CoRank Relaunches: Create Your Own Digg
When CoRank launched in March it was a social news ranking site (like Digg) that filtered news based on your sources -- people whose opinion you value. Or, as CoRank founder Rogelio Bernal Andreo told us, it was "yet another boring bookmarking site." Today, the site relaunched with a new focus: allowing users to create their own, branded social news and bookmarking site based on CoRank's technology using a set of simple online tools.
Rogelio, who is also the founder of eGrupos, one of the largest Spanish-speaking social networks on the web, said that a trial run of the new CoRank on the Spanish version revealed some demand for this type of build-your-own-digg service (Rumoreame is an example of a customized CoRank running on the Spanish language version that is getting some use).
Creating a site on CoRank is a simple 3 step process. Choose a name and subdomain, enter a description, choose a design and set up your categories. After your site is set up, you can change any of the settings you chose during sign up, or access the HTML and CSS for real customization of its look and feel. You can monetize your creation using Google Adsense. CoRank's customization and management tools are all very easy to use (they passed the difficult "Can Josh understand them?" test).
Is It Worth It?
It may seem fruitless to try competing with Digg, but I think that because of CoRank's twist, which attempts to eliminate the mob from social news voting, there is an opportunity for tighter social networking as a result. CoRank offers its users a "Like Minded" feature, which gives you statistics on the 50 users who are most like you based on voting and submission.
I think this presents an opportunity for CoRank to allow users to connect in a way that most social networks don't offer: based on how similarly you think. CoRank's new version will allow people to create specialized, topical versions of that concept. So, for example, I could create a movie news site that would allow people to connect with other, like minded movie geeks. Beyond just sharing a love of movies, CoRank's tools would allow users to find people who actually share a similar outlook on the film industry.
What do you think? Is there a place for branded, topical social news and bookmarking sites?
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I've only read your description, not seen the site yet, but I think this is smart idea.
It helps people with their own crowd, intead of making things homogeneous.
I don't think that coRank's conceptual twist is enough to take on Digg, but I do believe that there is a place for branded, vertical social news and bookmarking sites, especially if creating one is as easy as creating a blog in Blogger, which seems to be what coRank is after. I agree it's a smart idea.
where is my digg?lol, it's in my mind
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Sounds a bit similar to http://DailyHub.com (a social content site for business geeks).
The underlying software supports creating custom social content sites.
Sorry, but dailyhub is an example of what might be done with corank (much like pligg, but i dont know the specific feature differences). It is the same thing going on with social networking sites, they are catering to specific niche markets. In corank's case, one can create a niche "social" news site (the SN equivalent would be ning). It is really a question of features and functionality provided by the "platform" developer, and this seems like a promising execution.
Anyone seen this report on "best practices?":
http://thenewsroom.com/details/231361/?c_id=jms
I think competing with digg shouldn't be too hard.
You just have to focus on different material than tech
Is there any site like this where I can make a delicious clone?