I had a story out in CJR today. It’s called "Digg This — a top ‘Digger,’ worries about his own power to drive traffic– and the potential rewards."
And at times I do. Social bookmarking is a young field and it has some growing to do. My number one piece of advice — Transparency, transparency, transparency.
I’m proud of this piece. Although the story doesn’t reflect it, I did a fair amount of reporting on it (and I want to thank all the social bookmarkers that took time to talk to me — some of whom I continue to keep in touch with).
Another thing to note: This story doesn’t really give the complete picture. I was limited in word count. For example "In the beginning, I was afraid of being called out as a self-promoter,
someone who manipulates a tool that is meant to give people without
access to the mainstream media a say in the countryâ??s news agenda." I wrote that originally to explain why I only used Digidave in my profile. In the begining I would hide the fact that the author of these stories was also the one submitting them to Digg.
I eventually got over this fear — deciding that the content can speak for itself. Better to stand up and say this is me — take it or leave it — than continue to submit stories under a fake name (I still use Digidave — but in my profile I link to this blog and give my real name).
I had every intention of submitting the story to Digg — but someone beat me to it. I don’t know MrBabyMan — but I have seen him/her around Digg — so, I was happy to see it reach the front page before I even had a chance to Digg it myself.
The comments from Diggers were most appreciated. One has already contacted me via email. I have also commented in the Digg thread.
I could rant for a long time about social news sites. I’ll keep it brief here — but I will end on this note: Social news sites are not going away. They will only become more sophisticated. If you look at the Epic 2014 video there is talk about people becoming the new news filters. A trusted journalist in the future doesn’t just produce news — they recomend news.
Food for thought.
Im a fellow digger as well as a journalism student, and I just wanted to drop by and say I really enjoyed the article.
Keep it up.
Once again, A well researched and written article. Kudos to you. Keep up the good work.
Thank you for your thoughtful essay. I’m a newcomer to Digg, but already one of my main interests is to promote the health of Digg.
People (not really that many considering how many Diggers there are) are always complaining, and there is the occasional piece about Digg’s eventual demise.
What I do in addition to digging and submitting article is to think about how to improve Digg/address these concerns. My first blog post on this, which I self submitted to Digg, was a list of “the” Top 50 Diggers. I made my decision based on viewing a number of digg’d items in the profiles of those diggers whose profiles have been viewed the most. I was looking for quality and variety of articles. My point is to have an extensive friend’s list of quality diggers, so that you can see what conscientious people are reading. It’s hard to efficiently keep up with the news and good feature stories.
My next post is going to be on The Top 50 Diggers You Never Heard Of. The point here is to let the community know there are good, new people out there. The quality of their digging is excellent. Beyond that, it would be nice if the community let them know they know the newbies exist and are appreciated. This can be done by viewing their profile, as a minimum, and even by adding them to friends’ lists. I have added all 50 to my list. Every day I find interesting things to read among the submissions they’ve dugg.
Sorry for this lengthy post; just wanted you to know there are people out there who are thinking about maintaining, if not improving, the quality of Digg. Personlly, I think overall the system works well.
By the way, I’ve looked at a lot of profiles, and it’s obvious when all a person does is digg their own stuff. I don’t consider that spamming, but I would not add them to my friends list. On the other hand, I don’t seen anything wrong when somebody, like me, submits their own work occasionally.