There Must Be A Bloody Big Hole Somewhere (Digg)
A while back Digg.com under went an overhaul moving to what they have dubbed Digg v3. Although this is old news now, and every geek worth his salt has taken stock of the spiffy AJAX enhanced features, my experience may have been a little different for I am one of 'the cursed freeloaders'. No news to anyone that has read my past entries, but after the accusations made during the lead up to Digg v3 I thought it was important to get my position out there.
I have been reading user submitted news sites such as Slashdot for many a year now, and recently added Digg to my ever expanding list of 'pre-work coffee fueled reading'. Initially I treated Digg much the same as Slashdot; checking headlines once a day and reading the remaining posts as time permitted. It quickly became apparent though that Digg was a different kind of beast and as such my approach slowly evolved to something a little more frantic, checking the top stories numerous times a day just in case I missed a vital tid-bit. Eventually I worked Digg into my new homepage, but due to the shear mass of news pumping through every day I still cant help checking it more often then I should.
What sets Digg apart from more traditional news sites is its reliance on community input. All stories on Digg are posted by users and are promoted depending of the response of the rest of the community. Ultimately this makes Digg self sustaining and governing that never stagnates. Of course, if all the users or top users were to stop submitting and 'Digging' the whole thing would fall apart. Luckily this doesn't look like it will be happening anytime soon as Digg continues to go from strength to strength, rocketing Kevin Rose (one of the founders) to superstar status. As the community is dominated by geeks, the stories tend to be closer to 'news for nerds' than 'stuff that matters', but this doesn't really bother me as it is what my life revolves around. As part of the version 3 update attempts were made to broaden the news coverage, but short of the announcement of Steve Irwin's death, the top stories remain technology oriented (often including Digg itself).
There are an ever increasing number of Digg clones (the most well known being Netscape's blatant rip-off) being released, but new tools, awesome styling and the overwhelming support of its users has left the best on top. Even in the face of criticism, Digg has never faltered and remains a top source for up to the minute news. I have tried contributing to the community as much as possible since creating my account, but when faced with a seemingly insurmountable wall of news, signing in and digging the stories I read does not always happen. I'm far from shirking my freeloader nature, but I have hopes that one day I will come to grips with my fears and maybe even post a story or two of my own.
Categories: Web2.0, Digg, News
I have been reading user submitted news sites such as Slashdot for many a year now, and recently added Digg to my ever expanding list of 'pre-work coffee fueled reading'. Initially I treated Digg much the same as Slashdot; checking headlines once a day and reading the remaining posts as time permitted. It quickly became apparent though that Digg was a different kind of beast and as such my approach slowly evolved to something a little more frantic, checking the top stories numerous times a day just in case I missed a vital tid-bit. Eventually I worked Digg into my new homepage, but due to the shear mass of news pumping through every day I still cant help checking it more often then I should.
What sets Digg apart from more traditional news sites is its reliance on community input. All stories on Digg are posted by users and are promoted depending of the response of the rest of the community. Ultimately this makes Digg self sustaining and governing that never stagnates. Of course, if all the users or top users were to stop submitting and 'Digging' the whole thing would fall apart. Luckily this doesn't look like it will be happening anytime soon as Digg continues to go from strength to strength, rocketing Kevin Rose (one of the founders) to superstar status. As the community is dominated by geeks, the stories tend to be closer to 'news for nerds' than 'stuff that matters', but this doesn't really bother me as it is what my life revolves around. As part of the version 3 update attempts were made to broaden the news coverage, but short of the announcement of Steve Irwin's death, the top stories remain technology oriented (often including Digg itself).
There are an ever increasing number of Digg clones (the most well known being Netscape's blatant rip-off) being released, but new tools, awesome styling and the overwhelming support of its users has left the best on top. Even in the face of criticism, Digg has never faltered and remains a top source for up to the minute news. I have tried contributing to the community as much as possible since creating my account, but when faced with a seemingly insurmountable wall of news, signing in and digging the stories I read does not always happen. I'm far from shirking my freeloader nature, but I have hopes that one day I will come to grips with my fears and maybe even post a story or two of my own.
Categories: Web2.0, Digg, News
posted by Adam at 9:12 PM
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