Digg.com has always been known as “Reddit.com’s news from yesterday”. It appears now they’re trying to combat this issue… at least on a micro level.
A recent post from Digg explains:
…we’re launching a new homepage voting experiment called Digg Trends which will surface certain highly active stories as they’re trending to Digg’s homepage so people can vote on whether or not they feel the story actually belongs there.
How Does it Work?
Digg Trends identifies and highlights upcoming stories that have a high volume of activity (think Diggs, comments, favorites, shares, etc.). When we detect a new trending story, it will appear on the homepage for ten minutes. Based on the Digg and bury activity in those ten minutes the story will either become popular or not.
In addition, they have a new Twitter account in which they tweet the trends as they occur (@Digg_Trends).
Some breaking news and trending topics include:
- The Real Men Who Stare at Goats” is trending
- Shooting reported at Orlando high-rise – CNN.com
- New Twitter Retweets Take A Little Peek Around
- Verizon Droid Eris: Officially launching on Friday for $99
Some NOT SO breaking news topics include:
- Disney Will Make Over Mickey — Why? To Make Us Like Him.
- Piggy Trouble (INFOGRAPHIC)
In short, it appears that Digg is just focused on high-activity levels over focusing on strictly “breaking news”. Opens up a new portal for manipulation? We’ll see… The question I have is whether or not they’re taking into account share data on Twitter and Facebook. My guess is…”yes.”
