We made changes to the site this week to bring you more mobility, flexibility, and enhancements that optimize your reports for search engines and provide a richer experience for your readers. We truly appreciate the great feedback we receive from our user community and the Allvoices team responds by delivering new features that help make your experiences on Allvoices most productive and enjoyable and enable you to expand your visibility and global reach.

Here are just a few highlights of the exciting new improvements we’ve just made:

• Mobile: We have optimized the way you can access Allvoices from your mobile devices, simplifying your ability to navigate by top stories and subject categories and making your news easy to read while you’re on the go.
• Suggested Tags: Now when you Report Your News, the Allvoices system will “automagically” suggest relevant keyword tags that you can select to better increase the chances of your reports coming up in search results on the AV site and on Google and other search engines.
• Want to add a live Twitter stream to your report?  No problem!  You can now add a live stream of related tweets by using the “Add Live Twitter Stream” button on your report page.  Simply add terms related to your report and we will show you and your readers the latest Tweets containing that term in real-time.
• Save Reports as Drafts: Our users asked for this feature and its here! Now when you Report Your News you can choose to save your report as a draft by using the “Save as Draft” button. Return to the Drafts tab in your user profile page at any time to complete and post the reports you previously saved as drafts.

You are always welcomed to contact us at support@allvoices.com with your great suggestions and you can look forward to seeing more and more site improvements ahead!

Thanks,

Sanjay Sood
CTO, Allvoices

The development team at Allvoices has been very busy making lots of changes to the site that many of you have already noticed.  We are constantly taking your awesome feedback and rolling the best ideas back into the main site. Our goal is be the people’s news network, so please keep sending us your suggestions on how we can improve the Allvoices experience.

We’ve pushed lots of new features to the site, but here are highlights of some of the exciting new improvements:

• A refresh of our main landing page that makes finding the more relevant news even easier. The layout is simplified and we are highlighting more of your great content for the world to see!
• Allvoices Widgets: Now you can take your news with you! We’ve developed a widget platform that makes it easy for you to add your AV content to any site! Check out the “widget” section under “edit profile” to get started
• New categories: You can now contribute original content in a “Causes” and “Humanitarian” category!
• You can now easily print reports on Allvoices by using the print icon at the bottom of the report page
• More control over your report page:  Don’t want to show related news stories? No problem! You can now easily toggle which types of content are shown on your report page

These are just a few of the changes in recent weeks. Stay tuned for more updates!

Thanks,

Sanjay Sood
CTO, Allvoices

Allvoices citizen reporters have the ability to make money from posting breakaway, original reports that will be a Hit and generate a lot of buzz and traffic. The new Hit Incentive only applies to an individual post or report and is only valid for a period of 15 days from the original posting date.

We are a diverse global community here at Allvoices, with contributors from 167 countries, millions and millions of viewers, and thousands of landing pages—one for every country and every city in this world with a population of 500 or more.

Each of you is a unique individual, one of nearly seven billion distinct “voices” on our planet. Allvoices has built a worldwide open-media platform that bridges geographies and cultures, politics and beliefs, countries and borders, and welcomes you to report your news, share your knowledge and style and individual perspectives, and engage with other Allvoices users by commenting on their reports, rating them up or down, becoming fans, and inviting friends to join in the conversation.

Allvoices is an unedited and unbiased and unfiltered site that is free to join and free to use and enjoy. We have no editors on staff and only a small team to support this vibrant burgeoning global community, to enforce Allvoices’ Terms of Use, and help foster a climate of mutual respect and collegiality.

Recently, Allvoices has noticed user comments and articles where the passion and enthusiasm of a few users has turned to personal attacks and inflammatory remarks against other individuals or groups. And there are reports that the Allvoices’ private messaging system has been used inappropriately. While differences of opinion are expected and lively discourse is healthy, abusive or disruptive behavior is unacceptable and may violate Allvoices’ Terms of Use and “common sense” Community Conduct guidelines.

