Critique of a US media: Digg.com

Résumé du document

Digg is, a very famous website in American media, and is typical of the web 2.0 phenomenon. Digg is a popularity website that allows users to vote for news / stories / websites / images / podcasts posted by other users in order to make them appear on the front page. This practice is called social bookmarking. Digg was founded by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson in December 2004. In order to analyze Digg's interest and characteristics in the light of the web 2.0 phenomenon, we shall explain briefly what the web 2.0 is.

Extraits

[...] There is much more to be said about that phenomenon of course, but we shall stop here to try and analyse Digg.com in the light of what has just been said. As we already stated, Digg.com is a popularity website i.e. it allows any Internet user to either propose content or vote for other users' content. Anyone can join and then post their content on the website. It could be images they like, a new website they have just discovered, an interesting article they have read on a blog, a funny video etc. [...]

[...] We think these criticisms might well be true, however they are just flaws in the way Digg is managed and do not diminish the website's interest and value. First, people have said that users had too much power over the proposed content, allowing sensationalism and misinformation. Some other people say that on the contrary, the website operators have too much power. In fact some users are said to have been banned from the service after posting certain pieces of information about the company. There is no evidence of such actions. [...]

[...] For decades only newspapers, radios or TV channels had the power to choose which content to broadcast. Services like Digg have given this power back to the masses (instead of having a limited number of paid professional journalists writing on imposed subjects and then an editorial manager choosing what is going public) Folksonomy has become real thanks to websites such as Digg, that anyone can modify by voting for his/her preferred contents. Any amateur can give a try at journalism by proposing to the community a piece of information found on some obscure website and that might be interesting to a great number of people. [...]

[...] Critique of a US media: Digg.com Digg is an American media, a very famous website and typical of the web 2.0 phenomenon. Digg is a popularity website that allows users to vote for news / stories / websites / images / podcasts posted by other users in order to make them appear on the front page. This practice is called social bookmarking. Digg was founded by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson in December 2004. In order to analyse Digg's interest and characteristics in the light of the web 2.0 phenomenon, we shall explain briefly what the web 2.0 is. [...]

[...] Every time a user finds an interesting item, he/she can it and then increase its popularity. Basically when new stories / websites are posted they first appear in the “News / Upcoming” section of the website. If enough users vote for an item, the ranking system automatically sends it to the front page, where everyone coming to the website will be able to see it. This is the core web 2.0 aspect of Digg. The user-based ranking system is really user-centred and cooperative, as opposed to hierarchical editorial systems. [...]