Can you digg it?
Recently a new technology “news” site hit the scene and has been heavily promoted by some tech celebrities. This site, known as digg, takes the approach of being an unmoderated forum for people to post technology news (among other items) and gives the sites readership the “editorial” power to bring the interests of the collective to the front page. Granted that this isn’t a brand new idea (giving editorial power to the readers), but it is quite possibly the most effective implementation of the format that I have come across.
When referring to the site, I use the word news loosely due to the high amount of “not quite news” that makes its way onto the site. I would like to think of it more as the tech related land of wonder. Postings range everywhere from “Latest Tech News Of The Day”, to “200GB Maxtor SATA Hard Drive $59.99″, with the remainder being everything in between. For example, as of the time of the writing of this post there are currently five posts on the unfiltered section that are either simply links to the “deal of the day” or “go download this file” links. Granted, currently there is only a single deal link that has made it to the front page, so the democratic style of rule on the site does work most of the time.
This democratic style of editing content is in stark contrast to some of the most popular technology websites, with probably the most notable being Slashdot. The idea of both digg and Slashdot being that the readership of the site submits content and the editors bring it to the front page for the masses to consume. But that is where the similarities end. Slashdot has its own collection of private editors that decide what is worthy of being posted on the front page, while digg has its entire readership available as an editor to decide what is considered the most important stories of the moment. Even though both sites allow you to look through non-front page worthy stories, I have found that digg’s subsections and diggall fuctions to be more usable than those features that Slashdot provides to it’s readership to consume the non-front page worthy items. The importance of the front page is probably the second most striking difference between digg and Slashdot. With Slashdot, it’s all or nothing, front page exposure and the death of your website for a day, while digg gives every story equal opportunity to be viewed by the readership. Currently their is no such thing as the digg effect, unlike the well documented effect of reaching the front page of Slashdot, which can bring 30,000 or more hits to your website in a single day above your normal traffic.
With that being said, digg offers those willing to take the time to search for their news a wealth of stories that might have easily been missed as they have been tucked away in some dark corner of the internet. Time is the secret of using digg, with the more time you spend exploring the diggall section, the more likely you are to encounter that specific tidbit of news that will effect your day dramatically. The diggall function is essential to the experience of the website as it helps to remove the reliance of “what is important to others” factor that can clog the homepage. That also being the downfall of digg, with those stories that reach the front page, become even more popular than those that become pushed further and further down the submitted stories list (being as how it is date dependant).
The site’s readership also seems somewhat slow at interacting using comments for the stories that are submitted. The average number of comments of a post that reaches the front page can easily top the total combined posts of every post from the last 24 hours that did not reach the front page. This lack of interaction can be a bit of a detraction to the overall community feel of the website, yet can also be a boon as it helps force the focus of towards the sites true focus, news and information. Comments have long ago become the place of trolls and spammers, so a site that has a quality readership that can discect the postings without hundreds of pages of pointless post can be a refreshing experience.
The only major detraction I have from the usability of digg is the repetition that can reach it’s pages on a regular basis. It seems that anytime there is a major news story for a day at least three or more posts reach the pages, all pointing to the same news story. It seems that at some point in the development process of the site, the report feature that was available in earlier versions of the website was removed from the individual story sections of the website. Granted it is still available from the diggall section, but it is not the as easy as it might be to report a bad story. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to digg the news, and seeing three seperate posts out of ten that are referring to the same news story. But with any site with a fully democratic style of rule this is an expected side effect and does not currently run rampant troughout the site, so as not to destroy the experience of visiting the website.
Where it really counts though is where is digg currently in my daily consumption of technology news? Currently I use it as my fourth source of news for the day, behind Slashdot, News.com, and BroadbandReports. Given the site’s young age and still developing process, I have too look forward to seeing how it handles the demands of it’s growing readership base and the stress they will put on its editorial style. Does digg have a point of saturation where its democratic processes will cause it to drown? Only time will tell, and in the mean time I will still visit it every morning, coffee in hand, and every evening, beer in hand, right after I check Slashdot, and News.com, and BroadbandReports.