Thing 6 - Digg

Digg was a new site that I discovered through the 23 Things project. I took some time to review the website, and created an account. I don't know that I will personally use it very often, it does not seem to fit any need that I have, although I can see how others might find it useful or interesting. But analyzing it from a different perspective, I considered how Digg compared to a library. And actually Digg is very similar to a library when I stopped to think about it. A library reviews information sources, obtains those that seem popular, have good reviews, and that they think their patrons will be interested in, so that the patrons can use the library to then search through those information sources for what they need. Digg similarly collects data and news, uses user reviews to rank those items, and users can come to that one location and select from what Digg has already collected. Digg's approach to news should not change the way that the public views news but it might. I would think that it should be understood that the news stories are ranked by other users and therefore do not reflect actual importance of news. However, it certainly cannot be said that all of the public will understand this fact naturally, so in some cases it may occur that the public has a distorted understanding of what news is important.