Allvoices Adds Context, Credibility to News-related Twitter Data

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) September 14, 2009

Allvoices, Inc., the first open media site where anyone can report from anywhere, today became the only citizen media outlet to integrate live, event- and location-specific Twitter data into its citizen reports. Live Twitter data assists allvoices' comprehensive verification process with vetting stories for authenticity by providing additional context and ranking reports in allvoices' "Breaking" and "Popular" categories. Users now enjoy an enhanced, real-time view of everything happening in the locations, around the events and to the people reported on the site.

Allvoices' uses a combination of community input and algorithms to vet contributed reports. As soon as one is submitted, the system "pivots" around the report and immediately pulls related content from mainstream news and user generated sources like videos, blogs and pictures to create a full, 360 degree view of the news. Integrating live tweets makes allvoices' ranking system even more real-time, adding context and a comprehensive understanding of circumstances surrounding the event.

Allvoices has leveraged Twitter data in several distinct areas of the site:

•     Allvoices displays the latest tweets for locations covering every city, country and regional landing pages created from citizen and mainstream reports about a location
•     For citizen reports, allvoices displays tweets related to the report to build a stronger case for the report's authenticity and credibility, while adding more context to the report itself
•     For mainstream news, allvoices aggregates real-time tweets that discuss the same news to show users what conversations are occurring around those reports.
•     Tweets now provide input for allvoices' ranking algorithms. The algorithms determine what shows up at the top of the "Breaking" and "Popular" tabs for each location, city, country and regional landing page. Live tweets add another dimension to Allvoices ability to vet and rank reports, which includes community validation and numerous machine-based heuristics.
•     In addition to integrating Twitter's data into contributed reports, allvoices has created a separate, unique page which aggregates hundreds of reporters' tweets, along with any stories and events they may relate to on allvoices as correlating reports from mainstream sources, providing full context and additional information related to each individual Journalist's tweet. Journalists and news addicts alike can find this site, called the "Twitter News Bureau," at http://www.allvoices.comtweets}.

A recent study conducted by research firm Pear Analytics found that forty percent of tweets are categorized as "Pointless Babble" (Pear's term), which is indicative of the difficulty people have finding tweets with real news content. However recent events, like those just after Iran's recent election, have shown Twitter to be indispensable for reporting news as it breaks, but lacks situational context, the ability to pinpoint location and in some cases, credibility. Allvoices solves this by vetting Twitter's information and wrapping it into a news report's "big picture."    

"We feel allvoices has broken ground here by pulling the news gems from Twitter's massive live stream and integrating that specific, relevant content into the reports contributed to our citizen media hub," said Dr. Sanjay Sood, chief technical officer, Allvoices.com. Twitter alone as a source for news doesn't have the ability to tell a full story. Allvoices delivers the full story for a report plus a deeper understanding of the conversations going on around that event. What's great about the system we've built is that it can take virtually any data source and apply it to user-generated and mainstream news reports."

Allvoices is the first citizen media outlet using technology to validate user generated content, the lack of which has been the biggest barrier to the mainstream adoption of citizen media. Allvoices' ability to vet user-generated content against mainstream sources, as well as other citizen-generated reports instantly provides validity and a measure of credibility to citizen reports, and gives users a level of comfort when consuming this information.    

About Allvoices, Inc.
Allvoices' mission is to create a global community for sharing news, videos, images and opinions from multiple points of view that invoke an emotional connection between individual perspectives from around the world. A community of diverse, engaged and globally minded citizens serves as news reporters, opinion leaders and publishers to share with the world the realities on-the-ground. Allvoices.com brings together context, insight and diversity of opinions around a broad range of topics and issues on the global, national and local levels. Allvoices is one of the largest global communities offering unedited and relevant news and perspectives in one place. Using a set of proprietary algorithms, Allvoices utilizes professional and online news sources, blogs, images and videos to determine relevancy, foster credibility and maintain openness with each contribution made to the site.

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