The Washington Post has been working on one of the most advanced news reader applications for Facebook. Here is the Social Reader for Facebook! The social reader is a fully interactive news reader application for Facebook. It brings all worlds best news stories into one place.
via – Crenk.net
Here is a bit of an old list that we had archived. This list outlines the best social news websites in specific niche’s.
General Social News Websites
1. Reddit: Popular social news website with a large user base. Covers a wide range of news. Includes several topical sections called subreddits, which focus on specific topics like programming, science, politics and business.
2. Digg: The largest and most popular social news website on the internet. Covers all topics including politics, entertainment, technology and general news. Includes a separate video and image section.
3. Propeller: A social news site that covers all topics from technology to politics and entertainment. Operates in a similar fashion to Digg.
4. Fark: A community news site which allows users to comment on news articles. User submitted links will be posted on the main page once they are approved by the administrators.
5. Slashdot: Primarily a tech news site, Slashdot also covers topics like books, games, politics and entertainment. Users can submit stories and they may be published after editors approve it. A popular site that can send a large amount of traffic.
6. Metafilter: A community weblog which allows users to share links and discuss interesting websites/topics. Moderation is done through editors as well as peer pressure in order to prevent gaming.
7. I am bored: Covers general topics with a strong focus on weird and offbeat news. You can submit a link which may be posted after the editors approve it.
8. Mixx: A general social news sites which has a category for all types of news. Topics covered include business, entertainment, sports, health and tech. Includes the ability to create groups to share news with other users.
9. Shoutwire: General news site that is well populated with a loyal group of users. Topics covered include technology, politics, entertainment, lifestyle and sports.
10. Newsvine: A website consisting of community-driven news stories and opinions. Users have their own blogs and can write articles, save links to external content and vote/comment on other user stories.
11. IndianPad: A general social news site that with a large indian userbase. Topics covered include entertainment, sports, videos and tamil news.
12. Linkfilter: Covers all sorts of news. All links are posted and moderated by users. Links can be ranked on several levels: clicks, votes, age, or a combination of all three called points.
13. NewsCloud: A general social site with a focus on news in all topics. Similar to Newsvine, each user has their own blogs and can publish content to be voted up by other users.
14. Hugg: Hugg is a social news site with a strong focus on environmental issues. Also includes other categories like politics, science, fashion and technology.
15. Plime: A general news site which features a wide variety of topics ranging from religion and sports to technology or business. Odd news performs best in this community.
16. C2NN: An active social news site with a variety of topics including environment issues, business, politics, animals and offbeat. Similar to Hugg in focus but much more populated and active.
17. Kirsty: A general news site with a focus on fashion, entertainment and design on top of other topics like technology and food. Has a strong female user base.
18. Nowpublic: A participatory news network which focuses on citizen journalism. Each user has their own individual profile blog/page and can upload videos, images and news stories.
19. Stirrdup: General social news site with four broad categories: politics, technology, news and entertainment.
20. Searchles: A hybrid social news sites which covers all topics. Includes a video section and offers personalized filtering features and the option of joining groups made up of other users with similar interests.
21. Linkinn: A social news site that specializes in pictures and video. Covers a broad range of topics, particular offbeat and weird content.
22. Earthfrisk: Covers topics like humor, politics, entertainment and business. Combines a social network and group features with digg-style news voting.
23. Truemors: A social rumor news site which focuses on the publication of “true rumors that are relevant, informative, and interesting.” Users can post links anonymously via text, voicemail, web or email. Editors moderate content.
24. StumbleUpon: A social network and browser toolbar which allows users to channel surf the internet. Technically not 100% a social news site, although users can submit webpages to be rated by other users. Here is a guide to StumbleUpon.
25. Linkswarm: Covers a wide range of topics from celebrity gossip to funny media, science and politics. Focuses on pop culture and bizarre news as well.
Here are social websites which focus on a specific niche. For best results, only submit to them when your site falls within the same niche or covers the same topics. Or else you’re likely to be marked as spam.
26. Sphinn: Sphinn is a social site for search and interactive marketers. It’s designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others.
27. Dzone: DZone is a free link-sharing community for developers. Other topics commonly featured include web design and programming.
28. Tweako: A user-powered site and social network with a focus on guides and tutorials in all categories like computing, technology, and the Internet.
29. Autospies: A social site that focuses on automotive news, car reviews, auto show photos and videos.
30. Design Float: A social news site for design-related content. Topics covered include business, freelancing, advertising, digital art and branding.
