Virtual Communities: Digg.com

Digg.com is just one of many peer-mediated news delivery and discussion site that have popped up and risen to prominence over the last year or so, but one of the most successful.

There are a number of reason I believe digg has risen above the rest in terms of the size of it’s userbase and the livelihood of it’s member participation (which in this case can be equated from the rapid turnover of news and number of ‘diggs’ and comments each article gets). Perhaps the most obvious reason for its success is the fact that digg got in early (opening its doors in late 2004) and thus achieved critical mass before competitors could cement their own market position. The explicit way in which digg shows the involvement of the community behind it (as opposed to a more implicit approach as taken by del.icio.us for example) is another major contributor to its success in my mind; encouraging users to view and contribute to the discussion about a post by presenting each one similarly to a common internet forum thread, and including information about who ‘dugg’ what stories throughout the site.

This leads to the site having a two-fold appeal; both a simple but effective peer-filtered content output, and a lively network of discussion and friendship between members. Of course a lot of the discussion eventually observes Godwin’s Law being enacted, but that’s inevitable for any site which allows for such easy debate about current issues on the internet.

On a related note; I had the good fortune of stumbling across a fantastic website as it was just getting underway in early March (this year). It’s called PopUrls and it provides a one-stop-shop for viewing all the internet buzz as outputted by digg and its competitors. How this kind of website will change the face of peer-mediated news, I don’t think anyone could say at this stage – but I believe it will be something that may cause head-aches for digg and the rest before long.

When offered the choice of more content via PopUrls, I wonder will people contribute to mediating the content themselves through the individual sites or simply browse the results of others’ contributions? Perhaps sites such as PopUrls will ultimately unite the news mediation sites behind the one with the strongest market share – they’re already displaying largely the same content, it would make sense for people to pool their votes all into the one site. Then again, mergers on the net have never been simple – just as likely a unifying movement will force flagging competitors to turn to more targeted, niche content. Either way, I believe the user will win out in the end (which just goes to show how dissimilar mergers offline and online are!)