I was thinking about how it was that I got to Newsvine in the first place today and thought that my story along with an invitation to the community to share each of their's as well would make for an interesting piece as well as a great way for Viners to get to know one another better.

Back in June of 2007 I was Googling Pervez Musharraf and when looking through the results I found one here on Newsvine. Upon my first contact with the site, I just understood the process of seeding a news story. I seeded some stories through June and July but then my attention span ran out. There were other places that I could link to a story and talk about it like the discussion forums that I'm a part of. And so, that was where my Newsvine journey ended... or so I thought.

One day in October I was bored and the quality of discussion in the forums I frequented had declined markedly. I remembered this site but didn't remember the name so I Googled "seed news story" and looked through the results until I saw that name that I recognized from the summer before: Newsvine. I took an interest in understanding it more since I figured I'd be spending more time here seeding stories and discussing them. I realized it was something I wished I had done earlier. LOL I found out all the following things which were an improvement over sites I had frequented before:
- There were content-driven groups that you could publicize your seeds and self-written articles through
- It had a user interface that was extremely functional and pretty easy to use once you spent some time with it
- There was a community aspect here that I hadn't found anywhere else that was strengthened both by the Leaderboard and by the profit-sharing
- It allowed other users to vote up your stories, seeds and comments which not only contributed to the sense of community but also acted as a form or reward for me because it was nice to write something and receive the validation of seeing that people had voted for it

I started to integrate seeding Newsvine with my reading of news (and I read a LOT of news) and, remembering how I had enjoyed writing actual articles for the high school newspaper as opposed to just discussion forum responses, I tried my hand at writing again when I felt like I had a decent idea to write on. Now here I am into my fourth month of heavy use, enjoying Newsvine and thankful that MSNBC bought it because I know that MSNBC has the resources to allow it to expand, try new ideas and, most of all, survive in a tough market.

So, that was my first time. ;-) Let's hear about your first time with Newsvine.