31. Ball Hype: A site that aggregates content from thousands of sports blogs. Users can submit stories and votes will determine if they make it to home page.
32. YCombinator Hacker News: A news site that focuses on technology, startups, business and entrepreneurship.
33. SWiK: A community driven resource for people who use open source software.
34. Buzzflash: A user driven progressive political news website that allows you to submit political stories.
35. DNHour: DNHour.com is a user-powered news portal built specially for the domain name industry. Most members are generally from the domain name industry, which includes domain name owners, companies or professionals.
36. PlugIM: PlugIM is a user driven internet marketing community. Topics covered include search engine optimization, products, business and marketing.
37.Showhype: Operates in a similar way to Ballhype. Stories come from two sources — users and aggregated content. Users can also submit a link to a story that they’ve found or write their own article on ShowHype.
38. Small Business Brief: A niche social site which focuses on small business news. Topics covered include marketing and sales, website development, management and entrepreneurship.
39. Hypediss: Social news site with a focus on design, fashion, urban culture and art.
40. Chictini: Product-oriented social site which a focus on new trends and styles. It’s possible to submit news stories although most of the submissions feature products from online retailers.
41. DotNetKicks: DotNetKicks.com is a community based news site that focuses on topics like NET development techniques, technologies and tools including ASP.NET, C#, VB.NET, C++ and Visual Studio.
42. Lipstick: Reddit-style social news site for celebrity gossip.
43. Hubspot: Social news site for marketers, entrepreneurs and business professionals.
44. Winelifetoday: A niche social site for wine lovers. Topics covered included news and opinion articles to do with wine.
45. iliketotallyloveit.com: Allows users to publish and share products with the broader public which they find cool, innovative, exceptionally beautiful, or just weird. Included with every item is a link to an online shop where it can be purchased.
46. Wordsy: A niche social news site for people who love reading and books. Topics covered include small presses, fiction writing, authors, book awards and poetry. (Note: Wordsy has suspended its site since Dec 2008)
47. Value Investing News: A niche social news site that covers stocks and investment news. A small but active community.
48. Teenwag: Focus on celebrity gossip. A hybrid social network with digg-style voting. Users can submit links to be voted up by other users.
49. Muti: Muti is a social bookmarking site inspired by reddit and Digg but dedicated to content of interest to Africans or those interested in Africa.
50. Tip’d: A social media site for finance, investing, and business topics. Tip’d users vote on stories they like by clicking the ‘Tip it’ button that appears next to each story, and then can comment by pressing the ‘Discuss’ link below the story.
This list is a work in progress and there are a few sites that have been either launched or hit the deadpool. We will be updating this very soon!
Over the past few months Twitter has made several changes such as the introduction of Lists which means that we see tweets from people we don’t directly follow. This annoyed me for quite some time as I was never really bothered to see who the person was, but still had them congesting my Twitter page. Now, Twitter aims to solve that problem by introducing ‘Hovercards’.
This means, that when you hover your cursor over someone username or avatar, information will be displayed about them as well as other options such as Reply, DM or Retweet. All of which don’t load another page, it’s done there and then.
“On any timeline, as its namesake suggests, Hovercards are cards which appear when you hover over a username or avatar. The cards display additional information about the person and allow you to interact with them while staying within the context of your page.” say Twitter on their blog. ”
“One way we’ve found these cards to be useful is to find out more about retweeted people and follow them right there. You can also see more information with an expanded view of the card. Sending direct messages to people you follow will also be possible with Hovercards so you can interact with tweeters without having to move off the page.”
This feature is currently in the process of being rolled out so we won’t all have it right away. However, within the coming days and weeks it will be the standard for all Twitter users.
Back when the internet was gaining huge amounts of users at the turn of the millennium, everything was about the World Wide aspect. But now, it’s worn a little thin. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still useful and connects people and companies all over the planet. But local search is where there are big bucks to be made. Think about it, aren’t you more likely to click on an advertisement when it’s a 20% discount for the Chinese restaurant around the corner, instead of an offer for the Chinese HiPhone?
All the major online services have caught on with Twitter being the latest having launched Local Trends. Now, Buzz.com looks to catch in on the local .com boom. At the minute it’s still in Beta testing. But more and more tech blogs are talking about it.
