Newsvine users were greeted today by an e-mail announced the relaunch. Some of the new features include a smarter front page, local headlines & weather, group creation, a live news ticker, a photo gallery, and external RSS feeds.
The new front page has a clean look and users are able to customize their pages fully with their content of preference. Selecting content is as easy as drag and dropping. Another new feature on Newsvine is that you can enter your zip code and find local news and weather.
There are over 600,000 users active on Newsvine and now they can associate with and create groups. Every user has the power to comment on any news story and Newsvine Live tracks the activity of commenting users.
Newsvine has also found a way to consolidate pictures from different news sources in the form of a slideshow.
Today’s big story is that England Prime Minister Tony Blair is retiring and Newsvine consolidated 6 pictures in a slideshow about him.
Newsvine was founded in Seattle in March 2006 by former Disney and ESPN employees. The company is funded by Second Avenue Partners.
Mike Slade is on Newsvine’s Board of Directors. Slade also works as an advisor for Apple and started Second Avenue with a few other former Microsoft executives. Plus Slade is also a board member of StubHub, which was acquired by eBay recently for $310 million.
