What’s next after Social Bookmarking? What will Digg++ look like?
Monday, November 6th, 2006Social bookmarking has attracted quite a lot of hype over the last couple of months. Digg’s founder on the cover of Businessweek, now Reddit being acquired by the Wired people. As with any successful market, a lot of me-too applications spring up all over the place.
Together with this success, though, I have the impression that there are an increasing number of complaints and growing criticism levelled at the social bookmarking phenomenon (I’ve also contributed some of my own). There were several related discussions about the quality of posts making it to the front page of Digg, about elitism of regular Digg contributors, and people abandoning social bookmarking sites. Some of the criticisms against Digg that keep coming up are that only a few Digg contributors appear to control which posts make it to the front page, and that cliques keep digging each others’ submissions and/or systematically digging down other people’s submissions. That, coupled with a high volume of ego-based submissions (people submitting their own Blog entries to Digg) make the value of the shared space somewhat dubious. The collective filtering approach does not appear to be working.
What would be the components of a better social bookmarking or sharing site? I don’t know! If I did, I’d build it and get my mug on the cover of Newsweek (or at least the German edition of MAD Magazine — I’m really not picky). But I’m thinking about it.
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