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Friday, April 13, 2007

Digg.com

I know I have mentioned this site before but I wanted to post about it. Digg.com is a website that keeps track of the most popular stories on the internet. Here is a description from the Wikipedia:

Digg is a community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles, recently expanding to a broader range of categories such as politics and entertainment. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control.

News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system. This differs from the hierarchical editorial system that many other news sites employ.
I like Digg for the following four reasons:

  1. There was a story, I don't remember the source, that said websites like digg are promoting peoples literacy levels and world awareness levels like nothing else. Instead of spending their time playing video games or watching TV, people who use websites like digg are often reading articles and catching up on world events in a much greater degree then their peers.
  2. You can make a good story popular.(And should for our benefit) You have some democratic ability to make a difference in what the world is learning about.
  3. It is always good to be caught up on interesting stories that you could only know about collaborating with thousands of people from around the world.
  4. I am a big believer in the idea that information and education are important to a healthy society. It is hard to suppress important information from a website where thousands can reach out and inform.


3 comments:

  1. It is an interesting site but I have to admit that it is not my favorite. I am more in favor of sites like slashdot.org and other comparable news sites. I spent some time on digg but I kept getting frustrated with it because news stories were popular only because they were popular. It's just a vicious cycle. I also didn't think that many of the stories were particularly illuminating. They were things that I could get from other news sources.

    The other problem is shear volume of news and not all of it relevant. It's very hard to sort through it all. I know "It's better that I sort through it and for me to determine what is important or not and not let the "lens of the media" determine what is important." But I can only devote so much time and energy to the news, and to really participate in digg takes quite a lot of commitment.

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  2. Ryan, you have a good point. I like slashdot as well. I like a few sights like these.

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