NewsCred Blog

One of my personal highlights from StartupSchool08 was the talk by Gmail creator Paul Buchheit. He talks about setting themselves a target of finding 100 happy users for Gmail before deciding to launch the product. A very simple idea, but one that resonated strongly with me.

We have a few hundred-strong Alpha community who are using NewsCred daily, and we get a lot of awesome feedback. Everything from “please move the <more articles> button to the bottom of the page” (which we did!) to completely wacky new feature requests (we love wacky ideas!). But we now have a new challenge:

We want to find 100 happy users, who are completely satisfied with their NewsCred experience.

At first, this seems pretty simple. But as Paul says in his talk, happiness is a pretty high bar. Our goal is to delight all our users, every day. And in order to do that, we’ll start one by one, and keep going until we have at least 100 users who tell us that they’re happy. We’ll push out features, fix bugs, change the interface, run up and down the street naked and do whatever it takes to make you guys happy. OK, maybe not that last one.

We’ll be reaching out to all of you soon. Until then, keep the feedback coming and tell us what really makes you happy: feedback[at]newscred.com.

On a completely unrelated note, check out our CrunchBase profile!

I recently came across this article by Ofwono Opondo, the deputy spokesman for the Ugandan National Resistance Movement. He wrote this piece for New Vision in Kampala. It’s a stunning assesment of the state of the media, and while he is directly addressing the situation in Uganda, it can be taken in a wider context. I should be absolutely clear that Mr. Opondo is a very controversial man - he is a spokesman for the Ugandan ‘government’, where other political parties are banned. Uganda has serious human rights issues and more importantly, the government does not always allow full freedom of the press. At NewsCred, we do NOT in any way condone the actions of the government. I wish merely to highlight and comment on some of the points in his article, and urge our readers to keep in mind the context and inherent biases of the author, given his role in the government.

Mr. Opondo takes issue with the fact that Ugandan media have spent so much energy criticizing the State and playing a ‘tit-for-tat’ game, whereas he believes the media should first get their own house in order. He states very clearly: “commercial profits, business and corporate interests, media idiocy and unfairness, rather than the ‘dictatorial’ state are greater threats to a free and independent media in Uganda today.”

Mr. Opondu is scathing. In fact, he is harsh and unforgiving. “The media and journalists are ideologically and politically a business, commercially partisan and unprofessional. We have seen media practitioners cross the partisan and hostile political floor to become ‘party spokesmen’ once they leave the newsroom. ”

One of statements that stood out comes near the end of the article. “The media have a bias for reporting on conflict, failures, negative and controversial news, and give little coverage on positives, which is not good for a developing society like Uganda.” It’s a powerful allegation and one that I’ve heard oft repeated. Bad news sells. Good news does not.

Some of the points made by Mr. Opondu are valid but the tone is overwhelmingly defensive. He does attempt to be fair by encouraging the government to be equally accountable. ” We should be concerned and stand firm against state brutality when dealing with its perceived adversaries, the media inclusive.” I only hope that these are not merely words, but will be followed through in action.

Would be interested in hearing our reader’s thoughts? Is this merely emotional rhetoric or is Mr. Opondo presenting a balanced view?

This evening, someone told me that they received an invitation to “a site called NewsCred” and was using it daily to read the news. I was driving, he was sitting next to me. How insane is that? He had no idea that I was the cofounder of the site and was recommending my own company to me! When your friend tells you that he loves your product and uses it every day, not knowing that you have anything to do with it, you know you are getting some awesome feedback.

A big thank you to the faithful NewsCred Alpha community. You may have noticed new features quietly being pushed out. Once Iraj takes a break (I’ve yet to witness this except for when FC Barcelona plays), he’ll come online and give you some of the scoop about the latest, most notable features.

If you haven’t already, please sign up for an alpha invitation on the NewsCred home page: http://www.newscred.com!

Now here’s a study right up our alley. Designed by the Edelman Trust Borometer, I’ve come across the following chart quite frequently in the past month. At first, I glanced over it and thought “Move along. Nothing new to see here.” But then I kept seeing it repeated, over and over again. The subject is ‘trust’ and the poll charts the reaction to the question “If you heard information about a company from each of these sources, how credible would it be?” If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one is priceless. Look at the results at the far right, for the section marked ‘blogger.’ Yes, those bars are shockingly small. The summary? No one trusts bloggers.

