Newsvine is the March 2005 creation of Calvin Tang.  Most social news sites involve users submitting and voting for the works of others.  Newsvine deviates from this.  Tang calls it “a giant platform for the participatory news model of the future.”  The site combines news from traditional media outlets, such as the New York Times or the Associated Press with user creations.  As Tang explains in an interview with Folksonomy, this makes “every piece of content on the site…a live discussion.  Users can leave comments or chat live directly within articles themselves. The centuries-old model of news being a one-way push from publisher to consumer is extended by allowing consumers to increase the lifespan and usefulness of stories with their own contributions.”

Newsvine is distinct in many ways.  Besides submitting other sites’ articles and voting on them, users can comment on articles, conduct live chats regarding articles, write their own articles, share “user columns” with friends, add lists of members and tags to a “watch list,” create a friends list, and even earn money (90% of the ad revenue from ads on your personal Newsvine page goes to you).  Thus, Newsvine operates with some similar features to other social news sites, but has large differences that distinguish it from the more traditional social news sites, such as Digg.