The articles you see here are not authored by users, but are interesting reads they’ve come across in their Net wanderings. This, therefore, isn’t an original news site-it’s a community bulletin board of sorts.
At A Glance
This is a very pretty, well-designed, XP-esque site. The home page is dominated by links to stories that have made it here. A box on the left of the title mentions the number of time the story has been “dugg.” In addition, a tiny link below the number box allows the reader to digg the story. Once you do so, the number on the yellow number tab increases immediately to accommodate your “digg,” or approval. Links that allow the user to read and add comments, blog and e-mail the article are arranged below the story title and introduction.
Just so you don’t feel lost, there’s a search bar, and also a list of categories you can click on-such as “robots,” “hardware,” “apple,” and so on. You don’t need to register to read articles, but if you want to do anything more, you have to.
Let’s Start Digging!
One gets started using three links on the top right-“Digg for Stories,” “Submit a New Story,” and “Digg Spy.” With the first link, you get a look at the stories that are up for reading and being rated, either in “story view”-where you see a set number of stories on the page-or “cloud view,” wherein all “queued” stories are clustered together.
As a registered user, you can invite others to read your pick of the crop, by clicking on “Submit a New Story”. You submit the URL of the news site from where you chose the story, then the site conducts a search for it. Once your story has been confirmed, you give it a title, submit a brief introduction, and specify the category under which you would like your story listed. The final bit is where the site searches if the same (or a similar) story has already been submitted, and if it has, the site requests you to not submit your story! The story is then posted to the “Digg Area Queue.” Stories are held here until (and if!) they are promoted to the home page. Promotion, as we’ve mentioned, is based on the number of diggs it receives.
The third link-“Digg Spy”-is interesting. Clicking on this gives you a “real-time view” of the site-all stories on the site get streamed, and you can pause a story if you want to.
Besides simultaneously checking out who wrote what, how many diggs a story received and whether it made it to the home page (or got “buried”), you can also sort them according to your preference with the help of the little buttons.
In this view, clicking on a story title does not take you to the article link, but to the comments the story has received and the diggers who commented. You can then take a peek at the profile of the digger and also look at the all the articles he has dugg.
…And Do More
It’s not all about spending geeky hours looking up and reading stories and articles about technology. As a registered member, you have a
“Digg” your favorite site on the home page
Clicking on a title on “Digg Spy” shows the comments the article received
profile via which you can create a circle of friends. Links on the home page take you to the top stories and show the top diggers. Besides, the site also has a podcast feed, and a link called “odeo”-which takes you to the Web pages of Diggnation, a weekly tech/Web culture show based on the top digg.com news stories.
Why Digg?
The news posted on the site, though largely controlled by its readers, is also monitored for content. The site also requests and instructs readers to prevent inappropriate or irrelevant content from residing on the pages by reporting this on the “problem” link that accompanies each article. And, of course, you can digg a site only once.
It’s true that there are an awful lot of “front pages”-1,097 at the time of writing! While this may seem too much to surf through, you can always refine your choices.
We can think of four reasons for being a regular Digger: first, you get the most popular tech news on the home page, without needing to wade through tens of other sites.
Second, you can actively participate in several ways in what’s going on.
Third, everything on the site is so neatly organised and arranged!
And fourth, the site embodies a sound democracy.
Trust us, if you’re a tech buff, you’ll get hooked on your first visit!