Where do you put the videos you find around the web, and how do they express your identity? Aiming to be the answer is #waywire 2.0.
Co-founded by Newark Mayor Cory Booker and launched nine months ago, #waywire focused on original and user-generated content. But with today’s update the beta recenters around you, collecting videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Vine and news sites into themed playlists.
From one perspective, this update is sensible. It’s #waywire trying to find its niche. “Pinterest for video” is a bit confining, but it symbolizes the value #waywire hopes to offer.
The initial ambitions of the startup were huge — to turn a generation of news-watchers into news-makers by letting them film and broadcast news segments or responses about things that fascinated them, and to augment those with original in-house news content.
But shooting a newscast is tough work that creates a big barrier to user participation, and people have plenty of news sources and behavior patterns already. Though #waywire was only in alpha, it did not appear to be gaining any traction and the company refuses to provide any user counts.
Read more: Techcrunch.com
