Digg Disappointment

I must admit that Digg isn't something I paid much attention to during the height of its popularity let alone now that it's not doing as well.

In one of my other classes, a student presented about how he uses Digg to get websites and articles for his tech interests and how it allows him to be able to get the information he needs right away. Dr. Levinson's chapter and supplementary lecture about the website definitely sparked my interest in it since I do a lot of reading about the soccer team I support, and Google News simply lists everything. While that's great for finding news, it's difficult to sift through what information is reliable and what should remain unread. So the concept of Digg was definitely appealing to me since it would queue up results that other fans think are worth a read. Another advantage of it is that the way everything is set up is very clean. There are not a lot of images or ads that get in the way of results and it's easy to just see the headline.

Unfortunately for my purposes, Digg has been a bust. I guess the Liverpool following on Digg isn't that prevalent and the results that come up tend to be more random than Google's. Most of the sites dug more than once are also just some fan videos of goals. It wasn't the news aggregating powerhouse I expected (as it is in the front page), at least for the topic I am interested it.

While the concept is pretty good and for certain topics and current events it could be good, I think I will stick to the more traditional media outlets and blogs I already follow for news. It was disappointing, but it wasn't a big part of my internet time in the first place.

No digg big deal.

Digg

I have never used Digg but I've seen it on various websites. I first saw it on StumbleUpon. After reading the article I stumbled on, it said "Digg this". What is Digg? How do I Digg something?
Digg is a social news website, consisting of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying. The readers get to decide what the stories are by "digging" the story up. Digg was originally popular because of it's creation of other social networking sites with story submission and voting systems. It has inspired other social networking websites, like Facebook, to add the "like" button - which is very similar to digging something.
After finding out what Digg is, I think it would be a great tool for procrastination and boredom, much like StumbleUpon and Facebook.

Digg What?

Prior to reading this chapter in New New Media, I had only briefly heard people mention the website Digg. I had no idea what it was or how it worked, because quite frankly, I didn't need to. After reading the chapter and investigating a little bit, I found Digg to be quite interesting, to the point that I actually got my own Digg account. It proved to be a useful way to browse headlines and see what's new and find some interesting articles to read.

Digg is a user generated content site where people post headlines and links, and other people can either 'Digg' it and vote it up or 'Bury' it and vote it down depending on whether they like it or not. Their is no 'friending' like you can on Facebook, however like Twitter you can become a 'Fan' of someone and follow them. Also like Twitter if the person who you are following decides to become a fan of you too and follow you back, you can send messages, called 'Shouts' to each other, another Twitter like concept. You can also provide a small profile with your name, picture, location, and description of yourself as Digg is still nonetheless a social site. You can also add links to your other social sites or websites that you my have too. Digg can also be connected with you Facebook, Twitter and Google accounts as well.

Digg proved to be much more of a help than I thought it would be at first glance. It offers a constant news stream that is more than just a monotony of song lyric statuses on Facebook, or Charlie Sheen's latest Tweet, if offers more relevant and useful information to the world around us.

Ya Dig?

I first joined Digg back in my freshman or sophomore year of high school after a tech-savvy friend of mine told me about it. Back then it was a pretty cool site to use in order to find interesting stories or articles--and it still is. Before there was "liking" on Facebook, it was fun to agree with something by "Digging it," or even giving 5 stars to a Youtube video (bring the stars back! Stop making everything like Facebook!) Over the years Digg has seen some changes, but it has largely remained the same, which is why I still like it and go on regularly. There aren't many sites out there that I can say I visited 5 or 6 years ago and still visit, but Digg has a winning formula that isn't broke, and ain't been fixed.


I think that Digg's roots can be tied to the mentality held by the early pioneers of the Internet. Before the World Wide Web, the Internet was a very different place. People shared programs, users had coding skills, and modifying or tinkering around with source material was encouraged. People communicated on bulletin boards and were eager to show each other interesting things. Digg recalls this eagerness to share interesting and cool information with other people, and the community of Digg users gets to determine what is most valuable. But this only works in an ideal situation.

Digg is not meant to be complicated or time consuming. It is a quick and easy way to see what other people think is worth looking at. That is why, "gaming" as Dr. Levinson describes it in New New Media isn't allowed. Artificially promoting stories to the Top News page interferes with Digg's ability to naturally bring attention to topics people agree are interesting. Much like the ideal, level-playing field that the pioneers had in mind for the Internet, Digg functions properly when people don't try to beat the system in order to promote their own agendas.

