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Article Rating: Average
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| Author:
| h3raLd
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| Submitted: |
10-Sep-2007 11:51:19 |
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| Some opinions concerning technology-related news sites like Digg, Slashdot, Reddit and dzone.
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I am addicted to technology and I spend a substantial portion of my (scarce) free time reading what's going on in the blogosphere (an old euphemism for "multitude of pointless internet blogs").
I enjoy RSS aggregators (particularly Google Reader), and I have subscribed to a few interesting and very popular blogs like LifeHacker, TechCrunch and a few Ruby/Rails-related sites. Of course, I also subscribed to Digg and Slashdot. I didn't subscribe to Reddit (though I did look at it) and I also subscribed to dzone, to get a wider sense of the aggregator-type sites that are out there, other than the obvious ones.
In general, my findings are somewhat mixed.
Digg
It seemed to be "The Site", back in the day: a site entirely governed by its users that actually worked well. Users submit new stories, and other users "digg them" if they like them. "Digging" increments a counter which can make the story appear on the front page of the site if a certain threshold is reached within a certain time.
Although the actual algorithm has never been disclosed, the mechanism seems to work well enough, and also seems more democratic: if more people like something, it has more of a chance of appearing on the front page of the site and becoming even more popular.
It is also a nice way to promote one's own articles, and I managed to get one of mine onto the front page. I got peak traffic of a few thousand visitors within the first 10 minutes (VERY impressive to watch), which went down regularly for the next few days. It improved the overall average of visitors to my site, though, as more and more people read my article, blogged about it, bookmarked it, stumbled upon it and so on.
All this was a year ago. While I still get people coming to read the same article, a few things changed in the way Digg works - some for the better and some for the worse:
- The site now covers every kind of news, from technology (which is now relegated to a mere content category) to politics to weird things.
- It is now much more difficult to get to the front page.
- The overall quality and originality of technology-related articles which make the front page is below average.
I'd like to elaborate a little bit on the 3rd point. I came to this conclusion after noticing the following trends:
- Once a week on average, an article about Firefox Extensions or Top X extensions for developers|designers|bloggers|noobs gets to the first page. Although I use Firefox as my main browser all the time, I really don't understand how it is possible that the SAME thing is considered digg-worthy so often!
- A list or roundup of free/open source alternatives to common Windows apps makes the first page once in 15 days, on average. That's an awful lot, considering that they're all reporting about the same pieces of software. Nothing wrong with it, but one list is more than enough for most of us, I think.
- If the story title matches "iPhone" or "Steve Jobs" or "iPod" then it's going to be on the front page within the hour. When the damn thing came out I unsubscribed from Digg for a week; stories about the Magic Object of Worship kept coming out for days - it was a nightmare. Still, if you notice some slightly unusual thing about your iPhone and blog about it, you'll get to the front page in no time.
- Programming-related stories hardly make the front page anymore. What? Nobody writes good tutorials or articles about coding? Yes, they do, but they are obviously not interested enough.
I really don't understand how certain articles get to the front page, really. Apparently there's a huge number of people who really enjoy reading the same things over and over again.
Slashdot
When Digg started to become hugely popular, I was very tempted to unsubscribe from Slashdot, because its model seemed outdated and almost outrageous when compared to the alternatives (like Digg): Slashdot still publishes stories "hand-picked" by a very few individuals, while Digg users as a whole govern the content of the Digg site. Despite Slashdot's "archaic" structure, it is still the most reliable and most interesting source for tech news on the Internet.
I remember when a friend of mine interviewed CmdrTaco for CyberArmy, nearly two years ago:
Ravn: There has been a great deal of discussion lately about Digg. A lot of the comments I read on Slashdot are essentially just people pointing out how the story they're commenting on ran days/weeks/whatever earlier on Digg. Of course, this is largely due to Digg being a completely user-driven site without the editing that takes place on Slashdot. Is the Slashdot model better? Why? What do you think the pros and cons are of their setup?
CmdrTaco: I've spent a lot of time thinking about this one, but I think the difference comes down to something quite simple. We both start at the same place: taking content from readers. We choose what to post, they choose what to remove. It's subtle, but key. But both sites have editors working behind the scenes, we're just more honest about it I think.
To me, the differences between the models are clear: Slashdot's model never lowers the quality of the stories published in favor of a larger quantity of articles or more timely release of news items, while Digg does thew exact opposite.
Reddit
Reddit never really grew on me. Aside from the fact that they seem to automatically attack self-submitted stories (h3rald.com + submitted by h3rald = lame!!!11!), I think it lists too many different types of stories under too few categories (or "sub-reddits", as they call them): the sum total of their categories are politics, netsec, science, freeculture, joel, programming, features, and request. Reddit is the least worthwhile of the lot, partially because digg stories tend tro migrate over to Reddit sooner or later.
dzone
Dzone was a pleasant surprise, actually. I had come across the service a few times, but I never really tried it until I decided to submit my latest article to it. Within a few hours, it was on the front page. This generated a small-scale digg effect, which brought my site a few thousand visitors between those coming from the site itself, from StumbleUpon, and also del.icio.us. That's not too bad, especially on a first attempt.
Unlike the other sites, dzone is built specifically for developers, with the result that the site is the Digg of coding-related material; its relatively narrow focus makes it an invaluable resource for its main audience, and also allows the site to offer a detailed tagging system covering the most important programming languages and the most important fields of computer science.
The system is very similar to Digg: you can vote stories up or down, but the number of views and visits to a particular site seems to matter in the front-page promotion algorithm, which is an interesting concept. For example, I hardly ever digg nowadays; I just read the stories in my RSS feeds, so as a result I don't contribute to the site directly, which does not appear to have an effect on the article's rating. However, on dzone, by counting article clicks and site visits, every single person who reads an item on dzone actually makes it more popular. My article got on the front page with just a +7 vote, or something like that, but it also had over a hundred viewings.
To conclude, although I'm somewhat disappointed with the Digg Technology section, I think it's still pretty amazing for non-techie stuff, which is fine. As far as technology goes (both for enthusiasts and programmers), a blend of Slashdot and dzone is probably the best combination. Reddit simply didn't make the grade as far as I'm concerned. It just goes to show you, though, that whether it be actual technology or just reading about it, sometimes the tried-and-true methods (no matter how "archaic"), are still the best, even though there are always new ideas on the horizon.
This article was originally published by CyberArmy.net in the CyberArmy Library.
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