Digg This: Soon, Not Just for Geeks Anymore

kevin rose is the CEO of Digg? im moving back to slashdot

I have mixed feelings about the RSS feed I get from Digg. Seems to me it's still pretty prone to manipulations, and rampant 'we're tech and yer not'.

Would be interesting to see if broader range would mellow that.

Growing communities ain't easy.

Thanks for the scoop, Rob.

I think the real question now is whether all zeitgeist are created equal (especially when it comes to marketability).

Also, was he any more specific about how finely the universal zeitgiest is partitioned in the new design? I ask because I wonder whether the Digg crowd can handle a front page filled with even more controversy than it already is.

We have a french Digg-like (with other functionnalities) and it covers lots of non-geek categories, like politics, fun, people, economics, movies, music, and they all work fine, with a particular focus on politics : http://www.fuzz.fr

I hope it works for Digg.

What I'm hoping to see is a healthcare.digg.

This would be great. This is one area where mainstream news is completely missing the real story.

Most Americans are not hanging on the news of the latest drug, which will supposedly solve some major health issue, only to let us down by producing some deadly side effect.

We're not listening to the racket on bird flu or whatever health scare.

We're not tuned in to a clinical study that contradicts what we thought we knew about hormone therapy, which study is subsequently contradicted by the next study to come along.

We're interested in real solutions to real health problems. Does a castor oil pack seem to work for arthritis? Great, let's hear about it. Is there a household cleaner that doesn't contain neurotoxins? Cool, tell me all about it.

I think Digg is the perfect technology to make this happen in healthcare.

Whether the Digg brand will carry over or not, I'm not sure. But the technology of user-generated news is here to stay, and I really hope Digg will make it happen in healthcare.

This is clearly just an effort to become more like Newsvine.

Reddit.com has successfully been doing this for almost a year...

The major difference is that I doubt many people would be interested in hearing the musings of the average digg user on subjects like world affairs.

They will need to do a complete reboot to make mainstream news on digg work. Something much similiar to Newsvine.com, which already does a pretty good job of incorporating mainstream news alongside user generated content.

People already submit these things on digg, this way it'll get its own place and won't get mixed with the tech/nerd stuff.

while I would love to see it, I'm skeptical of a digg-site working outside of tech - right now.

Currently, I think the most active, vocal internet users are tech-oriented... maybe this will change in the future...

And Digg will be reorganized into the first... galactic... Collaborative Website! for a safer and more informed Society!

It'll be interesting to see how Digg gets into these other fields, especially politics. I've been using a few sites like Newsvine.com and Jazznoodle.com for politics for a while now. I think the success of Digg's foray will depend on how it handles different political groups and what it does about thread vandals.

LOL. Slashdot, Digg, etc all full of people who are rude to newcomers, elitests like MAc users. I occasionally read, but not daily and certainly dont waste my time with their communities. They are all overrated.

Hey, imagine reading about Paris Hilton's dog giving birth to a bunch of puppies in Digg? That will be bad. Making Digg uninteresting. If you think that will not happen, check out how many searches are done on paris hilton alone.

I suggest that digg allows people to digg what categories they want. Since it is a social site, let the society speak.

it is in my post at http://blogs.ideapreneur.net/ideas/?p=12

i think this is step in the right direction, more of a cnn by the people for the people instead of just tech news

As Karl said above, Reddit

http://www.reddit.com/

Forgot to add....

www.popurls.com

It lists the "front page" stories from reddit, slashdot, digg and other such sites in addition to the current popular or top flickr photos and google videos.

Oops, sorry Jay (the real CEO of Digg). I corrected the reference to Kevin, who is founder and president, not CEO.

that would be so great if digg really branched out mainstream. then, i could ditch my paper!

I think this is a good move by Digg. The site can sometimes feel restrictive because stories have to be "techy" in order to have a shot at the front page. I think a version that focuses more on politics or entertainment (and keeps these distinct sections separate from each other) would be a step in the right direction.

The digg model should work for just about any kind of topic. Sounds like winner to me. I think they should use subdomains for the different sections, like politics.digg.com and tech.digg.com

I think the problem will be that you can't take the geeks out of digg. It is a *collaboratively edited* site.

And the tacks that your typical geek takes on world news (software patents, bullet trains), entertainment (anime, scifi), and politics (libertarian elected-official-hating) aren't exactly what Average Joe is looking for.

I think with the development of open source software like Pligg, we'll see the abundance of Digg like sites from a number of people. Check out the marketing news site we developed on the Pligg platform: http://www.marktd.com

sites like http://crispynews.com are already branching out to these different areas.

There is already a open source digg-like software out there (Meneame) with TONS of clones:

http://meneame.wikispaces.com/Clones

There are over 115 digg-clones listed there already using the Meneame source code.

PS: I have nothing to do with Meneame. In fact I run a digg-like site for videos (www.zoomblast.com) developed in-house, so :-)

There is already a site devoted to celebrity and entertainment news. It can be viewed here:
http://www.staralicious.com

NO, they had better not add in non-tech stuff or it will kill digg's appeal.

Keep non-tech stuff separate at:

http://www.youpickthenews.com

It only makes sense to branch out... just look at that site, the growth has been phenomenal. No doubt the entertainment.digg.com will get just about the traffic as myspace. Another winner in the making i say. Go digg!

If you go to digg for the stories and not the community I suggest you checkout http://tail-f.net/ It pulls technology headlines from over a dozen tech news sites and lists them on one site. It's also got a single rss feed for all the headlines.