What you need to know about digg and Netscape
Many people have been using digg and the new Netscape and think that they are exactly the same, but they are not. Both of them are community driven websites, but there are many differences between them that affect how well the stories you submit perform on them.
Finding stories
Digg and Netscape both have search features and categories to help you find newly submitted stories, but they each have their own unique twist. If you want to find newly submitted stories on digg, you can go to the Upcoming Stories section. On Netscape you have to backtrack from the frontpage or browse by using their tag cloud feature.
Voting
Both digg and Netscape have voting systems where you vote for stories that you like. Although the voting systems appear the same, they are quite different. With digg you need X amount of votes before you hit the frontpage. Netscape on the other hand is time based so if you get 10 votes within 10 minutes there is a good chance the story will be on the frontpage.
Favorite stories
Netscape has a pinned stories area in a tabbed interface at the top of the homepage that is controlled by their anchor staff. These stories are displayed on the frontpage of Netscape even if they have only 1 vote, which causes them to perform well. If you want to give attention to a specific story on digg you can add it as your "My #1". By doing this that story will be pinned at the top of your profile page as well as placed in your "My #1" page, but it does not have the same effect as Netscape's pinned stories.
Frontpage
When you submit a story to digg or Netscape the goal is to get it to the frontpage, but the way a story gets to the frontpage is different on each website. On digg after a story gets X amounts of votes it goes to the frontpage and is displayed as the top story. Netscape on the other hand requires stories to climb to the frontpage. So before a story hits the frontpage it will hit page 3, then page 2 and finally the frontpage.
Audience
Digg first started off as place for technology news. Just recently, digg decided to accommodate other topics such as world & business, sports, videos and entertainment. Netscape on the other hand started off with a variety of subjects. Because of this digg users are mainly into technology and Netscape users are generally more into world news and politics. This also hints at the fact that Netscape has an older audience then digg.
If you plan on submitting stories to digg and Netscape make sure you tailor your submissions to each community. There are distinct differences between digg and Netscape and you need to recognize them to increase your chances of success.
**Update: "With digg you need X amount of votes before you hit the frontpage." To clarify on this statement, sometimes you might need 30 votes to hit the homepage and sometimes you might need 50 votes. The number varies because it is based on multiple factors.
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Reader Comments (8)
- matthew, September 29, 2006
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Another News Site by Crowdsourcing, Megite, at http://www.megite.com/newsriver.php. You may want to check it out too.
- Neil Patel, September 29, 2006
- Ray Dotson, September 29, 2006
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I've been experimenting with both digg and netscape and I've noticed some traffic from each of them, but the types of visitors do seem to be different.
- Joe Mappa, September 29, 2006
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Neil, take a look at http://www.techtagg.com for some more interesting features. 1) it rates users and give users a specific karma. based on that karma their votes are rated before promoting a story 2) karma is public. hence it allows users to understand where a story stands 3) allows top ranked users to edit the content or the link of the stories so there won't be spam. user control spam. 4) one can't create multiple accounts and vote on the same story from the same IP. 5) Users get to make money with Google Adsense ads. Great way to pay back the community. Digg really needs this soon. 6) etc.
I've been testing few of these sites and I think it makes sense for the sites to give the users as much features as possible but in the same time try to keep them aligned. This way the stories that appear to the front page is not garbage.
- David Pinero, September 29, 2006
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Ah, and some of us have been working on personal blogging apps that allow users to democratically control their content on a much smaller scale. My open source project Battle Blog is an (and I believe only, so far) example. ;) I think this is the next big thing in blogging apps in general.
- Landroos, September 29, 2006
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IMO the best community-driven news site out there is Newsvine. http://www.newsvine.com/
- Bruce Wells, September 29, 2006
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Another one to the mix. But geared towards technology howtos. Wish they had commenting on though. howtohut
- A better tech site, September 29, 2006
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you may want 2 consider this tech site, its more customizable & I think better... ww.e-fuze.com... incorporates digg voting, a great tech blog and custom RSS!