Is Burial in Digg's Future?

Prior to reading New New Media, I did not know about Digg either. I do not know anybody that uses Digg, but I do think that the concept is pretty cool. I think that, contrary to a regular newspaper, it gives the people the power to decide what stories are most important to them. I think that this website is a sort of shortcut. It is one general place to go to learn about different topics, news, issues among many different categories with ease. I definitely think that our society values ease and speed these days so I think Digg is a great place for this. However, now that news websites are starting to incorporate videos and links to other pages, I wonder how different Digg actually is from a normal newspaper website.

I don't know if I just missed the Digg era, but it is interesting to think about why Digg didn't catch on and become as popular as other sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Is it saying something about our society? Do we care more about being social, looking at people's profiles and finding out what our "friends" are doing, more than we care about real events and news that is occurring? I would like to think that this is not true, but judging from the popularity of Facebook and Twitter over Digg, I think that it actually may be a possibility.

I found this article about some changes being made at Digg: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-20045598-2.html

dirt to digg

Digg is an online index for all news published on the web. It is a combination of stumble, facebook, and twitter. The user on Digg can search for information or news articles that pertain to their interests. Digg selects articles that fit your interests automatically. Digg also allows the user to have "friends" just like you would on facebook or twitter. Digg shows common interests between you and your friends and connects articles that interest both of you.

Personally I don't think Digg is all that useful unless you are using it for your job or school work. I just don't see how being connected to people for what news articles I'm interested in is really that big of a deal. I think that although it is an interesting idea, I just don't ever see myself using this website regularly. Digg flat out isn't facebook or twitter. It's purpose isn't to connect people for social reasons but to connect people based on what news articles they like. That being said, I just don't think this type of new new media is life changing or worth my time. Google is an easier and more popular web search that finds interesting articles as well and I just don't see Digg ever surpassing that.

i Digg it

I was not familiar with the site Digg before reading Levinson’s book but found this chapter to be very informative. After visiting the site myself, I found many different stories that I was interested in and was surprised on how easily accessible they were. They are categorized into topics such as Entertainment, Science, and Sports, which made the site very easy to navigate.

In comparison to other social media sites, I would not consider this a great site to have “Friends.” The concept that one person can follow another like Twitter does not really make sense to me because I feel you should both agree to being “friends” together. While they are not true friends, I do like the idea that your “friends” have similar interests to you just as you would in real life. This keeps you connected and forces you to keep up with each other so you can find out more things going on in the world. You can keep each other updated on current events and this is a very positive part of this site. The site is always refreshing which keeps everyone informed at all times.

How Non-Voters Can Keep Up With the Rankings

Digg is a site that I am not familiar with. However, after reading the chapter in Dr. Levinson's book New New Media, I have an idea of what it is like thanks to websites such as Stumbleupon and Mashable.

I found the Ron Paul section to be pretty interesting due to the stories about Ron Paul that were "Dugg" by readers, despite the fact that he did not even win the primaries. Dr. Levinson points out the usage of Digg by people (who claim to be) 13 years or old. There is a 5 year gap of teenagers who can use the site, but are not able to vote. Dr. Levinson says there are several factors why this occurs, but most importantly it could be due to the young audience that Ron Paul targets rather than Barack Obama who targets those people between the age of 18 and 30. So rather than this occurrence of "gaming" on the website, it seems that the age difference plays a role in online politics as well.

Towards the end of the chapter, Dr. Levinson talks about the "Alexa ranking," which made me curious to see how much it has changed. As it turns out, Google is the number 1 website (which probably held that spot when this chapter was written) and Facebook has moved from number 5 to number 2. MySpace, which was ranked number 7, is now ranked number 63. And these new rankings have occurred about 2 years later than when the book was written.

Not only were "Top Sites" posted, but so were "Hot Topics." The one that I think is worth mentioning is FireFox 4, currently ranked at number 3. FireFox is one of the leading web browsers today. After experiencing some competition from Google Chrome (and let's face it, it doesn't receive any competition from Internet Explorer), FireFox is being updated with some pretty cool improvements. The official update can be download starting tomorrow. To see some of the features in this update, check out the following link from Mashable, a site similar to Digg. I can't wait for this update!
http://mashable.com/2011/03/10/firefox-4-guide/