Tingout: the new news stream social media for citizen journalism

Tingout: What is it?
Tingout is an internet platform which offers a simple way of saying something publicly on a worldwide scale.
Based on limited, shared, visible spaces, Tingout combines an interesting system of storytelling to citizen journalism, adding a pinch of social dynamics and viral talent. For this reason, it can be defined as a social media news stream.

How does it work?
After having created an account, it is possible to insert, for free, news or stories, enriching them with videos, photos and audio or other content. Every piece of news or story has a temporal label attached to it, in the format of month, day, hour and minute, for example 25 October 16:01.
At this point, Tingout does the rest. Tingout hosts a maximum of 60 pieces of news for each label, publishing with no territorial limits, within a shared bulletin board worldwide, permitting the news/stories to be read, commented on and to be challenged and intercepted using various filters and modes.

Unlike other ‘social’ networks Tingout is not based on single individuals or their popularity, nor on relationships between relatives or acquaintances of two or more people.

Tingout gives value and visibility to ideas, to news and to storytelling. This is why it’s the perfect tool to give ‘a sunny place’ to budding artists, shopkeepers, businesses, voluntary organisations, institutions or whatever type of user.

Tingout: Types of space and visibility
Tingout offers exclusively two types of space inside the bulletin boards of each temporal label:
- free space with covers of a module, subject to potential challenges
- fee paying space with larger visibility from 6, 9, 15, 30 and 60 modules

Challenges
Since the space of visibility on Tingout has a limited number (maximum 60 per single temporal label), free occupied space is subject to challenges such as ‘one against one’. The logic behind this is simple: each registered user can challenge someone else’s piece of news/story with their own, in this way competing for the allocation of visibility space inside a specific temporal label.

The challenges last seven days and the participating pieces of news will also be visible through a proposed showcase. During this period, the community, after having read the two stories/news in competition, can vote for one of them. When the voting period expires, the news which gets the most votes will get a virtual prize and its visibility will be guaranteed until it is outvoted.

Tingout: Extended visibility space
Larger visibility space offers more advantages than free space and reserves for its users – private, businesses, institutions and voluntary organizations – greater creative freedom in the publication of news/stories.

In detail, the advantages offered are:

• more tools available than those offered to news/stories which occupy free space
• greater creative freedom thanks to the larger cover (cf table at the back)
• immunity from potential challenges
• possibility of blocking paid spaces for months or for a year

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