NewsBox looks to tune out media noise

Somewhere in the social space between LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, the Baltimore-based team behind NewsBox envisions a publishing platform that focuses on influencers.
Initially conceived as a way for reporters to work around the sea of press release spam in their inbox, the cloud-hosted software now features a full dashboard that’s designed to allow journalists, organizations with a message, investors and more to connect, president Gary Pick told Baltimore TechBreakfast last week.
Once they sign up, organizations and PR specialists can upload content or press releases to the site, and share it through content categories within NewsBox, as well as social media channels and RSS. From there, journalists can get access to the content through their own NewsBox accounts. The company is also working on developing a tool that will allow users to track where a story was reported, and how it progressed.
Launched in 2012 by the software company Connectus, the site has 10,000 users, 600 of which are journalists.
Here’s its angle:
Where LinkedIn focuses on jobs and Facebook focuses on social interaction, NewsBox looks to keep the focus solely on content. That way, influencers can tune out the noise, Pick said.
But the laser focus doesn’t sacrifice diversity. A quick scan of recent uploads shows press releases promoting subjects from the rapper L.O to aircraft engine monitoring systems. One normally ubiquitous subject, however, was absent.
“You’re not going to see a lot of cat pics on NewsBox, unless your business is launching a cat-related product,” Pick said.