What I find perplexing about the study is the way the categories were chosen. The most trusted source was “A Person Like Yourself.” Why is that mutually exclusive from “blogger”? I know many people like my self who are also bloggers. Similarly, financial or industry analysts also blog, as do CEOs. The chart paints a sensationalist picture, when really the question is just phrased poorly. If you read a blog, its usually because you trust the author, who may be some like yourself, or a CEO, or an analyst, or even a doctor. The point is, a blog is just a platform. What it really comes down to is the author’s credibility, rather than the platform he or she choses to distribute information on.

While I think the study is important insofar as it highlights the significance of trust, it’s misleading in the way it aggregates and displays the information. The key takeaway is that we trust people who are similar to us. But alas, that is human nature and the follow up question becomes, does that lead to inherent bias? Given our instrinsic habit of trusting our peer group, do we automatically distrust those that are from dissimilar backgrounds? Now that would be an interesting study. Look out for a follow up post on that topic.

There’s been a flurry of posts out in the blogosphere about the notion of ‘early adopters’ and the lack of mainstream adoption of Web 2.0 services in general. I think its pretty clear that there is an ever-growing divide between the tools techies and early adopters use versus those adopted by the mainstream web audience. First of all, I’m a techie but wouldn’t count myself as an early-adopter per se. I just started using twitter a few weeks ago, hardly dabble in Friendfeed, and am usually a bit behind the wave when it comes to adoption of the latest/greatest new technology. Despite this, I am increasingly reminded of the fact that I am hardly mainstream. The mainstream don’t want, don’t care and don’t ‘get’ most of the latest Web 2.0 technologies.

What’s worrying for me is that the gap between techies/early adopters verus the mainstream web audience seems to be growing at an alarming rate. Most of my friends and family are still using Ebay, Amazon, Gmail, and now Facebook. A small minority may have discovered Flikr. None of them have heard of Twitter or Friendfeed. So what does that say? I think we’ve missed an entire generation of web services that can bridge this gap. Us techies swoon over the latest Web 2.0 technologies while 99% of the population is still getting comfortable with the 1.0 generation tools. There is simply no demand for those services outside of the tiny minority of early adopers, at least not yet.

I’m convinced think there is a market opening for web sevices that can bridge that gap (Web 1.5?). The mainstream don’t even use or understand RSS, but us techies have moved on to Twitter and FriendFeed. Aggregation is an awesome concept, and adds a tremendous amount of value and efficiency. RSS is a simple concept, but still completely new to my friends and family. Why not take a step back and build tools to bring RSS and syndication to the masses first? Otherwise the chasm will just keep growing, and we’ll be more and more out of touch with what our friends and family really need.

At NewsCred, we want to build a kick-ass web service for the masses. We want to bring the mainstream web audience up the learning curve and help close that divide. And for all the Twitters that are being built, we’re also hoping to see more web services that will help excite and delight the other 99%.

As the word about NewsCred starts to spread, I’m fielding a lot of interesting questions. I recently began thinking about trust and reputation. Its clear that one of our objectives is to help the media industry (both journalists and news organizations) regain some of the lost trust that has plagued the industry recently. By introducing transparency and accountability, we hope that both providers and consumers of news will benefit. In the media industry, more than in any other field, reputation is a critical driver for success. If a news organization’s reputation is one of trustworthiness, we can rest assured that readers will turn to them time and time again.

The opposite is also true. If a journalist’s reputation is shattered, reverting that reputation back to the status quo is nearly impossible.  There is an indelible bond of trust between writer and reader, one that must be preserved at all costs. The reader must have a firm belief in the competence of a journalist or news source to act dependably and reliably.

So how does one measure trust or reputation? At NewsCred, we are using explicit and implicit inputs to power our credibility algorithms. Explicit factors like direct user voting, coupled with implicit factors like past ratings of author and source help us paint a picture of perceived reputation. And that is the crux of this post. It does not matter so much as to how well the community can determine the credibility of a journalist or source (although it is important). What really matters is how the community perceives the credibility of that entity. Trust and reputation are merely indices of perception, and NewsCred can be seen as a tool that aggregates data to create that index.

