Digg this

This blog aims to show why I’m suited to Project Redstripe in several ways. Because of the projects I’ve initiated, my startup, go-get attitude and a true love of the fast changing www. It will also show ways in which, I think, The Economist can take advantage of these changes.

This time I look at what we might learn from Digg.

Everyone loves Digg.com. Jeff Jarvis, founder of Entertainment Weekly and net-journo-guru, calls it the future of media. CEO Kevin Rose is the geek hero of the post-gatekeeper internet news scene.

The site works by aggregating interesting stories on the web. If other users like them others can digg/vote for them. The theory being that a popularity contest means the best ones make it to the top.

Without it I wouldn’t see 8 years of photos in one video, how to make an amazing fancy dress outfit or how to shoot yourself in the foot in any programming language.

As you can see from the last post, it is very geek driven. However, there are others moving in to this space. Netscape have just launched their politics aggregator calling the users that vote, anchors (rumours that it’s rhyming slang for Jason Calacanis are grossly exaggerated).

A question we can ask ourselves is : what is The Economist reader’s web? If The Economist Feed Reader (TM) had a button to bookmark favourite posts and pages, we could find out.

We could see which readers liked which stories from across the web and from within The Economist. Instead of being a destination in itself we would become a way of exploring the rest of the internet.

Use the hive mind of our readers and we can create an Economist web.

Even tiny minds can produce startling things

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Digg’s homepage will display trending stories for user voting