Social Median, Best Social News Nomination
The easiest site for me to nominate for an Open Web Award is SocialMedian. While still in beta, Social Media allows users to connect with others to share the news stories they find most relevant, as well as create personalized news networks. They are the best site on the web for digging through all of the hundreds of stories that come out every day, presenting you only with the most relevant stories.
The SocialMedian Home Page
From the moment you sign in, SocialMedian presents you with content you have already told it you are interested in. Clips by either the newsmakers you follow, the news networks you follow, the clips you have added, everything, or just replies to your comments.
You can keep up with topics in general or start/join a news network to stay up to date with all of the news on your interests.
News Networks, the Power of SocialMedian
The real power of SocialMedian is its news networks. News networks can be as broad or specific as you want them to be. Simple to set up and use, the news networks make the volumes of information on the web quick and easy to digest.
What makes the news networks so special?
1. News Sources
SocialMedian allows you to add the raw RSS feeds from your favorite blogs and news sites onto the source list. I have added sites from the New York Times to my own blog. I have even added Google and Technorati blog search RSS feed into the mix, as well as Delicious tag feeds. Any RSS feed where valuable information might be, it is easy to add to the network.
2. It is quick and easy to add content of your own.
Their clipper sits in your browser's toolbar, and whenever you see a post that should be included, just clip it and you are done. No tagging, categorizing, SocialMedian will take it from there and put it where it needs to go.
You can also connect it to sites you already use to bookmark pages such as Twitter, FriendFeed, Google Reader, and Delicious. Anything you bookmark on any of these services or any other RSS feed you give it are automatically clipped.
By know you are probably thinking, "That is too much information, how can I ever get through all that?"
3. Topics
You don't have to sort through all that information, SocialMedian does it for you.
Add the keywords you want SocialMedian too look for in the sources you told it to look through, and then set the noise level you are willing to live with.
Low only searches for the primary topic.
Medium searches for relevant combinations of topics.
High will search for any single term, primary or related.
That is it. SocialMedian sorts through that tangled mess of feeds you give it, and only shows you the stories you are interested.
4. Fourfold Voting
My favorite part of SocialMedian is that the voting is not simplistic by it is simple. For every story you can mark them "clipped or not relevant," and the stories you clip, you can mark mood about the story.
5. Sharing
Any story on SocialMedian is easily shared to other networks.
For simplicity and power, SocialMedian deserves not only to be nominated for an Open Web Award, but to win one.