Worried about fake news? Not getting the quality news you want? What if I told you there is a way we can change it together?

I came up with an idea about 6 months to develop a social media site. But not the social media that we are used to like facebook, twitter, or Pinterest, but a new medium to truly democratize how media is shared, consumed and why not dare to say improved.

The concept was to have a place where news can be aggregated by the community and for the community. A place where anyone could share the news that they thought were relevant, write blogs, share videos, create pins and memes, etc. All media in one place with a couple of twists.

The first aspect was redefining how news is aggregated and ranked. Did you ever want to go to a site or app that would allow you to get a pulse on what is going on in the country at any given time? A place where news is not carefully selected by a few individuals, or crafted for a particular message, or focused on a narrow topic; but instead a place where the news is ranked by the whole community based on user interactions such as views, likes, comments, and rankings of fairness, accuracy, depth, and relevancy ? I did. I wanted a place that I could go to get a quick glance at what's new and what everyone is talking about, the water cooler of the internet.

The second was interactivity. news site can be dry, so I thought we could add another twist to it. Add a poll to the news you submit, follow the person who posted the news, look at his or hers public profile and see what else have that person shared, follow the best bloggers, rank what you read so you can customize your content consumption, open up for comments, etc. Make media social. Create a space where content creators and consumers can interact and collaborate.

Another point was the depth. It's great to have a place where you can see what everyone is talking about and become part of the conversation at the same what if you are looking for something specific? Do you need to go to a different site for different topics? I wanted to build a place where you could choose to find out how deep the rabbit hole goes (Yes, that's from the matrix .)

So at Upvotenation you start at the highest level, but can quickly drill down by keyword, if you like a particular news source, you can filter by the source, by category (Politics, sports, etc), by the author, by media type and be a laser focus on your search. But instead of doing that search everytime why not create interest channels where you can create content that is specific to a particular topic but still make it interactive as you being able to share your channels, follow other users channels, send notifications to people subscribing to your channels and have the same level of interactivity on specific topics as you had interacting with the broader community.

The channels concept serve 2 purposes. The first is a way for you to get you media filtered by your interests, and second is a way to share your interests with the world.

Another point was the whole discussion about fake news, biased news, where we have to search through many irrelevant stories to get to the things we really care about. That's why I added a ranking system where you can rank every media on upvotenation. This allows you customize and create your channels and get better results on your searches, but a broader goal is to have enough users rating the news where it becomes an honest although anonymous feedback loop to the news media, which in turn creates positive change opens the conversation. What if Instead of going thru market surveys and other elaborate schemes to know what we are thinking, we could tell all the media outlets directly how we feel about the quality of their new content. Hey, media outlet "ABC" We really like your sports sections, but your political commentary is killing us, your average rate is a 4. We talk about data and data privacy, but here is one way where data sharing could go a long way and create an almost instantaneous feedback loop. We consume the news and let them know in almost real time how we feel about their content. This way we create a strong alliance between the media outlets, bloggers and content creators, and the media outlets on a continuous improvement cycle.

One last point is regarding equity. Since we are trying to make the news more fair and social, why not also make it more profitable and fun? gamefy it! Upvotenation will take a percentage of the ad revenue on the site and share with everyone that's contributing content to the site. Every time you contribute content you get points that at the end of the month can be converted into cash. Let's make a fair system where we really build a community by aligning all interests involved. Talking about gamification, the first 1,000 people to sign up get a founders badge for life! There will be badges for the number of followers, for curating content, etc. We will show the boy scouts how it's done!

I don't want to stop there, as we talk about data, the goal to the site is to improve the flow of information, allow people to share their thoughts (the Channels app is a start) while at the same time having the option to build their online brand as content creators by sharing their ideas and other interesting things from the web. Add messaging, site and follower statistics, API feeds, RSS feeds in a way that makes the media really social.

Let me know what you think, and any ideas are welcome. The site just went live, you might be one of the top 10 to sign up and get that founder's badge. There is new code being pushed almost every day to make the site faster, more responsive and more collaborative. Messaging, news API and site statistics are just around the corner.

Sign up and tell your friends about it, and let's build a true social media commmunity!

https://www.upvotenation.com