Community Conduct

Allvoices is a global community site and we want to encourage discussion between people from around the globe, so we have established community conduct rules that all Allvoices users agree to when they register for an account on Allvoices:

• Do not use the Allvoices website to defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or otherwise violate the legal rights of others
• Do not post obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit or otherwise illegal content
• Do not post any inappropriate, profane, infringing, obscene, indecent unlawful material
• Do not use hate speech which contains slurs or the malicious use of stereotypes intended to attack of demean a particular gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or nationality
• Respect copyright regulations
• Do not conduct or promote any illegal activities
• Do not upload content, report, distribute or print anything that may be harmful to minors
• Do not use the personal messaging system to send unsolicited email advertisements or spam

Allvoices users should familiarize themselves with Allvoices’ Terms of Use at the following link in Allvoices Help section: http://www.allvoices.com/terms.

Report Abuse

If you are certain that an Allvoices user has violated Allvoices’ Terms of Use, you can flag the comment or report as abuse or flag a private message as spam (http://www.allvoices.com/help/abuse). However, be discriminating and use common sense when flagging abuse, as many abuse complaints turn out to be just differences of opinion, do not violate Allvoices’ Terms of Use, and no action can be taken.

Collegiality

Allvoices is a talented community and there will always be differences of opinion, but disruptive or abusive behavior cannot be tolerated. Allvoices encourages everyone to treat each other with respect, direct talents and energies in positive ways, approach disagreements with compassion and self-control, and understand and follow Allvoices’ Terms of Use and Community Conduct guidelines.

Answer: Never, if you work for The Washington Post.

The Washington Post unveiled guidelines today restricting its newsroom staff from sharing via social networks their opinions on just. about. anything.  The “Newsroom Guidelines for Use of Facebook, Twitter and Other Online Social Networks” are a virtual radio silence order for anyone in the Post’s newsroom who also participate on the web’s social properties.

Just the facts, please...as you see, hear or speak them

paidContent.org has the full text of the guidelines (with a hat tip to TechCrunch).  Among some activities verboten by the Post if you write for the paper:

Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything—including photographs or video—that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility. This same caution should be used when joining, following or friending any person or organization online.  Post journalists should not be involved in any social networks related to advocacy or a special interest regarding topics they cover, unless specifically permitted by a supervising editor for reporting and so long as other standards of transparency are maintained while doing any such reporting.

In fact, All Washington Post journalists relinquish some of the personal privileges of private citizens (direct from the Post’s text).  So, Post journalists never really get to just be citizens.  They can’t have an opinion, or if they do, they can’t share it with anyone.

It’s easy to understand why the paper is going to such lengths to protect the integrity of its content.  It’s ombudsman, in a blog post to the paper’s readership, is refreshingly frank in his explanation that the paper has been fighting a perception problem: “Many readers already view The Post with suspicion and believe that the personal views of its reporters and editors influence the coverage.”

Well of course they do.  The Post’s reporters and editors (in fact, every newspaper’s reporters and editors) are paid to decide for their readers what is and isn’t news; what gets covered, and what doesn’t get ink.  How are those decisions made?  Personal opinion.  The opinions of reporters and editors are used to determine what is and isn’t newsworthy, and opinions are always influenced by personal filters, whether they’re cultural, political or environmental.  So there is always some element of bias at work in determining a newspaper’s content.  Yes, “professional” editors and reporters are good at shutting out their slant, but they can’t completely neutralize themselves.

Another contradiction in the Post’s guidelines: how they can expect their news staff to stop having authentic, human conversations with other connections on the web especially if, on the flip side of this no opinion order, the Post recognizes the importance of social properties for news gathering.  It’s difficult to see how the two can co-exist with one another.  The Post can’t expect its people to make connections for the purpose of gathering information, without giving up a little of themselves.  That’s just not how the web works.

Allvoices offers an unfiltered platform which embraces multiple points of view.  In fact, the more “angles” exposed around a particular story, the more information that story’s readers have with which to formulate their own opinion about the content.  There’s no one editorial source making decisions for readers.

It’s a new model for news which understands people are social beings.  No matter how good an editor is at determining what is and isn’t news, something influences those decisions.  Reporters from any outlet looking for a place to write without fear of being exposed should take a look at Allvoices’ incentive program, which allows anyone to register and write under their own or a screen name, with full privacy protection.

