The Digg Effect

I was taking a quick look back at the Crashpod archives today, and I noticed we’ve never put up a good write up on the Internet’s new darling: Digg.com. It’s a site that’s quickly moving up through the ranks of internet popularity, and for good reason: the content found on Digg’s front page is arguably the most consistently up to date and timely aggregate of technology news you can find on the net today.

Can you Digg it?
Digg.com allows all of its users to post links with short explanations to a master pool of content. At first thought, you might believe this would be a pointless endeavor, as the signal to noise ratio would likely make finding anything truly interesting or pertinent exceptionally difficult. Digg’s master stroke is the filter they apply to all of these content submissions: each story can be “dugg” by users of the site, and only after a predefined threshold is met are stories promoted to the front page.

Putting the fate of these news items in the hands of its readers allows Digg to move and react far more rapidly than sites that rely on an editorial staff to decide what is and is not worthy of prime time (think Slashdot). Of course there’s also an element of danger in this strategy: websites that put their fate in the hands of unknown parties from around the ‘net are naturally putting themselves at risk of accepting offensive and obscene content. Digg’s got this covered as well: just as any user can vote to promote a story, they can also report content as being bad links, spam, or as in digg’s words, “just lame”.

If you’re a dedicated tech newshound, you’ll find Digg an invaluable tool. Even if tech isn’t your thing, keep your eyes out for news about Digg: they just scored a nice bundle of venture capital, so they’re developing plans to branch out of tech news into other areas of interest. I love seeing the idea of social software really starting to come into it’s own: it feels like everyday the internet becomes easier to use, and thus a more integral part of everyday life.