Earlier Smartmobs pointed to CommonTimes as a social bookmarking community for news readers. It lets you “tag” news stories on the web into its database. Your stories are combined with those of all the other users of the system to produce a news service that reflects the aggregated wisdom of its users.
Today Jeff Reifman describes some potential scenarios that might be appropriate uses for CommonTimes communities.
Intra-office: Employees at Acme Org. wish to share the news they feel is most important with each other.
Sector-based: Nonprofit technology consultants such as those at Circuit Riders might want to share technology news and information with members of their association.
Cause-based: Employees of organizations working for reproductive rights around the country wish to share news and information which they feel is important for their colleagues.
Research-based: Medical researchers working on stem cell issues may wish to share news and research with colleagues around the world.
Interest-based: Democratic activist readers of the blog DailyKos.com use CommonTimes to clip and share news stories before linking to them in blog entries.
News-gathering: Journalists at the Acme Tribune may want to clip and share news and information to discuss with newsroom colleagues – and to keep a trail of important stories.
Jeff also explains how you can build your own news site with his XML REST APIs.
