Ah, yes. Another new beta. I have to admit: I’m getting to be a Beta addict. I love it when I get an email telling me that I’m allowed to peek inside something that is not yet available to the public. Whether it was Squidoo, Yahoo’s Publisher Network, or now, Newsvine, I immediately jump in and tinker around.

I remember when I got my first invite to Gmail. The reason for the invite so early? I had started a blog at Blogger when it first opened. You can see the spiral, can’t you?

I don’t really like to use the term Web 2.0. But these new services like Newsvine, Basecamp, and Squidoo are all part of a “do one thing and do it well” wave of internet strategy. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone a la Yahoo and Google, the Newsvines of the world see something lacking online, and just try to fix that one thing.

Though again, this is my first time looking at Newsvine from the inside, it seems like newsvine is trying to bring together disparate news stories into one nice, easy-to-use package. Rather than simply aggregating news, they’re actually offering a publishing and linking platform, allowing authors to point to news stories they’re reading with one click. This is the main feature that attracted me. Rather than having to grab a link, put it into WordPress, and hit submit, I now just have a button on my browser. When I see a story I like, I click the button, and it’s sent to my Newsvine account, where I can then comment on the story. I understand that WordPress has similar capabilities, but WordPress isn’t a news source. So Newsvine, to me, seems like it’s both a content publisher/aggregator as well as a destination.

Unfortunately, however, you can’t see anything I’ve posted at Newsvine…….yet, since they’re still in private beta. Like Gmail, Newsvine gives their authors invitations. Each author can invite 20 friends to join in while still in beta. So, if anyone is interested, send me an email and I’ll get back to you.

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