Publish2, an online news aggregation platform that currently in private beta testing phase, has successfully raised $2.75 million in a Series A financing from Velocity Interactive Group, a leading global digital media and communications investment firm. What makes Publish2 stand out of the competition race is its uniqueness of the market it tend to serve. It has the similar features that look like Digg, but only designed to empower journalists on discovering, organizing, and ranking the most important news for them.

Publish2, co-founded by Scott Karp and Robert Young, both have vast experience in the media industry. In regard to this funding, Scott Karp, President and CEO of Publish2 said, “This financing allows us to continue building a strong team aimed at developing a Web platform for journalists that helps them bookmark and organize news articles as part of their story research and staying on top of their beats, connect with other journalists with similar interests, and contribute to their newsrooms’ editorial efforts in linking to interesting news around the Web. By working closely with Velocity Interactive Group and having the guidance of both Ross and Jon on our board will help us continue making the best strategic moves as we move to publicly launch the site.”

On the about page of Publish2, they mentioned their platform is the Digg for professional journalists. While on the Web, Web news is a bit of glut now, and Publish2 seemed to be fulfilling its role in reinvent the news model of journalism. Nevertheless, the time has come to recognize that by providing an easy bookmarking tools for journalists, it will help them to deliver their insightful articles convincingly.

via [PE HUB]

Ubuntu, a popular open source operating system has a new sister site that called Ubuntu Brainstorm. This is a site preoccupied the Digg ideas where users determine the hot stories will go to the front page, but this time, it’s not the hot general stories, but the hot topics surrounding Ubuntu. On the Ubuntu Brainstorm, you’ll read all those stories that posted by Ubuntu users, from technical issues, wanted features, future direction to the know-how that most of the Ubuntu users want to learn. I think most of the questions or issues that posted there are that Ubuntu can’t afford to say ‘No.’ Like this one, the WiFi issue, as I experienced with my friend, it’s indeed not easy for a beginner to configure the WiFi connection. Unlike Windows, you just install the driver, the system will automatically detect the connection for you.

I like the purpose of this site, in spite of the idea was inspired by Dell IdeaStorm. If Ubuntu managed to take advantage from the sincere ideas posted by its users, it won’t be far behind Windows or Mac.

A social news site called PrettySocial has been launched on the Web this week. It is a social news site believed in itself that its existence plays a major role in facilitating the women interest especially in five categories, fashion, beauty, health, relationships, and celebrity gossip. Much works like a Digg site, but more as a female version of Digg (allowed users to vote on the stories they like, and stories with the most votes will appear on the main page). Each of the story has its own tag, generally recognized as a way for users to gain easy access to similar stories or articles with the same tag. When I first came across this site, it helped me to recall another female-centric site that I profiled in last June, called sk*rt, in a post entitled, Sk*rt: A Female Curated News Site Launched. However, this site provide a manner that non-registered users have the advantage in voting on some stories they like without the login requirements. To better attract users for a regularly visits, PrettySocial has a much difference layout and beside each story, you can find a pretty photo that help in supporting a particular story.

To know more about PrettySocial, it is a startup that currently based in New York City.

Slashdot has launched a new site called Idle, a site with the business model much look like Digg but only links with non-technology related pictures, video or news bits could appeared on the site. Still in testing status, this site would definitely not repeated the cyber-revolt by readers of the Digg as the submission of all the news will be monitored by the editors working at Slashdot. In other word, you won’t see the true power of web 2.0 community where the users can decide which stories go to the main Slashdot Idle page. However, started a site strategically with a direction where users submitted the stories while another group of editors working at Slashdot decide on the approval or rejection processes, there’s probably the only way to strike a proper balance between delivering value to the community and encouraging community participation.

