Neothoughts

Add another one to the pile. MySpace is the latest of the big players to adopt the socially driven model for news delivery. Being one of the top 10 most visited sites on the web, its natural to expect a lot from such an offering. It also begs the question, with a user count that is an order of magnitude higher than all other social news sites, can MySpace News be more relevant?

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Here’s a list of ideas I’ve had over the past year or so while using social news sites. Most of them are ideas that I think would improve sites like Digg, Netscape and Reddit in one way or another. Admittedly, one or two of them would just be interesting to see implemented on an experimental level. Either way, feel free to rip each and every one to bits.

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Have you ever tried to participate on one of the big social news sites and found that you just didn’t fit in? Perhaps the problem is the level of conversation. Perhaps it is the community’s main interests. Did you know there are a world of alternatives out there which cater to niche interests, each with its own unique community.

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It takes a certain type of personality to climb the ranks on sites such as Digg. Here are some traits that are common among the most active social newsies.

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Over the past month a slew of big players have unveiled socially driven applications that all seem to have one thing in common: Digg. Here’s a rundown of new sites that have raised some eyebrows over the last month.

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There are some things social news has yet to master. Here are some types of content and methods of aggregation that have proved clumsy or non-existent on social news sites.

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From a Digg user’s point of view, Spotplex is a site that takes all the work out of social news. Users don’t need to submit, vote or comment on content. This begs the question: is the future of social news automated?

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Recently a conservative blog called Little Green Footballs voiced their displeasure with Digg’s “mob rule”, claiming that they are falling victim to left-wing diggers. If you set aside the partisan politics, there is actually a lot to learn from the situation surrounding this particular site on Digg. It brings to light some common misconceptions about Digg as well as problems that need solving.

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A couple of weeks ago, Yahoo! launched Pipes, a GUI that makes remixing and mashing up RSS feeds fun and easy to do. Since Pipes uses RSS data for input and output right now, the applications for social news are limited by the RSS features of the sites. The more RSS features they have, the more you can do with them in Pipes. That being said, there are a number of ways you can use Pipes to streamline your social news RSS subscriptions.

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In a world where large volumes of information can be produced in the blink of an eye, citizen journalists need tools to access and cross-reference information. Several online database applications have sprouted up to fill that need. Here is a run-down of sites that are making it easier for citizen journalists to connect the dots.

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