Can Digg Do Real-Time News?
A great community for crowd sourced news and content, Digg is taking a page from the Twitter playbook and testing its mettle in the real-time stream. Similar to Twitter's Trending Topics, Digg is set to launch Digg Trends. According to a company blog post , the bookmarking community is offering users a chance to view trending stories before they make it to the home page. True to Digg fashion, this public view of the trend firehose comes with a catch. Voters have 10 minutes to digg or bury a story in order to determine whether it occupies valuable homepage real estate.
Digg Trends are identified when stories receive a high volume of comments, favorites and shares. From here a trending story will appear in a box above the site's "most recent" page content for ten minutes. Within that time frame users decide which stories are worthy for the homepage. In order to ensure that Digg members stay connected to these trends the company is also introducing a new Twitter account with a real-time feed of rising stories. These notifications are likely to increase user engagement and encourage higher traffic to the site during peak hours.
What makes this an ingenious member engagement tool for Digg, is that sub-par articles with a high number of comments are likely to incite action. In the past, many of us simply ignored the sensationalist stories that plagued the lower echelons of Diggdom. Nevertheless, with trolls being a driving force in the determination of trends, users will find themselves clicking through simply to right the wrongs in the Digg universe. While real-time shopping notifications like Woot's Twitter account incentivize users with deals, Digg knows that its members will keep coming back to maintain a sense of justice. The company will be rolling out the trends feature in the near future.
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Just from casual use, it seems that half the content that hits the Digg homepage is stuff that I saw on Reddit the day before, or in some cases 2-3 days earlier. On the reverse, I rarely see stuff on Reddit that was previously posted on Digg.
So, the question for me is not whether Digg can do real-time news, but whether this new Trends feature can fix the time lag in getting new/interesting content on their home page.
I've noticed this show on Digg whenever I go to it. I think that it is a great idea, but I also think that there are a lot of bugs involved and it will have to be consistently moderated in order for it to only be appropriate links (no spam, porn, etc)
That's a good feature to keep track on. You can get other local alerts from nualerts. nuAlerts is connecting local residents who want to be the first to know directly with important community leaders who are "in the know" via social networks and more! Several Mayors and leading organizations are already using nuAlerts and anyone can start posting their important information at www.nualerts.com
@Nate: Well, it's funny you should mention the Reddit -> Digg lag because this very feature has been on Reddit for almost a year now! Really strange why Reddit doesn't ever get the props it deserves, this article included.