If a million strong community perceives a news organization to be less than credible, that is all that matters.  That reputation, once shattered, is hard to regain.

So now that we have an active community of NewsCredders, the logical next step is to nurture and grow that community by printing kick ass t-shirts. Obviously. In order to do that, we need help. If you have any artistic skills, even if they were fine-tuned in kindergarten, send us a design you think we could put on our t-shirts. We have no requirements - as long as its awesome, we’ll take it. If you suck at art, but have a great idea, feel free to send that through as well.

We’ll chose the best design (or funniest), and print off some t-shirts, hats, bumper stickers, mugs and other assorted paraphernalia to give away to our fantastic NewsCredders and blog readers. In fact, anyone who sends out their allocation of 5 invites will get one automatically. How’s that for a deal?

So please, please, please help us design some kick ass t-shirts. If you know someone who may be able to help, point us in the right direction. There will be free t-shirts for everyone involved. Feels like 2001 again doesn’t it?

P.S. Should it be “NewsCredders” or “NewsCreders?”

Its that time of the year folks - Earth Day. Every year, our beautiful world gets just a little bit dirtier, a tiny bit warmer, and a little less cleaner. It’s not much, but at NewsCred, we believe that regular folks like you and me have the power to make a difference. A million people doing one tiny thing is still a million things. So what do we do?

• Our lights are all powered by compact, fluorescent lights. Get rid of those old, regular light bulbs!
• We never use paper (if you do, make sure its double-sided)
• We try and buy local. On average produce travels 1500 miles before reaching your supermarket. Save that fuel by buying produce from near you!
• Power down your PC. I admit, we don’t always do this, but we will tonight!
• Donate.

For the last point, NewsCred will take any revenues we make on advertising from this week, double it, and then donate it all to an organization working towards saving our wonderful planet. It’s not much, but hopefully we can start a trend and continue it each year going forward. After all, we only have one Earth. And without it, life would suck.

Happy Earth Day!

NewsCred CredRank Leaders for Week 1: and

Just one week into the official NewsCred alpha, we thought we’d share some of the very early results. Just seven days in, the NewsCred community has declared the most credible mainstream news source to be the Economist! Congratulations to the Economist and all the journalists, fact-checkers, and staff who work hard to bring us the highest quality news. As with most early tracking polls, all the regular disclaimers apply. Our core group of alpha testers is but a small sample of the eventual NewsCred population, and given the limited dataset (7 days!), these rankings are still quite fluid. However, the Economist seems to have settled into the top spot quite comfortably.

Meanwhile amongst our blog sources, TechCrunch continues to dominate. Given the early adopter makeup of our alpha, it’s no surprise to see one of the most established news sources in the blogosphere head up the list. In fact, TechCrunch has maintained its top credibility ranking through the entire week! Congratulations to Mike Arrington and his crew of dedicated writers.

Its been a fantastic week here at NewsCred. We’re excited to see an active community blossom and we’ve been extremely busy reading and responding to all your wonderful feedback. I’ll published some of the best (both positive and constructive) feedback in the next few days. In the meantime, keep it coming!

At NewsCred, our goal is to become the authoritative source for discovering all the world’s most credible news on the web. The success of NewsCred hinges on our ability to grow and nurture our community. I think we’re off to a great start, so a heartfelt thank you to all our alpha testers from Iraj, myself, and the rest of the NewsCred team.

Update: Coincidence? Techcrunch just posted a list of ‘Top 100 Bloggers‘, although their list is clearly labeled as a list of how often a blogger appears on the tech news site TechMeme. However, it’s an interesting talking point, and I’m curious to see the intersection between our ‘Most Credible’ list vs their ‘Frequency of Posts’ list. Its clear that quantity does not translate to quality. At least not necessarily.

Please don’t sue us Dreamworks, this is just for fun. Plus, we asked Ron Burgundy.

Update: We haven’t gotten sued yet. Shoot me an email at shafqat[at]newscred.com if you want an invite (or if you want to sue us).