Knewsroom, a new service from Kluster that is described as “a community- directed news publication,” has brought its people-powered invention to launch. In mid April, Adam reported of Kluster’s plans for a Knewsroom debut, and now, the site has gone live.
The concept of Knewsroom is pretty simple. Mate the community-driven news promotion idea popularized by services like Digg, Newsvine, Reddit and so forth, and present daily results of top picks in the classic newspaper model, sans any tangible stuff to sort out. (And no child soldier screaming, “Extra, extra, read all about it.” Yeah, no, no one’s done that for a while....)
The reason for drawing basic parallels with Digg and Newsvine and others is that it is in fact a social effort to get a daily digital paper out to Web readers. Yet, as with Newsvine, it is also one that asks of contributors to provide either partially- or fully-original content. And the motive users may have to partake in the experiment? They get paid. Either by having a link submission (20% of all ad dollars is divvied to respective contributors) or fresh-crafted story published (standard $150 per piece).
Starting off, Knewsroom presents six sections to readers: politics, business, technology, design, sports, and entertainment. If contributions manage to rank among the top 5 stories and top 5 topics of each section, the money starts getting made. It’s all about reader interest at that point. From proposal to submission to popular decision to publication, Knewsroom essentially takes the hierarchy out of the editorial circle. It’s an exercise in supply and demand, if you will, with the user base running the ship. Which makes it quite an interesting thing to watch take shape, for sure.