MediaPost Publications – Digg.com Plans Expansion – 12/05/2005 Digg.com, one of the fastest growing social media sites on the internet, is poised to expand into other areas of news beyond tech.
According to MediaPost: “Digg.com, a collaboratively edited technology news site that some on the Web are touting as the next Slashdot, intends to branch out from tech stories and move into other news categories as well as media such as video and audio, said Digg.com CEO Jay Adelson. Adelson said the site has now reached a “critical mass” of users that can sustain entry into categories broader than technology–sports and business news, for example. “Whatever we choose, we’ve got good access to a critical mass of people,” he said.”
Nice to see. Ultimately Digg represents a revolutionary new way to report the news. By relying on the wisdom of the crowd vs. editors or webmasters, Digg’s front page has been breaking interesting news much faster than Slashdot and Boing Boing. If the quality and consistency of Digg’s front page stories remains high, this very well may represent the news delivery model of the future.
What are the implications of Digg in the bigger picture of things? What if you were allowed to “digg” news stories on any of the major sites to create a front page.
Can you imagine a world where internet users largely determined what made it to the front page of the New York Times each day? Although I could never imagine the New York Times giving up this degree of editorial control, could they use a Digg like feature on their site as a tool to assist them in assembling each days stories for tomorrow’s front page?