The team here pushed an update to the main site earlier today.

You may notice a design change to the main report page that shows related news stories, images, blogs, and videos.  One of the features of the Allvoices’ News System is the ability to automatically aggregate related content to provide a 360-degree view of the report.

We want you, the contributor, to have as much context surrounding your report as possible.  You can control what content is shown on your report by toggling the hide/show buttons on each content box.  If you see content that’s unrelated, you can delete individual items or the entire section. It’s that easy!

Lots of our contributors have asked us how they can spread the word about Allvoices to their friends and family.  Until today, the only way to invite your friends (and get points for doing so) was through your e-mail address book—which was a bummer for users who did not have an account with a supported e-mail provider.  To make it easier, we have provided you your own personal invitation link which can be found under “Edit Profile”  ->  “Invite Friends”.  When your friends register with that link, you will get points that you can redeem for cash!

Lots of other updates went live today that will help make your Allvoices experience more enjoyable and much faster.

As always, let us know how we are doing by dropping us a line at support@allvoices.com.

Thanks,

Sanjay Sood
CTO
Allvoices, Inc.

There’s no denying the power of Twitter’s immediacy and ability to capture snapshots of news breaking from anywhere, anytime.  It can be powerful stuff. But *usually* those snapshots stand alone and unframed by any useful context, relevancy or even the ability (beyond what’s said in 140 characters) to tell you where the news is from.

just took the wraps off our new system for bringing context and credibility to Twitter, while using Twitter to help allvoices bring more, additional relevant information to its citizen reports, as well as data for allvoices’ “Breaking” and “Popular” tabs.

We’re the only citizen journalism site able to take virtually any data source and integrate it with relevant citizen contributions to the site; Twitter is just an example (albeit an important example) of this ability.

BNET’s David Weir has a nice analysis of our news here

editorsweblog.org also covers us

and Journalism.co.uk writes us up here.

News release below….check out the Twitter feeds on the report pages and please let us know what you think!

ALLVOICES ADDS CONTEXT, CREDIBILITY TO NEWS-RELATED TWITTER DATA

Global Citizen Media Hub Integrates Tweets Related to Breaking and Popular Stories; Creates Enhanced Journalists “LiveStream” for News Addicts

SAN FRANCISCO — September 14, 2009 — Allvoices, Inc. (www.allvoices.com), the first open media site where anyone can report from anywhere, today became the only citizen media outlet to integrate live, event- and location-specific Twitter data into its citizen reports.  Live Twitter data assists Allvoices’ comprehensive verification process with vetting stories for authenticity by providing additional context and ranking reports in Allvoices’ “Breaking” and “Popular” categories.  Users now enjoy an enhanced, real-time view of everything happening in the locations, around the events and to the people reported on the site.

Allvoices’ uses a combination of community input and algorithms to vet contributed reports.  As soon as one is submitted, the system “pivots” around the report and immediately pulls related content from mainstream news and user generated sources like videos, blogs and pictures to create a full, 360 degree view of the news. Integrating live tweets makes Allvoices’ ranking system even more real-time, adding context and a comprehensive understanding of circumstances surrounding the event.

Allvoices has leveraged Twitter data in several distinct areas of the site:

· Allvoices displays the latest tweets for locations covering every city, country and regional landing pages created from citizen and mainstream reports  about a location

· For citizen  reports, Allvoices displays tweets related to the report to build a stronger case for the report’s authenticity and credibility, while adding more context to the report itself

· For mainstream news, Allvoices aggregates real-time tweets that discuss the same news to show users what conversations are occurring around those reports.

· Tweets now provide input for Allvoices’ ranking algorithms.  The algorithms determine what shows up at the top of the “Breaking” and “Popular” tabs for each location, city, country and regional landing page. Live tweets add another dimension to Allvoices ability to vet and rank reports, which includes community validation and numerous machine-based heuristics.

· In addition to integrating Twitter’s data into contributed reports, Allvoices has created a separate, unique page which aggregates hundreds reporters’ tweets, along with any stories and events they may relate to on Allvoices.  News “addicts” can find this site at www.allvoices.com\tweets.

