I'm currently working on a new start up, called Athesyn.
It's a new kind of social news site with some new innovative features.
I thought it would probably be a good idea to see what people here would like to see from the future of social news sites.
In case you're interested in Athesyn and the progress we are making, you can sign up for our private beta and news letter here: http://www.athesyn.com/
One thing I believe is lacking in news today is follow-up. It seems that so many things are all the buzz today, even an outrage, but by next week it's all but forgotten. I'd like to be able to track the life of an issue.<p>So a nasty crime is committed, and somebody is arrested; is he later convicted? Responding to complaints, a corporation pledges to make changes; do they ever materialize? An earthquake puts thousands out of their homes; have they been restored a year later?
Timelines, timelines, timelines. I want to see stories in the context of days, weeks, years, not just right this moment. I often search for old stories and I'm yet to see any tool that let's me clearly see things by date.<p>If you don't build it, I will. :-)<p>Edit: All I get on your homepage is a login form and a restricted access message.
If I have to scroll to see more than 20 headlines, I won't use it. So I'd say compact the space so that I see the headlines that I want to see in those first 20.<p>Example of a social news site that I don't like: <a href="http://www.newsvine.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.newsvine.com/</a><p>There are three problems for <i>me</i>:<p>1) It doesn't fit 100% of my screen<p>2) This results in too few headlines so I have to scroll, scroll, scroll<p>3) There are no categories so I can't self-select<p>I like the MSNBC page about midway down where it lists the category, lets me select how many stories I want in a category, and crams a lot of headlines into a small area.<p>My $0.02 since you asked!
If it is the kind of thing where people vote up stories, you are going to have to fight very hard to avoid the influx of low calorie news (same goes for crappy comments). Unless that's what you want of course, but people already get that from digg/reddit/gawker/fark.<p>From one of PG's essays:
"Hence what I call the Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over unless you take specific measures to prevent it."<p>It would be nice to see a social news site that ends up with an intellectual feel instead of the polemic vibe that a lot of places give off.
1. More intelligent and diverse discussion. I don't know how you would do that, but try to make it the opposite of reddit.com/r/politics.<p>2. Convenient links to relevant background information for the article. E.g. relevant statistics, opposing viewpoints, press releases, wikipedia articles, a summary of "just the facts" from the article, previous quotes from the people the article is about.<p>Also, I know you weren't asking for feedback on the site, but the name would otherwise make me assume that it's a site about atheism.