Collect
Our Machine Learning pipeline converts news to data and safeguards it on a decentralised network
NewsBlocks, as a store of news value, are the foundation of a global news marketplace that – for the first time – assigns a value to every piece of news. Applications that display NewsBlocks’ data to their readers pay usage fees in the NewsBlocks cryptocurrency, while fees generated from the retrieval of NewsBlocks are paid to contributors who added and verified the NewsBlock’s data.
How it works
Applications access NewsBlocks data through a metered API (Application Programming interface). The API delivers the data, while an auction system sets the price to access each NewsBlock. High-demand news, such as popular breaking news, is priced higher than unpopular, archived news.
Assigning value to individual pieces of news creates a decentralised marketplace where — for the first time — anyone can know the value of any piece of news. This allows large organisations to sell their news data more efficiently, and also lets citizen journalists sell their news without having to deal with intermediaries, or with each news organisation individually.
Participating apps can create free products using ad-supported models, offer ad-free subscriptions, or employ other business models. Testing, research and educational use is free of charge.
SAMPLE APPLICATIONS
ON THIS DAY APP
Retrieval-type app
This app retrieves text and video from NewsBlocks for people who have birthdays on a certain day. For example, on June 21 Prince Harry, Edward Snowden, Benazir Bhutto, and many others were born.
Payment for the use of the NewsBlocks’ text and video is automatically handled by a Smart Contract that transfers funds to everyone who has contributed to the NewsBlock. In this case there are two contributors, the developer of the Newslines app (The Social News Company Ltd.) and Citizen News. In turn, both apps pay their contributors.
Other examples of retrieval-style apps are news archives, topic-specific newsfeeds and chatbots, and news timelines.
CITIZEN NEWS APP
Contributor-type app
This app lets citizen journalists upload on-the-scene videos that are attached to NewsBlocks. The videos are verified on the NewsChain and are monetised as other developers use the video in their applications.
This app does not retrieve NewsBlocks. Its primary purpose is to collect funds for videos that are used by other apps, such as the On This Day app and Newslines.
Other examples of contributor-type apps include news organisations that convert their archives into NewsBlocks, and companies that use new, more efficient AI techniques to convert news into NewsBlocks.