Digg vs. Reddit vs. Netscape – Who’s got the goods

Posted on April 29, 2007. Filed under: Web 2.0, Web Based Blunders |

Digg this 

First let me start by saying I’m an avid user of digg.  I waste loads of time there every day.  But digg is far from perfect and it’s pretty much degenerated into i-am-bored.com with voting.

I won’t bore anyone by describing what digg, reddit and netscape are.  If you don’t know what they are get off the internet.

I’m not going to make this a pissing contest either.  As far as I’m concerned, digg’s a great site and I enjoy using it pretty much every day.  It’s probably got more users and more activity.

What I’m going to do is compare the quality.  Each of those 3 sites describe themselves as being news oriented.

For the sake of simplicity, I’m only going to count actual news site links as “news”.  That means some chump “reporting” a photo of something lame doesn’t count.  And no, blogs aren’t “News” sites.

Top 10 “news” stories on digg.com, reddit.com and netscape.com.

digg reddit netscape
Meet The Next President of the United States of America
- NewsDarwin’s Lost World
- News

Zio Systems reinvents the keyboard. (PIC!)
- Some chump who mouths off on forums mirrored a picture.  Some other chump submitted it to digg, and many other chumps figured it was news.

Exclusive Sexy Pics Of The Vudu (AppleTV Killer)
- News.  Wait no, it’s not.  Product rumours and pictures are only news if you’re a retard.

Special Report: Third Manhattan Apple store to dwarf them all
- Special report: stupid stories dwarf digg’s front page

Shootout: 8-core Mac Pro versus 4-core Mac Pro (UPDATED)
- Updated.  Wow.  It must be news if someone screwed up a benchmark test and then updated the results.

George W. Bush and Richard Nixon and Their Startling Similarities
- Wow, a trailer for a new game.  Phone the NY Times this should be frontpage material. /sarcasm

Bill Moyers and Jon Stewart Discuss “Fake News”
- The irony is sickening.

Only another 5,500 calories to go …
- And then what?  You’re a retard?

Sen. Durbin Drops Bombshells on the Senate Floor
- News

Meet The Next President of the United States of America
- NewsAsk Reddit: Reddit search sucks. Please fix it.
- Use Google and stfu.

Equador gives world 1 year to offer money. If it gets nothing, it will drill into its major oil field in the heart of the Amazon
- News.  Blackmail is always news.  Especially when it sounds like one of Dr. Evil’s schemes.

Unfortunate placement for a Yahoo ad [pic]
- Unfortunate misinterpretation of “newS”

Mike Gravel for President
- News

General Odom: Our Commander-in Chief has gone AWOL
- News

O’Reilly Attacks MediaMatters for Accurately Quoting Him
- And the world keeps turning anyway.

Mike Gravel for President! Straightening out the Media
- News, but jesus what is this a gravel fetish?

Timeless prank: UW time capsule from ’50s reveals porn from ’70s
- Time “travelling” prank maybe.

Sen. Mike Gravel at SC Debates 04/26/07 (somebody with balls)
- Leave his balls out of it, it’s bad enough that all of the news in the top 10 stories is about this guy.

Senior Bush admin Official Linked to Escort Service Resigns
- NewsThe Misplaced Jubilance of the Anti-Abortion Right
- News

The White House Scales Back Talk of Iraq Progress
- News

Rocket Fuel Chemical Found in Food, Water Supply, And Us
- News

false pretender: The Anti-Bush Poster Collection – Click…
- Not news, crappy title, and likely to get you arrested for terrorism

Goodbye To The Normals
- Not news

France’s Royal in Bayrou debate
- News

Ancient camel bones found in Walmart
- News

Micheal Vick and pro dog fighting
- Bad news, and I hope someone cuts that guys face off.

The tally looks like this:

  • digg: 3 news stories
  • reddit: 6 news stories.
  • netscape: 8 if news stories

At a glance it looks like digg is the least newsish of the news sites, with netscape leading the world in relevance.   While this isn’t by any means a conclusive study, I think anyone who uses digg secretly (or admittedly) knows the site’s become a link dump catering to short attention spans and younger ages.

Edit and kind of on-topic:  There’s an interesting comparison of digg and stumbleupon here.

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[...] got even less real news than usual, which I thought was actually impossible.  The front page is dominated by this crap, the most [...]


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