The Slick Network

 

Many people visit the popular social bookmark site called Digg.com .  I find it to be one of the best solutions for finding interesting news articles without having to search around.  One of the most disappointing things about Digg is that once a site becomes popular enough to hit the frontpage, it gets slammed with traffic and often crashes.  This leaves many frontpage stories that lead to error pages.  This leaves me with only one option…to digg the story ,so I can save it to view it later.  I know that digg allows you to undigg stories, so I could digg and then just undigg later.  That just seems like it would eventually just leave thousands of people digging a story that they haven’t even had a chance to read. 

My solution would be to create a “saved bookmark button” without a vote and it could hold those stories in your profile section.   You would then be able to read the article after the craze of the Digg Effect has died down a little.  Once you read the story, you could choose to delete or digg it. 

Below is an example of how it could be incorportated in to the site.

 

 

 

 

 

It is quite a simple solution, but I am sure that the programming behind it is more complex than it seems. Digg is constantly adding wonderful features that ”wow” the users, but this would be a simple solution that could bypass the need to start a service to cache a website for later viewing.  I miss out on getting a chance to see many of the stories that make it to the frontpage , so this would really be a wonderful feature to try out. 

How quickly things can change. A look at the Digg.com website from just over one year ago. This shows how quickly a great concept can go from simple design to a highly evolved social bookmark /news site. This is a snapshot of Digg.com from 14 months ago.

read more | digg story
 

 As a really huge fan of Digg.com , it is very interesting to know the inner workings of the site.  Since today is MLK day, I have the day off from work and decided to do a little experiment.   I was checking out the Digg Spy feature that we all love so much and I wondered(…and forgive me if this has already been explained by Kevin or a member of the Digg team) how many negative reports does it take to remove a page from the frontpage.

Below, I show an image capture that I took of a story on the frontpage that seemed like “spam” because it had tons of affiliate links and adds.  It was a story titled, “Legality of ALLOFMP3.com EXAMINED!!”  The title alone sounded a bit SPAM-ISH , but it already had over 120 Diggs.  I monitored the Digg Spy feature until I saw that it was no longer on the frontpage.  It took about an hour or so to get removed.  That sounds pretty cool because I counted at least 40 reports that it was “spam” or “just lame”(most likely it was a bit more).   I have to assume that since this article had nearly 300 Diggs when I last remember seeing it on the frontpage, that it must mean that it takes a negative comment ratio of about 15 to 20% of the total Diggs received to actually get booted off of the frontpage.  Since I didn’t view this article from Digg #1, I can only estimate how many negative reports it may have recieved before I started to monitor it.

Since I can’t actually find the link on Digg anymore, I am posting a full page image of a Digg Spy screen here Full Page Digg Spy  .  I looked up the username of the person who is listed on this screen cap on Google and found his profile, but he must have undugg the story because it was no longer part of his profile.

 I did find something strange. I noticed that once the article was removed from the frontpage, for the next ten minutes or so, I would still see it come across Digg Spy. I assumed that maybe a cookie was on my browser that was aware of recent stories that I submitted or reported , so I logged off I went to Digg Spy again.  I still saw the item coming across.  I think that maybe it was because some visitors may have not refreshed their browsers.   

 Once a story is removed from the frontpage, it is also removed from the Digg search.  Does anyone know the reason for this?  I assume it is just another means of filtering out spam.

 This just shows that Digg.com has a very effective way of filtering out spam and useless information.  This is great for people who are only looking for quality news items.  I know that I use Digg nearly everyday and sometimes three or four times a day, so I appreciate the effectiveness of it and look forward to seeing new features as they are released.

*forgive me for using photobuck to host the images.  If this article gets Dugg enough, I will be sure to replace the photobucket images and host them on my own server.

YouTube is to video like Flickr is to photos. YouTube.com , often mistakenly called uTube.com,  lets you upload up to 100 MB of video for FREE.  This is the newest in a long line of social networks that are exploding in popularity over the net.

What is YouTube? YouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. With YouTube you can:

1. Blog the videos you take with your digital camera or phone.
2. Share videos with family and friends.
3. Become an instant internet celebrity.
4. Create video podcasting segments.
5. Produce video how-to videos.
6. Create an internet based tv show.

This is very easy to use and very fun. YouTube is a free online video streaming service that allows users to view and share videos that have been uploaded by our members. Anyone can view and share videos, and members can upload videos and use other features, free of charge.

     Most of the content on YouTube.com is worthless material,but sometimes you can find some very interesting video mixed in.  Just like any other service, you have to search for quality content.

     YouTube has taken some heat by networks for displaying copyrighted content.  I feel that they should just view it as free advertising for their programming.

 Update:  4/2/06

 YouTube.com has limited video content to 10 minutes because of fears having to deal with too much pirated content.  This makes it a much less attractive service than it once was…or does`it?  Video bloggers/podcasters will not like this new change, but the shorter segments may be more attractive to the A.D.D. generation. The shorter video segments will enable more unique content to reach the internet because it will allow give the non-professional segment of the internet to have a place to display creative videos on the net. Most segments above 10 minutes are usually pirated content. This could potentially be the next billion dollar idea or it could be the next internet bust.  Yahoo and Goodle may see this site as a gateway to the the social marketplace.

In additon to YouTube, you also have a service started by one of the creators of MySpace called Vsocial.com  .  Vsocial lets you post video content with no specified length limit.  Google video has updated and it now allows you to instantly upload and share video online.  Google Video had previously required that you upload a file and wait a few days for it to show up online.

 09/01/06 Update

YouTube has announced that it plans on making music videos available online in the near future.

 

Some of the most talked about items on the internet are tech videos on demand. One of the real pioneers of this genre of web video for download is Kevin Rose. He started this trend with the Broken and continued it with System and Diggnation. His Revison 3 company is at the forefront of this digital revolution. Not too long ago, you needed the backing of a major television studio in order to get a show aired. WIth the expansion of this new medium, quality tech programming is being produced on distributed by “individuals” with new ideas.

The only drawback of this video revolution is the same drawback that put an end to smaller developing podcasts —the high cost of bandwidth. The more popular a show gets, the more expensive it becomes to maintain. This is where this mediums differs from traditional television programming that relies heavily on advertsing. The main thing that can save this small productions is the use of a peer to peer program like Bit Torrent.

I am putting together a list of some of my favorite web video shows:

• Diggnation
• Systm
• the Broken
• Command N
• The.Scene
• Digital Life TV

Give some of these shows a try. *Note: Not all of these are “indie” productions/ Digital Life TV is produced by Ziff Davis.

Kevin Rose and the gang have released Digg 2.0.

What is Digg?

Digg is a technology news website that combines social
bookmarking,
blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial
control. With digg, users submit stories for review,
but rather than allowing an editor to decide which stories
go on the homepage, the users do.

You can always trust a product from Kevin Rose, so I wasn’t surprised to find that this is a quality site.

Digg 2.0