Thoughts 26 Feb 2008 09:56 am
Social networking
I don’t have a MySpace or Facebook account, for the same reason I got out of ham radio. I have too many things going on to spend a lot of time chatting with or messaging people I have almost nothing in common with.
Besides which, a friend who’s just a few years older than I am, has a MySpace account and the picture of his gray, balding head looks rather incongruous in amongst those teenagers and twenty-somethings. (Incongruous.. Ain’t that a nice way of saying “just plain silly?”)
I recently discovered Digg and I can’t tell you what the attraction is.
The premise is simple. You find a site or article that you think others might find interesting and you digg it. If it’s found to be original you get to submit it. The people can digg or bury it. The more diggs you get the more popular you are and the more weight your vote carries. Sort of like DMOZ.
I know why the owners of these site do it. To sell advertising. The more traffic you get the more ads you can sell.
In fact it’s so lucrative that Yahoo has created Buzz. If you want to digg an article on Yahoo News you have to do it entirely by hand. All Yahoo offers is Buzz.
Google is trying to do something similar with their personalized web searches.
Ok I see what’s in it for them. But why did I decide to try it?…. Probably because it’s social networking without so much of the “social” part. (It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that I don’t like most people.)
Mean while back at the ranch:
Here’s a link to a great page about Digg popular.