Alt Wire is an real-time socially curated newsmagazine from Utne Reader. They selected a group of twenty "core influencers" to help do the curating of the content that makes it to the site. Seems like a good model for brands looking to get into some sort of branded entertainment (Makeup.com comes to mind).
Namesake is a site for people to have realtime conversations. People post topics or questions they want to discuss and then people "join the conversation" keeping the whole conversation threaded; it's sort of like a forum that brings topics to you instead of having to go through to find them yourself.