Social News Startup Urban Times Relaunches Platform With A Focus On World-changing Stories

LONDON - Jan. 30, 2014 - PRLog -- Urban Times (www.urbantimes.co) has just launched their new look site with a dramatic update to its content strategy and voting algorithm.

A key influencer for over 3 years in the growing “content for social good” space, their new update seeks to fill the vacuous holes currently riddling the industry.

They have found the bottom-up sweet spot that Reddit and Imgur users enjoy every day, where news is submitted and/or voted on by the community.

A leading source of user-generated news (with a forward-thinking and optimistic (http://urbantimes.co/about/) ethos), anyone can sign up to write and begin competing for their place as a leader in their field.

They feel it's time that media platforms became more democratic, and empowered users to drive the right people and most worthwhile content into the spotlight, so they redesigned their site accordingly.

Major updates explained by Urban Times:

Our door is opened to all: We made it so anyone can sign up to write. A users’ first two articles will be reviewed by an in-house editor who checks that it abides by the guidelines. After that they are free to publish as and when they wish, putting the fate of their contents into the hands of the community.

Content turned into a game you play: Games make everything more engaging so we made blogging and journalism into one. We’ve done this by launching a rewards and ranking system to govern how content gets prioritised, and create an atmosphere of friendly competition to motivate writers.

Upvoting to empower writers: An upvote helps drive content to the top of the site. This way users can promote what they think deserves to be seen with the click of a vote, ensuring content best reflects the values of the community.

Features drive friendly competition: Leaderboards offer a place for writers to check their progress against others. Upvotes for content or comments also boost writers up the leaderboards, ensuring that good contributions lead to more clout in the community.  We’ve also launched badges which are awarded for contributions in a specific field, or for upgrading to positions of greater responsibility and voting power on the site.

A Spotlight that gives power to the underdog: Heading our site is the ‘Spotlight’, which displays content picked by our in-house team, or viewed the most in a rolling 24 hour period. Just as anyone can write, anyone can make it into the spotlight. The likelihood of a small-time blogger reaching the thousands of readers they dream of is much greater than on any other platform.

Charlie Hilton, Co-founder, said:

“We consume media on any device with a strong enough connection to the internet, and it is our vision to fill those screens with content that actually matters.

Our latest platform update moves forward in achieving a balance between grabbing the attention of readers, sharing genuinely meaningful subject matter and empowering users to decide what’s important to them. This isn’t feeding the trend of algorithm-backed interest feeds, but trail-blazes the idea that humans are the ones that should decide what needs attention and when.

The power needs to be put back in the hands of people that give a damn about the world - whether it’s quirky mobile bloggers or heavy impact journalists. We’re just providing the technology to help their voices reach the right readers wherever they are on the planet.”

-Ends-

Note to editors:

Please find images for your use:  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/akqsjih69gue14d/5syQiCxL2V

For more information please contact:

Website: urbantimes.co

Twitter:@UrbanTimes (http://twitter.com/urbantimes)

Facebook: facebook.com/theurbantimes