What is YulNews…?
August 23rd, 2007
Like I mentioned in the past, I met Heri at the latest DemoCamp and he strongly suggested that I open up about YulNews so here I go. I will attempt to explain you how I came up with the idea and what is my vision regarding YulNews. There are many things to say about my project and my long term vision can’t be explained in a few words so I’ll stick to my short term version.
I work in downtown Montreal and I often see newsworthy events like gatherings, accidents and (but rarely) small crimes, fires and so on. I often found myself in a position where I could be a “news reporter” and could report this to some local media. Then again I told myself that they couldn’t care less about a gathering or a protest. Big media companies like big stories. Perhaps they don’t care but I do. So that’s when I decided to talk to a few friends and all of them said the idea was good. None of them knew about anything similar so the opportunity was interesting.
Before I go on, I can already hear some people saying “Oh but there’s this XYZ site which is doing what you’re doing as well..!†Yes, there are a couple of similar sites out there, mainly NowPublic which I didn’t know until I started investigating for similar ideas. There are some other hyper-local sites as well, so let me explain you what YulNews is about and what it isn’t about as I believe I’m on something neat and new.
Without going in the details, YulNews is about social news but with a twist. I like to think of it as a “You Tube for news”. It’s multilingual and international. The plan is to support every city in the world. If a city is not in the database, any user will be able to add a new city.
YulNews is about individuals, ethnic groups, communities, businesses, schools and so on. Of course people can post their own news but what’s interesting is that others can participate and interact with the news thread, creating at the end some sort of timeline about that particular story. So the coverage keeps going on and is done by anyone willing to cover the story. You see everyone’s point of view, their side of the story and of course, their own media (the usual trio of audio, video and pictures). I guess this could be seen as CNN meets blogs where users can add their own tidbits about the story, thus making it more reliable, more interesting and thus bringing a new side to it (which the original reporter probably never thought of).
So for example, if someone writes about a public transportation strike, someone else could add to the news thread that schools are being impacted as well or that taxi’s revenues are skyrocketing and so on. I hope you now see the interaction possible between stories and how, in the end, this creates interesting, thoughtful news.
But this is just the basics. You can also create your own channels, but not only about your own news. It can be about any news you find interesting. Let’s say you enjoy environmental issues, you can create a channel and add your favourite stories to this channel thus making it an environmental channel. Think of it as a “blog of a blog” where your channel could be made entirely of other people’s news. Again, I haven’t seen this yet.
If you want to go further, you can create a group. A group can be anything from an end user to a multinational corporation. Let’s say you are a Spanish speaking person living in Toronto. You could create your own mini-portal where people could post local news in Spanish. In other words, this is the equivalent of the ethnic community newspaper but online. There are some independent local ethnics sites but as far as I know, there is no site where anyone can create its own portal. Then again, it’s not limited to ethnic communities. Schools, businesses, public organisations, cities and other entities can post their news online as well. Nothing stops the University of Harvard or the city of Montreal from having their own portal as well.
YulNews is also a lot about freedom of press where people are not afraid to discuss about sensitive topics. Some might say that the media is controlled by too few entities and perhaps a form of “self” censorship is required by some journalists. Basically, I want everyone to have his/her voice over what they think is important. Be it a Montrealer witnessing an accident, a soldier on a battlefield or a Chinese citizen complaining about local pollution. If it matters to you then I want you to “be the news”!
So what’s YulNews NOT about? Well it’s not a social bookmark site like Digg or Slashdot although you will be allowed to keep track of your favourite news and vote on the most informative or insightful news. Voting, along tagging are in my opinion unavoidable. Some people see sites like Digg as social media while I see them as social bookmarking site. There is nothing purely social about digg and definitively nothing local about it.
Well I hope everyone had enough information to feel what YulNews is about. The project is currently in “alpha mode” and I would like to hear from people wanting to experience it. Also, if you have any ideas, please go ahead as I’m open to feedback.
Posted in Startups, YulNews, business, social network | Comments (2)
August 23rd, 2007 at 2:47 pm
hi denis
this is a great idea! i really like the idea of giving a voice to common citizens and cover the “long tail” of news. i read your post quickly and though it was a clone of nowpublic, but i re-read it again and i think it’s the focus on a city that gives it the edge. (like yelp.com). great idea, cant wait how you will accomplish this.
i also like the channel and group features — it would be really useful for anyone who have a particular interest. you will have to create a powerful search function for this so people can go straight to these sections when arriving at the homepage
also have you thought about getting “serious” funding for this? ie for instance talking to angels? it would make the development and marketing faster.
August 23rd, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Hello Heri,
I’m glad you like the idea. Yes I understand that there are similitudes with NowPublic but probably as much as Digg looks like Slashdot. They both bring topics to a geek crowd but deep down, they are very different. The channel/group part is really what makes this different. It’s the core. Citizen journalism is just a basic feature, not a product. YulNews is meant to be de-centralized where NowPublic keeps some sort of centralization. But anyhow, I don’t think of N.P. as a competitor but rather as a neighbor..
As far as financing, well I haven’t done any work on that side. This is kinda what killed my first project. I worked hard on a nice business plan and looked for financing but by the time we finished our plan and everything (it took over 6-9 months BTW), there were too many close competitors around and yelp was actually one of them..!
So this time I said “screw the plan and let’s code”. So far I’ve been pretty happy with this unique way of doing
Finally, getting funding is not my top priority at this point but it’s on my top 5 for sure. I agree that it will help a lot but I want to focus on getting a beta version out there as quickly as possible and get feedback from users. Your article about going live in January or March is motivating me a lot and I really want to have a full public beta by then. I’ll give you a tour shortly if you want. Let me know..!