A recent study conducted by research firm Pear Analytics found that forty percent of tweets are categorized as “Pointless Babble” (Pear’s term), which is indicative of the difficulty people have finding tweets with real news content.   However recent events, like those just after Iran’s recent election, have shown Twitter to be indispensable for reporting news as it breaks, but lacks situational context, the ability to pinpoint location and in some cases, credibility. Allvoices solves this by vetting Twitter’s information and wrapping it into a news report’s “big picture.”

“We feel Allvoices has broken ground here by pulling the news gems from Twitter’s massive live stream and integrating that specific, relevant content into the reports contributed to our citizen media hub,”  said Dr. Sanjay Sood, chief technical officer, Allvoices.com.  Twitter alone as a source for news doesn’t have the ability to tell a full story.  Allvoices delivers the full story for a report plus a deeper understanding of the conversations going on around that event.  What’s great about the system we’ve built is that it can take virtually any data source and apply it to user-generated and mainstream news reports“

Allvoices is the first citizen media outlet using technology to validate user generated content, the lack of which has been the biggest barrier to the mainstream adoption of citizen media.  Allvoices’ ability to vet user-generated content against mainstream sources, as well as other citizen-generated reports instantly provides validity and a measure of credibility to citizen reports, and gives users a level of comfort when consuming this information.

Allvoices sent an e-mail this evening to all registered Allvoices users, advising of a routine update to Allvoices’ Terms of Use.

Unfortunately, multiple emails were inadvertently sent to everyone and Allvoices is truly sorry for all the e-mails. We identified and corrected the problem and are sorry for the inconvenience.
Sincerest apologies,

The Allvoices Team

The team here at Allvoices pushed a major update to our servers earlier this week.  We’ve introduced more capacity for our ever-increasing global audience as well as some cool new features and incentives aimed at growing our core community.  Among the recent changes are:

• The Allvoices Points Program that lets you earn cash and rewards for being part of the Allvoices community.  Take a look at http://www.allvoices.com/help/points for more information.

• Do you think you are an expert?  If so, apply to be a Category Expert!  If approved, you will receive full Report Credibility for all your reports within a certain subject area.  Check out http://www.allvoices.com/help/report_credibilty for details and instructions on how to apply.

• Related Tweets:  When you create a report on Allvoices, we will automatically find Tweets that are related to your content and put them right on your report page!

• We’ve added more servers to make sure your Allvoices experience is as smooth as possible.  Please forgive some of the recent, short outages.   We are working as hard as we can to keep up with the demand!

As always, let us know what you think about these changes or anything else that’s on your mind.

Thanks,

Sanjay Sood
CTO
Allvoices, Inc.

Although I haven’t posted development updates recently, the Allvoices’ team has been hard at work improving performance and adding features that our amazing community has been asking for.  Here are just a few of the new features rolled out over the past few weeks:

• New Categories:  We’ve added a few more categories (Green, Health, and Travel), based on your requests
• Tweet Widget:  You’ll notice that many of our pages have a real-time stream of Tweets related to the theme of the page!
• Related Tags:  You will now see related tags to help you find more interesting new content
• Re-hauled Notification:  You now have more control over what type of notification emails Allvoices sends to you.  Check out your notification settings under “Edit profile”.
• Better Spam Detection:  We have implemented a new spam filter to prevent spam comments from being posted on the site
• Report Credibility:  We’ve improved the algorithm and added better messaging. Visit http://www.allvoices.com/help/report_credibilty for more information!
• Better Performance:  The entire team has been working tirelessly to bring you the best and fastest citizen reporting experience on the Web.
• Stay Logged in:  Now you can stay logged into Allvoices.  Simply check “Keep me logged in” and you are all set!

We are working on another major release that will go out before the month’s end.  It will have lots of cool new features aimed at fostering our growing global community.

As always, feel free to drop us an e-mail (support@allvoices.com) and let us know what you think!

Thank you,

Sanjay Sood
CTO
Allvoices, Inc.