I have the Mu Life in my RSS Feedreader of Legendâ„¢, mainly because it's written by somebody living in the middle of the social media world. As soon as this post about social news being better than Google News, I read it and moved on with my life. Whenever a big story breaks, it's on Digg and reddit and FARK and everywhere within seconds. That's what millions of users will get you. Like I said, I read it and moved on with my life. Rummy gone, diggers rejoice, 3,000 diggs, yada yada yada. That changed, however, when Steve Rubel linked to it. You see, I have him in the RSS Feedreader of Legendâ„¢, too. Since I've decided to start linking the A-listers in hopes of sweet, sweet linkback action, I took another look at the story behind the story. What I found was that I'd come to a simple conclusion the first time I read the post. I saw that Digg beat Google News to the punch, but I attributed it to how those sites work. Digg links directly to news, while Google News is an index of stories, drawn and categorized from the entire web. It's not that Digg got there first, it's that Google News didn't post the story until it determined that it was a big news story. Yes, I know the Secretary of Defense resigning is a big story. But was it bigger than Britney going back on the market? That's debatable, but there's thousands of other stories Google News sorts through to figure out what is important. I figured this would be the best way to come to peace with this story, in my mind, until Rubel made with the linking. On second look, I realized the Digg story linked to - get this - BreitBart.com. On that site, it's just an AP report. Traditional media got there before social media. There's nothing surprising about this, that's how it always works. The blogosphere is practically built on copy/paste/blockquote/whine. In seeking some sort of insight on this issue, I realized this was another case of OBSOI. It's grown from its humble beginnings back on GeoCities.com, to the blogosphere, to the world of social media, with YouTube vlogs and the horror - HORROR - of gaming Digg. Frankly, I find it hard to comment on people who link to things linking to other things. When coming up with content on MacStansbury.com, I force myself to create as much as possible. If I have nothing (or very little) to say, I link it up on del.icio.us. Those links are stories I've sifted through, and I find valuable enough to share. That Digg (and Netscape and reddit and etc.) is (are) thought of as being content providers would be a misnomer. To understand the differences, look at how they work:

  • Digg is a message board, and it's not a news creator, it's a news finder.
  • Google News is a meme-tracker, and only tracks news after it's interesting.

Comparing the two as direct competitors is wrong. Celebrating a 22-minute lead is OBSOI.

status: published
lastmod: '2006-11-09T17:51:04.000Z'
author: John Stansbury
cms: wordpress
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