Allvoices, a new citizen media start-up, today introduced an open global community where anyone can report and share news from anywhere in the world. The Web site gives the diverse community a chance to share and discuss news, videos, images and opinions tied to events and people. It is the first community to weave together traditional news, blogs, online resources and anyone who wants to share their voice.

Since its beta release, Allvoices has built a rapidly growing community of individuals voicing multiple perspectives on important news and issues facing people today.

The Allvoices community provides eyewitness news and perspective that is free from traditional editorial oversight and censorship characteristic of global media organizations. Allvoices’ Web site aggregates, contextualizes and categorizes a broad base of breaking stories and individual perspectives through unedited points of view. Using a set of proprietary algorithms, Allvoices has created a technology platform that utilizes more than 3,500 mainstream feeds and online sources of news to provide relevancy and context for user generated news. Story rank on the home page is determined by the number and diversity of other sources citing the particular news event and community-activity on the report.

“Allvoices is using technology to leverage a single voice. Contributed content is validated by the community, traditional media and other online sources,” said Amra Tareen, CEO of Allvoices. “At a time when traditional news establishments are facing severe cutbacks, the need for citizen reporting is more important than ever, and we believe our model of merging user-generated content and professional news sources into one community will create the first true people’s media.”

Registered users can report news on a broad range of topics divided into the following categories: Politics, Business, Conflict & Tragedy, Science & Technology, Sports and Entertainment. Allvoices takes each news posting, organizes it by location, time and category, and creates context by bringing together existing, relevant news stories, blogs, images and videos. The technology platform also has an algorithmic ranking method and a system that strings related content together. A person can report news on Allvoices from their cell phone with SMS, MMS or via the Web site, by clicking on “report your news.” Each news event is assigned an event code number that will help individuals add their voice from their mobile phone to an existing news report by automatically linking the related contributions together.

Allvoices spawned from a trip Tareen took last year to Pakistan where she witnessed the devastation of the 2005 earthquake and felt her own pictures and experiences were not enough to make a difference back home. Inspired by the individuals she met, Tareen wanted to create a place for individuals from all over the world to report on what they know first hand and share their experiences via photos, video and stories. Born and raised in Pakistan and Australia, Tareen used her personal experience, her Harvard MBA and her previous career as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist to start the Allvoices community.

“At it’s core, Allvoices is about fostering democracy; about giving power to the people; about their voices having the effect that makes a difference,” said Tareen. “We believe that differing points of view complete the human story.”

Allvoices’ mission is to create a global community for sharing news, videos, images and opinions from multiple points of view that invoke an emotional connection between individual perspectives from around the world. Allvoices brings together context, insight and diversity of opinions around a broad range of topics and issues on the global, national and local levels. Allvoices is one of the largest global communities offering unedited and relevant news and perspectives in one place. Using a set of proprietary algorithms, Allvoices utilizes professional and online news sources, blogs, images and videos to determine relevancy, foster credibility and maintain openness with each contribution made to the site.