This is the second installment of an IJNet interview series that takes an in depth look at the operations of various online news platforms, shedding light on the future of global media as envisioned by thought-leaders around the world. To read last week's piece, on OhMyNews, click here.

Amid rapid change in the news media landscape, online multimedia platforms around the world are competing to secure their names on the proverbial map that is growing in size. Some are more successful than others in a time where success depends on the uniqueness of the brand, model or business approach of the organization behind the platform.

Incorporated in April 2007 and launched more recently, in mid-2008, Allvoices strives to be the first true people's media, according to their mission statement. The online global citizen media platform enables individuals, or citizens, worldwide to share their take on newsworthy events wherever they take place and at any point in time.

The news content distributed by Allvoices is not edited by humans, but is processed through the use of proprietary algorithms, or problem solving software that weaves the citizen journalist's content with mainstream media feeds.

Last week, IJNet writer Zul Maidy interviewed Amra Tareen, founder of Allvoices. Amra was previously a partner at Sevin Rosen Funds, focusing on investment opportunities in communications infrastructure and next generation carriers from 2000 to 2006. Her career track in telecommunications includes managerial roles in Ascend Communications, Lucent Technologies and Telstra Australia.

Amra, a native of Pakistan and Australia, received an MBA from Harvard University and a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from University of New South Wales, Australia.

ZM: Could you describe to us the essence of Allvoices?
AT: Most citizen media sites are local. On Allvoices we have 33,000 city pages. When you're reporting from a city, [the story] gets loaded up on the city page, and then we try to determine whether it is new, valid, or credible. The news item becomes popular as more and more people get into the mix of things. As it gains momentum on Allvoices, as well as on the Internet, it could move from the city page through to the world page.

ZM: What is it that motivates citizens to contribute to Allvoices?
AT: People can create their own brand on Allvoices, and as your audience develops, the site helps you build a community and also gets you traffic. When you get readers, you'll have a higher reach and you'll get paid a higher CPM (cost per thousand page impressions) in advertising revenue.

If you are a citizen, journalist, blogger, or a student, if you are a great writer and you are contributing, you should be able to make money. The goal of Allvoices is to get the cost structure low, get the community and citizens to move forward so we don't hire people, and use technology in algorithms to help us scale to share our revenue with our end users.

ZM: What goes behind the credibility ratings of each news item?
AT: When you send a news item to Allvoices we try to determine its geography and what category of news the material falls into. Then we try to identify the keywords. Based on those parameters, we start looking at who else on Allvoices was recording. Is there anyone else reporting on the same story, then we say, "OK, this may be credible." We then look at stories from traditional news sources reporting and posts from bloggers. We finally give you a credibility score, which is self-adjusting.

ZM: Who decides? Who is "We"?
AT: The technology. It's in the algorithms. We are community based or automated - software based. Both the community and the algorithms are involved in deciding the credibility rating of the news item. If you report something, an algorithm rates it higher. And the community may help the algorithm and say that the algorithm has judged it wrong and take it the other way. So the algorithm takes all that into account. It's dynamic.

ZM: What do you feel makes Allvoices unique?
AT: Allvoices' model is very different from the newspaper's "top-down" model. It does not have an editor, nor does it tinker with your content. We rank your content based on the community and the Internet and all our algorithms, but we will never, never change your content. We want to hear your voice. We don't want to manipulate or put words into other people's mouths. We are solely unbiased.

We don't want to edit and we don't want to have a bias. We want to let people make their own decisions and get other voices heard, because I strongly believe people have different perspectives about the same news, at different locations of the world. Allvoices is very dependent on geographic location and is location based.

All the content that you contribute on Allvoices belongs to you. We just distribute it, just like YouTube. Your content is not alone. Once you write, we'll collect, and we'll aggregate videos or images. We'll make a really rich multimedia content and create a community. On average, an Allvoices registered user gets 300 page views.

ZM: How big is the Allvoices team?
AT: We have seven full time staff. I have a team of engineers here, software developers, programmers, and we continue to add features to make it easier for our users to contribute, to add more features. It's an ongoing process. But we also have contractors including UI (User Interface) developers, web designers and operation servers that we bring in a few at a time.

ZM: Is there any human interaction between Allvoices and the community?
AT: We have two types of human interactivity. One is the community interaction between users and reporters. The other human intervention is when our community manager tries to resolve an online dispute between members of the community. This is a person at Allvoices who can solve problems. It's more like customer support.

If they have any issues with products not working, or if their sites are not up, they will send all the messages to the community manager, and she'll try to resolve it. She's up all the time.

ZM: Given the chance, would you provide training opportunities to your contributors?
AT: If our community wanted that, if they sent a lot of messages to the community manager, we could partner with local journalists to help them. The good thing about a startup is that you continually improve by taking ideas that would help build it.

ZM: Do you feel that Allvoices has reached its maximum potential?
AT: Not at all. We're just starting. The company was created in April 2007 and we started development in August. We launched the site to the public in July 2008.

In March, we had over 2 million unique visitors in a month. So we're going tremendously. Now I need to get more writers and more registered users, to get more of the reporters to start contributing to Allvoices. In terms of the reach from contribution and traffic, we're nowhere near. We're just beginning, and we want to get people on the planet to contribute to Allvoices.

Right now we have people from over 167 countries reporting.

ZM: In what way(s) do you feel Allvoices can grow?
AT: To get really comprehensive local and global coverage, you have to leverage the people who are there, because you can never have global desks and all these other people that are just employed by yourself. People are going to be in different places and they're going to change. So they should get paid for what they do as opposed to having journalists all the time that you have on payroll.

As you write more and more great content and you have your own fans, you have a reputation and your credibility rises. And that develops and brings you revenue.

ZM: What was your drive behind starting Allvoices?
AT: I used to be a venture capitalist. And after 9/11, being a Muslim woman, I felt that the mainstream media labeled everyone as a terrorist. I am not a terrorist. My kids are not terrorists. So it was my mission to create a media site where everyone's voices can be heard, no matter where they come from.

ZM: What is your view of the future of the news media landscape?
AT: I think there will always be newspapers, but maybe largely in the electronic format. I don't know what will happen to the mainstream media, because I'm not from the news industry. I am a consumer of news, and I really want to enable people.

I believe the news media landscape will change forms, but we will always need journalists. We'll always need investigative reporting. Something is going to evolve, and I don't know what it is going to be. But I still think that people like you are going to succeed regardless of how the industry has changed.

I was from the telecoms industry, and I've learned that in every industry it's like a pendulum. First it rises, then it falls. Then it reinvents itself. Times change, but people move along with them.

Journalists will still be sought after, but just by different institutions. Overall, I think it is the best time for journalists to be in their field.

To visit AllVoices, visit http://www.allvoices.com/.