Buzz and NewsCred: two different takes on social news

By Jacqui Cheng | Published: August 19, 2008 - 11:45AM CT

As online news consumption grows, the methods by which we find and evaluate our news continue to evolve. “Social news” has become increasingly popular, especially with the advent of Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, and more that let users vote on and evaluate each other’s shared items. Two more takes on social news have gone public this week, bringing along their own approaches on how to present the “best” news while allowing the users to interact with the stories.

The first is NewsCred, first launched privately in May and opened to the public today. NewsCred acts as a sort of news aggregator like Google News, except with a number of twists. For one, NewsCred allows you to choose among a handful of news and blog sources that you’d like to see news from. More importantly, however, is the fact that NewsCred uses an algorithm to rank stories on the page based on the credibility of the story, the publication, and then author.