When CoRank launched in March it was a social news ranking site (like Digg) that filtered news based on your sources — people whose opinion you value. Or, as CoRank founder Rogelio Bernal Andreo told us, it was “yet another boring bookmarking site.” Today, the site relaunched with a new focus: allowing users to create their own, branded social news and bookmarking site based on CoRank’s technology using a set of simple online tools.
Rogelio, who is also the founder of eGrupos, one of the largest Spanish-speaking social networks on the web, said that a trial run of the new CoRank on the Spanish version revealed some demand for this type of build-your-own-digg service (Rumoreame is an example of a customized CoRank running on the Spanish language version that is getting some use).
Creating a site on CoRank is a simple 3 step process. Choose a name and subdomain, enter a description, choose a design and set up your categories. After your site is set up, you can change any of the settings you chose during sign up, or access the HTML and CSS for real customization of its look and feel. You can monetize your creation using Google Adsense. CoRank’s customization and management tools are all very easy to use (they passed the difficult “Can Josh understand them?” test).
Is It Worth It?
It may seem fruitless to try competing with Digg, but I think that because of CoRank’s twist, which attempts to eliminate the mob from social news voting, there is an opportunity for tighter social networking as a result. CoRank offers its users a “Like Minded” feature, which gives you statistics on the 50 users who are most like you based on voting and submission.
I think this presents an opportunity for CoRank to allow users to connect in a way that most social networks don’t offer: based on how similarly you think. CoRank’s new version will allow people to create specialized, topical versions of that concept. So, for example, I could create a movie news site that would allow people to connect with other, like minded movie geeks. Beyond just sharing a love of movies, CoRank’s tools would allow users to find people who actually share a similar outlook on the film industry.
What do you think? Is there a place for branded, topical social news and bookmarking sites?
