So, this isn’t really a news site but it is a tool that I see more and more news sites making available for their users to utilize. Digg.com is a site that does not actually generate a lot of content, instead they keep track of what the most recommended (or the links that get the most “diggs”) stories or links of the day are based upon how many visitors to the individual sites choose to dig it. Digg claims to “surface the best stuff as voted on by our users.” The interesting thing about this site is that there are no editors, instead the users pick all of the content that is featured on the site. What is featured is based strictly on how many recommendations it gets.
In the site’s about us section, they stress that they are all about sharing and discovery, so all of their topics or links have comment boxes and the possibility for users to discuss the content with others who found it useful or interesting.
On the site’s home page you have the option to choose a genre of topics you want to explore or simply explore the most popular links from the past 24 hours which is what is on the main page. All of the links are listed in descending rank order, so the first link you come to is the most popular story, as denoted by the number of times it has been dugg on the left side. The headline or title is a clickable link and sometimes there is a thumbnail image accompanying the link and a small summary of the link.
There really isn’t much to their site, but a user can get a lot out of it depending on what kinds of things they like to read about or watch. Instead of going to multiple sites to find things this site brings it all together for you and tells you what the rest of the world is talking about, reading and watching. In a way it takes all of the work out of getting the news. I like this better than Google reader because within the news feed on Digg, there are hardly ever any repeats of stories like I get from my subscriptions to multiple newspapers and sites like CNN. If the AP has covered it I will get the link sent to my reader about ten times.
On some news sites, like CNN, you are beginning to see them use Digg as a way to share their content and I think that more news sites should jump on the bandwagon. I think that this site would be particularly useful because they do not actually host the content from the sites like Google Reader does in some instances, all you get from Digg is the link that then takes you to the news site, so they would still be getting the traffic for their content. Overall, I think that Digg is a very useful tool for readers and news outlets alike to get information and receive information. It makes my life a little easier, and it certainly makes keeping up with the news a lot easier and a lot less repetitive.
