All about Digg

Researching one of the many segments for our humble radio programme last week, I had one of those “OMG” moments when I realised that in nearly 3 years of Tech Talk Radio, we’d never discussed the Web 2.0 phenomena Digg.

So what’s Digg?

Well it started out as an experiment by four guys in the U.S. in 2004. It’s become a landmark website of recent times … Digg is a community-based news website, lending itself to the Web 2.0 concept of user-driven content. The emphasis is on technology and science-based news, and it uses a clever bookmarking system which allows users to submit and rank stories.

You might have noticed the pervasive “Digg this!” icons at the bottom of people’s news articles, blog entries and websites. In fact I’ve added a couple to recent posts on this blog. If you think the article is interesting, just click the “Digg this!” button, and it adds a hit to Digg’s counter. Eventually, if it gets enough “Diggs”, the article will appear on Digg’s front page. Cool huh?

The essence of Digg is that you can see what other internet users are watching, reading, surfing and downloading … it’s a bit like a WWW barometer.

There’s also a weekly podcast and vidcast, made by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, who discuss the top Digg stories for the week in their own irreverant fashion.

Anyway, there’s heaps more to it than this. Just check it out, if you haven’t already: http://digg.com/