Open Topic's goal is to create and dominate the news graph, providing a single platform for users to navigate, manage and contribute to their media stream.

Open Topic combines the sensibility-driven voice of great media with a Twitter data-mining app to create an innovative participatory news platform. Our open ecosystem -- all links resolve to the original site via a sidedock -- make Open Topic a true social newsroom, allowing us to build a graph for news unfettered by publishers' boundaries.

Our alpha -- www.opentopic.com -- showcases our Twitter-mining app, as well as the sidedock navigation. Currently, we are in the process of designing and implementing a new UI that will include the participatory element.

Started by three publishing and new media execs, Open Topic's team has grown to include an award-winning product development team, a data-mining architect and a digital strategist.

Our editorial director (see http://bit.ly/bOWJOW) is a best-selling author and editor. Our CEO is a serial entrepreneur who has raised over $1.5M for startup ventures. Our chief scientist, a former search architect from Ask.com, teaches computer science and loves to turn talented developers into innovators.

We share a large loft space with a division of O'Reilly Media and RevSquare, another startup. It's a collaborative startup environment, with passionate thinkers and doers. Our conference room can get a bit noisy when the whiteboard comes out, but everybody gets focused when its time to execute.

It is a loose, fun, kinetic place, with the coffee pot is always full. Since we bridge the media and tech worlds, we have editors, developers, biz dev and product dev people working together.