Digg It, Dugg It, Good

The next big thing in Internet news is digg. According to the site it is:

Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.

That’s a lot of buzzwords to be sure. It’s much easier to explain in another way. Digg is a site where people post what they consider interesting stories. Other users can agree by “digging” the entry. Each user can “digg” a story only once.

The best/most interesting stories are naturally the ones with the most diggs. Those stories get promoted to the front page, allowing one to see the most popular stories of the day. This differs from a site such as Slashdot, where editors take submissions and decide which stories are best. Given, the Slashdot editors do tend to pick the most important stories, but one never knows what the dynamic of a large crowd will pick out. That, my friend, is what non-hierarchal editorial control.

The other buzzwords can be explained much easier. Social bookmarking is when you mark things you want to remember or find interesting and those choices are made public, allowing friends and strangers to see what you’re looking at. Blogging allows one to easily post a story along with your own comments to your blogging system of choice (yes, even Blogger and LiveJournal). RSS feeds for the most popular stories, stories you’ve dugg, and even those of your friends are available.

Speaking of friends, like many new websites, you can add other users as friends. I’m d00d if you’d like to add me and see what I’m digging. I’ve integrated that feed into Planet d00dism already. Another good friend to add is diggnation. Diggnation isn’t just a user on the site, it’s a pod/vidcast.

If you’re into tech or science news (I can think of at least one person interested in the latter), join the revolution.