005. She wanted to share her impressions of the devastation and lacked a platform.
Besides, being a native of Pakistan, Tareen was startled by some people's perception of the United States, where she has lived for 10 years. "They thought that the U.S was against the entire Muslim world," she said.
On her AllVoices profile page, Tareen describes herself as "a mom who is concerned about the world and wants to get the people in the world to talk to each other to resolve issues."
Here ye, here ye or is it ou ve, ou ve. Here we go again. Every time you turn around the credit card companies and the banks are sticking it to the general public. They always find a way to fleece more of our hard earned money from us. The new bank rage is charging more money for ATM use. Let's look at this for a minute. Just say your out and about and you forgot your debit card but you have one of your credit cards and you need to grab a couple of bucks say fifty dollars. You go over to the "money machine" and you swipe your card yada, yada, yada & behold there's your fifty bucks and you go about your business. Now you get your credit card statement of which you are carring a balance and you see the charge you made for the fifty bucks. Low and behold your eyes are drawn to the interest rate for that "loan" to your card. You stare at for a moment like a deer in the headlights and say to yourself what the @#$% is that all about. Your normal interest rate sa is 9% but the money you borrowed on your card is anywere between 15 to 29.99% depending upon your current credit score. Let's say your a little short of funds this month and you can only make your minimum payment. Boy that fifty bcuks is going to cost you a fortune and add the ATM service charge to that what do you have. You have another way of the banks bilking us out of millions of dollars. It's like the Federal Government, when they get short of money they raise taxes. With all the money that Obama has spent since he has taken office it will either bee one hundred years before it is paid back or you guessed it her comes the tax increase. Of course congress will wait ttill we are on our recovery to do it. Let's face it they don't want to loose there cushie jobs with all the benefits they like great retirement and theydon't even have to pay into social security plus their health benifits. We should be so lucky. We always hope we make the correct decisions in life but letting these guys get away with all this crap is enough. Do I have an answer, you bet I do. If this was a corporation and they are evaluated by their performance on the job two thirdws of them would be fired. What we need are our smartest MBA's & PHd in finance and management to run this corporation and I don't mean guys like werre running the big three. they were just plain jerks and fleeced the companies dry & we are paying for it. There is some great talent out there like Warren Buffet & Malcom Forbes eve Ross Perot. These guys didn't get to where they are by being stupid. Let's push to get the correct people in the right places so we can see some real change in this country or we will be the biggest third world country on Earth. Thank you for your support.
Finally in Washington someone did something right to help the little guy on the street. This is a great concept. Yes the tax payer is footing the bill but it will only help the economy. The more people that are working producing goods and services adds to the tax roll which puts more money back into the tresuary. just think if they didn't have to bail out the financial industry and the automotive industry and they took that same money and put it into other programs similar to the "CASH FOR CLUNKERS" think what could of happened. Let's say they decided to put it in to electronic's. Since we have all gone to High Definition it renders your old TV obsolete. Let's do the same program with TV's. You bring in your old outdated TV and get a new HD flat screen. They would have a set of qualifications for the program and let's say everyone would get between three hundred dollars and five hundred dollars as per pre set qualifications. How many TV sets are there out there, one hundred million of more. Thats a lot of factory time,domestic & forgien, and people would be kept working adding to the tax rolls plus the sales tax etc.plus these new TV's are more energy efficient so we woiuld be using less energy and you could do the same program with house hold appliances. It now becomes a win win for both the consumer who would start spending money and pull us out of the recession we are in using the same amount of money or less then the government has already infused into the economy. The ripple effect to our economy would now spread world wide and help everyone else. Now the senate is debating weather to put another two billion into the CASH FOR CLUNKERS program to keep it going crying on how are we going to pay for it. The answer is simple, you shouldn't have put that bail out money for the corporations. You should of put it on main street where it belongs. It's our money. Remember the three most important words that our country was founded on, "WE THE PEOPLE". It's our money, not congresses. They are suppose to be our guardians of it and to use it for the benifit of the general public for life, liberty and the persuit of happiness. We as a united people can make a change it's called elections. Just remember the next time there is an election and you are dissatisfied with the current conditions you hold the opportunity to make a change.
- by rnewman516 October 4, 2009 11:43 AM PDT
- Recession or no, we go, go ,go. Were going right into the financial crapper. Why do I sound so negative. They say the recession is over. How can that be when we are loosing jobs every month. The banks say they are now showing a profit. A profit based on what. I'll tell you what. First off we no where they got there money from, us. The government gave them ARE MONEY to bail themselves out of bad loans due to their own greed from mortgages to credit cards. The rates and the fees the banks are charging for credit cards is absurd. Yes congeress passe the consumer credit card bill of rights which offically goes into effect after the first of the year which is giving the credit card companies plenty of time to squeeze more money out of us. Lets look at how they play the game. They no that most of the credit card holders carry balances. They watch your useage of your account. If they see you starting to shop at discount stores ( to save the household money) they figure you are in financial trouble or are headed there. So what do they do, they cut your available credit line down and raise you intrest rate up. They no consider you a risk. Can you believe that. Your trying to be financialy resposible by shopping for better prices at a discounter to save money and you have now become a risk in their eyes. So if you live in the L.A area and you go from shopping Rodeo Dr. to Flower St. you have a problem. Isn't his called profiling and I thought that was illegal. The President's plan might have had good intentions but was done incorrectly. You never let the fox in the hen house you make sure he can not get into the hen house. YOU DON'T GIVE THE BANKS OUR MONEY to bail themselves out and then give them the right to charge outregious interest rates back to the comsumer on the money which inadvertinley is ours to begin with. Have any of you ever read the back of credit card statement to see how the interest is compounded on your principal. First off I hope have your MBA in finance beacuse you will need it. The guy who ever figured out the formula fo compound interest should win a Noble Prize for something. You keep paying interest on top of interest ontop of the on going balance. Theres a word for this, it's called "LOAN SHARKING" and they usually put people in jail for this. I no what you are saying yada, yada, yada I've heard this all before and ther's nothing that can be done. I hate to say it but you might be right unless we all unit as a single front and take the attitude that we are not going to take it any more. Thats easier said then done. So how do you combat a system that is based on only one motivation which is money, power and greed. You do't give it to them. Remember when you give some one interest you are giving them your money. Everyone needs to flood the White House with emails, letters and phone calls and remind the President Obama that just like we voted you in, we can vote you out. The stimulus package should not of gone to the banks that caused this problem but to the people. We are the ones that are hurting. If we do not have the money to spend for goods and services then the whole economy comes to a crashing halt. If you took the amount of money that has already gone to the banks and other avenues for the bail out and put that into the peoples hands our economy would be humming by now. It's our money and no body wants to bail us out. When a people are hurting they become weak and make us more vulnerable to terrorists and terrorist activities. Remember it is WE THE PEOPLE not the banks or big government. We are now coming into the holiday season and I hope you all have a happy, healthy and safe holiday and new year.
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