NowPublic Launches New Website and Features: Sets New Standard for Citizen Journalism Credibility and Trust

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 16 /PRNewswire/ -- NowPublic.com (http://www.nowpublic.com/), the world's largest participatory news network, today announced the launch of three new features that raise the bar for trust and credibility in a crowd-powered media platform and community. These features include a member ranking system, a presence stream and a news dashboard.

NowPublic was founded to empower the average citizen to capture and chronicle the news around him/her. It has distinguished itself in the burgeoning crowd-powered media space as the category leader with reporters in more than 5,500 cities and 160 countries.

    With the new member ranking system
(http://www.beta.nowpublic.com/ranking/list/top-contributor/new-members/daily)
, users can accumulate NowPublic points by assisting in the growth of the
global news community through a variety of variables based on the behaviours
and actions in the community. The points will be used to calculate member
rankings on a daily, weekly, monthly and all-time basis.  A member's ranking
is determined by multiplying the aforementioned variables with the value
denoted here:
http://www.nowpublic.com/newsroom/tips/member_guide/top_newshounds.

"Other participatory news networks lack a means of gauging an article's relevance, resulting in extraneous news and hindering the credibility of some of the best citizen reporters out there," said Leonard Brody, CEO of NowPublic. "NowPublic has revamped its site and remedied this problem, highlighting the news that matters most and furthering the integrity of our users, whilst maintaining an unconventional tone, conducive to the expectations of user-generated news."

Allen Weiner, Managing VP of Gartner Research, recently remarked, in response to the launch of YouTube's CitizenNews channel, "Take Vancouver, B.C.-based NowPublic, a company that understands the power of citizen media and its relationship to the news. It has built out a portal, platform and set of very handy tools, which has resulted in what most critics agree is the model for citizen media (http://blog.gartner.com/blog/media.php?itemid=3538)."

Additionally, NowPublic recognizes that many of its members are plugged into sites like Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and others. In order to create the most efficient and streamlined influx of news, NowPublic is offering a presence stream, in which users' externally generated media is fed to the site. Also, NowPublic users are now able to create a customized news dashboard (http://blog.nowpublic.com/uploads/dashboard1.jpg), culling photo, video and/or text feeds from the places and people they want to hear from.

"What do you know? What do you think is important? What are you doing tonight? What's happening locally?" said Michael Tippett, CMO of NowPublic. "NowPublic's existence is premised on the concept that you are more interesting than your television."

About NowPublic

NowPublic.com is a crowd-sourced, participatory news network that mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world. In its short history, the company has become the largest news organization of its kind with contributing reporters in more than 5,500 cities and 160 countries. The Guardian has named NowPublic.com one of the top five most useful news sites on the Web and Time Magazine named it one of the Top 50 Websites for 2007. The company has received funding from Rho Ventures, Rho Canada, Brightspark, GrowthWorks and members of the New York Angels.

    Contact:
    For NowPublic.com:
    Chris Macowski
    The Morris + King Company
    212-561-7459
    chris.macowski@morris-king.com