While Buzz.com will rely heavily on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, At&T have stressed that they have not built a social networking site, although you will be able to share many things with friends and family. By indexing what people are talking about as well as working with companies and advertisers, buzz.com will provide people will accurate search results for things like clubs, restaurants, shops, deals and much more. It’s like social media for local businesses.
I can’t wait until Buzz comes out of private Beta. It sounds like a great service to get the skinny on what’s going on in your locale. If you want to try your luck at getting a private invitation, click here.
Want to know the best places to go or businesses to call? Let buzz.com help you tap your social net for business recommendations from the people you trust most – your friends and family. – Buzz.com
Apple devices come with a native recording device, and even social networkslike Utterli have functioned as a way to capture audio and share it, but none have been as easy as and intuitive as Audio Boo for the iPhone and the iTouch is. The application takes voice recording to a whole new level with a press of a button. Before you know it, you just might start audio recording a whole lot more than you think.
Audio Boo is both a desktop and mobile app. The desktop app allows you to configure your account, asking you where you’d like your “Boo’s” to post. You can choose from a variety of social networks but it’s also stored in the audio stream for others to interact with and comment on.
For those of us writers who find ourselves seeking new content to relate to what we write, it was a huge breath of fresh air when Zemanta was released. Zemanta not only offered us links, but it offered up keywords we might want to highlight, along with images the engine though we should include in our post. Zemanta was unlike anything we’d ever seen in terms of its wide use and availability across browsers and blogging sites.
For those of us that have a knack for words, Scrabble has long been a favorite. Many of us enjoy the challenge of sparring one another with our wits and knowledge. In today’s mobile world there was little chance of us playing Scrabble until now.
Recently I’ve found the pleasure of a mobile Scrabble app called Words with Friends. This app replicates everything I remembered from playing Scrabble with my family that I instantly became hooked. Words with Friends has an amazing number of additions that truly define this powerhouse of entertainment.
For starters you are able to connect two of the most popular social profiles, Facebook and Twitter. This will not only announce your scores but also invite your friends to join you in a game. Furthermore the app has the built in ability to run more than one game at a time. When I started playing, it was not unusual for me to be playing four to five games at once. Definitely something you could not do with a Scrabble board.
There’s a lot of apps out there, both mobile and desktop, that use the Twitter API to make it more “functional” for power users. What’s a power user? Well if you’ve got more than one account on Twitter, have over 1000 friends, and like to have your posts link to other social networks where you have a community, then you are probably a power user.
In the race to be the most dominant desktop application for Twitter, TweetDeck is definitely one of the leading contenders. Having been around for about a year, TweetDeck has taken the Twitter experience to a whole new level. It’s integrating the use of multiple columns, and attaching itself to URL shorteners, photo posting apps like Twitpic, and the ability link to other network like Facebook, all under one app. But just recently TweetDeck has evolved again, and this time, making it even more useful for power users to extend their reach further into the social web.
For many of us, December is a special month, and whether you celebrate Christmas, Kwanza, Hanukkah, or any variation of holiday celebration, it’s a time for us to connect. More often than not we look to build stronger relationships with co-workers, family, or neighbors, and nothing says that better than a personal message from the heart.
Online communities may use social media tools to mass message large numbers of people, but social media is not the only thing for us to consider. What about digital holiday cards? Well Crenk did a little work and found three sites you should consider for your cards and perhaps there’s something for you in one of these three.
Sure there’s a lot out there, perhaps you’ve got some of your own favorites. Drop them in the comments section and let us know what you like best about them.
For those of us in the business of online marketing, brand building, or building web strategies for companies, Jeremiah Owyang is a familiar name. His innovative thought leadership has defined the world of online web strategies and how companies interact with audiences.
His blogs have been a ranked as one of the top sites in Technorati, and his career board has increased the number of visitors to his website simply because of his strong belief in connecting people. Jeremiah “strives to define and deliver user and community needs, business goals, and web technology to craft and deliver long term successful web programs for companies.”
Most recently the web strategy guru has released a mobile app that now allows fans and followers to keep up with what’s happening on the blog and career board via their iPhone or iTouch. MotherApp‘s creative innovation has brought to life a clean and intuitive application to life. Via the interface you get access to his thoughts via the blog, his Twitter stream, and the ability to favorite tweets or blogs posts you find interesting.
If you’re into online marketing or strategizing web initiatives, check this app out. I’ve found that the information on here is useful and applicable immediately for just about any brand you develop for.
