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Newsvine 2.0 - Evergreen

Newsvine has just released its first major update today since the site's launch a little over a year ago. Join us for a first look at the new features.

Modularization

There are essentially four major updates that Newsvine has made (with several minor ones within), and the first one is steps towards home-page customization, or what they call 'Modularization'. Rather than going the Netscape route and offering completely customizable user pages (which Newsvine believes no one uses), the site has instead opted to make the same information available on the front-page as before, but allows the user to re-order it and add/remove modules according to personal preference (or perception of importance).

In addition to the modules that every page starts with, you can either choose to 'add a news module' from a pre-compiled list that Newsvine offers, or you can other sites' RSS feeds to create your own modules.

A large amount of work that has been done in this update falls under the larger umbrella of Modularization. For example, the ability to display the local headlines/weather on your front-page, or to see the news in pictures as opposed to reading articles, the ability to showcase various different active groups on the site, and showing the top seeds from a particular source (most popular content), are all implemented through the use of modules for each function.

Newsvine Live

The second new feature, Newsvine Live, is just like Digg Spy or Netscape Tracker Live. It's another way to see what activity is occurring on the site before the content is made popular and is displayed on the main page of the site. I like the feature's implementation more than others sites' though, simply because the feature is available directly from the main page, and because it is easily collapsible (by clicking the green arrow) it never gets overbearing.

Super Widescreen

Following Digg's footsteps and because it is an absolute necessity after all the new information available to Newsviners now, Newsvine has enabled the ability to switch to a four-column, up to 1300px (width) view for the lucky few with incredibly large monitors.

Not Just Eye Candy

While sites too often get caught up in eye-candy, Newsvine has actually managed to make a visualization tool that is fun to look at but also helps users easily see how thoroughly they are covering Newsvine. Considering the amount of content that goes through any of the big social news sites, this tool can prove to be very useful to the average user in making sure no important piece of news is missed.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to Newsvine and start taking advantage of all these features right away.