Digg : Going From Strength To Strength

We started by covering the Digg phenomenon recently while tracking its trailblazing growth. Technology Review writes, Digg has become a serious rival to Slashdot, Delicious etc,and other social bookmarking/community rating/"intelligent browsing" services. It notes that at TechnologyReview.com, Digg is routinely among the top 20 referring domains and in november,it was actually the third-ranking referrer,after Google and Yahoo, thanks largely to the hundreds of people who dugg one terrific article on aging and the brain by TR biotech editor Emily Singer. Now Digg has unveiled some radical improvements to Digg Spy, a page that shows a scrolling list of the stories people are digging (and dissing) in real time. When you go to Digg Spy, you are essentially watching democracy in action. You'll see the new pages just submitted to Digg, the pages people have just dugg or commented upon, and also the pages they've "buried" or removed from the queue due to irrelevance or duplication. It's like being in a massive restaurant kitchen and watching which orders are up and which dishes picky diners are sending back. Pretty soon, you get a sense of what's good on the menu. Comparisons to Google Zeitgeist are but natural - while Zeitgeist gives a static snapshot of trends in Google user's interests, Digg spy gives a sense of tapping into the wanderings of the collective human mind besides the fact that it shows you how people rate content they have already digested, while the Google display simply shows which topics people are curious about. Clearly Digg is paving a new trend.Overall, with blog publishers creating content they want dugg, submitters scouring the net for stories they can add to their 'published on the homepage' list, digg queuer watchers looking for cool links before anyone else has seen them, and digg readers reaping the benefits and creating a powerful digg.com frontpage readership, digg has come a long way very quickly. As digg tries to go into other fields to live up to their venture valuation, such as perhaps political news, general news, or more innovative areas, it will be interesting to see if they can keep this same ecosystem going or if they have to try to invent new dynamics..