Rivva shows what a social news aggregator is all about
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My name is Martin Weigert, I am a social web enthusiast from Berlin, living in Stockholm. Here I'll post my thoughts on the web (and life) that don't fit in 140 characters. If you understand German, head over to www.netzwertig.com where I am the editor.
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Email: m-w at pop.ms
If you are familiar with the blogosphere in Germany - which probably are not many outside of the German speaking countries - the chance is high that you know Rivva. Rivva is Germany's own little Techmeme, the popular US news aggregator that is giving a near real time overview about which blog posts are getting most attention and ingoing links at a given time.
Now Rivva, which was launched almost three years ago, recently started to not only include blogs but also tweets in its clever algorithm to analyse which articles from blogs and mainstream media are hot at the moment among the social web crowd. And with "Buzz", Rivva's newest feature, the service might have come up with a killer tool.
Buzz, which is in closed beta at the moment, takes all the links posted by the people you are following on Twitter, sending them through the secret Rivva algorithm to provide you with a personalized and ranked news page, showing a list of most talked articles, with the "buzziest" on top. And since you are getting a public link to your own news page on Rivva, you can let other people access this site, too. Here is mine as an example: http://www.rivva.de/social/martinweigert
Unlike other Twitter aggregators which simply give you a chronological list of the articles that the users you are following tweeted out during the day, Rivva is taking into consideration how many people did link to a piece from Twitter, from blogs, within which time range and with what frequency. The result is a very dynamic page that can change many times per hour.
The great thing with Rivva Buzz is that it serves at least two purposes: On the one hand it can provide you with a quick overview about which news and articles people that you think are credible - otherwise you wouldn't follow them - are tweeting about RIGHT NOW. On the other hand you can spread your unique Rivva URL to other user in your social graph, using your own credibility as a human newsfilter - if you have one - to help them staying informed.
So if (in)famous Robert Scoble would have access to Rivva Buzz, he could utilize the tool to show his worshippers what's hot right now among the people that he follows. Since he is following more than 16.000 users, that could be something. And it might bring down Rivva directly, which is why the tool is limited to very few users at the moment. And of course, Rivva is using OAuth for authentication through Twitter.
Rivva is a one man show and side project, which in my eyes explains why it never really took off outside of the German blog crowd. But having already seen a lot positive feedback about Buzz and an increasing number of people asking for access, there is a chance of 2010 being the big year for Rivva.