Though there’s not much liberty in the submission processes, but there is a valid reason why Slashdot Idle doesn’t allow much freedom room left for the users. As reported by New York Times, the founder of Slashdot explained, “A lot of these community news sites are all about Ron Paul,” he said. “Ron Paul may be a valid candidate. But what that is really demonstrating is that you are seeing 1 or 2 percent of a community shaping where the whole community is going. A small dedicated group of people can manipulate these sites very easily.”

via [New York Times]

About two weeks ago, I discussed a Digg-like startup that called Mixx, and yet a new Digg-like startup has been launched in the Down Under. It is a startup namely as Kwoff, was known officially launched in last week. Kwoff was founded by Crikey founder and shareholder activist Stephen Mayne, writer and barrister Greg Barnes and new media consultant Dan Walsh. It is a new site that let the Aussie to submit the link/url for interesting stuff, such as story, article, blog entry, etc. and let other users to vote on it, normally the story that received huge number of votes from the users will appear on the “front page” of Kwoff. Their business process especially on submit and vote on stories works exactly as Digg.

I have wrote on a lot of Digg-like players on the Web, each one of them have their own distinctive value creation process when they getting started. Apparently, Kwoff has its own vision. It was aimed to become an Australian’s Digg site. However, unlike Digg that obviously focused on technology news, Kwoff’s main focus was to act as an aggregator for social, business, political and current affair news. They also want to ensure that the Australian news are found, voted and appeared on the front page of the site. Though their purpose is obvious, the outcomes are not, as some of the stories appeared on the front page are not the local news at this moment.

Mixx, opened the public beta on the Web few days ago, is a new people-curated site that want to challenge the market leadership of Digg and Reddit. It offered their users a new way to read news, view photos, or watch videos according to their own preferences.

In fact, Mixx is promoting the concept of deliver the relevant, individually tailored content to their users. In other word, users can now personalize the site, by selecting the news that fit their interests, or choose the categories that they like in the first place in addition to create private groups. Key to Mixx’s strategy was to provide the different user experience that Digg, Reddit, or any Digg clones currently were “not” doing. Mixx was aimed to let users find the content or read the news instantaneously without having to dig through a lot of stuff that other users thought that those are important. No doubt, Mixx users can submit, vote or against any articles, news, photos or videos to the Mixx site and normally the top one will display on the main Mixx site according to the votes received. However, this does not mean users are not allowed to customize the news that they wanted to receive in the first hand. Mixx build a YourMixx, a customized start page that allowed a registered user to fully control the news that she want to receive at the time she sign-up to the site, she can tweak and filter the content she intended to read according to the categories selected. This contrast to the normal practices of other Digg clones such as Sk*rt, Yasvs, Hugg, or Yahoo! Minna Japan that I covered in this blog.

I believed Mixx users are also bought into the value proposition and trust that they’ll get the better content they want due to the “Local feature” developed by Mixx. According to Mixx, the Local feature makes it really easy to find and share things that are relevant to your hometown, where your parents live, or pretty much anywhere in the US. Meanwhile, Mixx also built tools, Mixx Lounge for the purpose on how karma points are to be awarded that might help in attracting more new users to their site.

This week Digg released their new widget, a tool that allowed blog or Website holders to display the latest Digg’s popular news on their blogs or Websites, has further announced that they choose Microsoft as their new advertisement partner, a deal which is a three-year agreement that would go into effect in the coming weeks. There is a lot of upside, according to online audience measurement firm Hitwise Inc, Digg can now focus on improving its site without having to create its own sales to sell banner advertising. That’s the idea behind the Microsoft’s new ads platform, a platform allowed a publisher the maximum level of customization.

See also Digg’s announcement by clicking here.

I just came across another Digg clone that was created by an Indian company in Bangalore. Irintech, their design, formating and layout was the same as another Digg clone, Yasvs. However, I respect Dan as he admitted that Yasvs was indeed a Digg clone and he gave credit to the content management system, Pligg that he used.

A vexed questions for all these Digg clones is how they can uncover the opportunities to position their offerings in a way that they would never have thought before, or identify the new points of differentiation, at least when the first time we see these sites, we’ll not recognize these as the Digg clone. However, it seems that this become an act of genius now.