For my practicum assignment, I am researching social news sites such as Reddit, Delicious and Digg. I have never used a social news site prior to this assignment. The closest I have come is reading Perez Hilton, but that has a much different focus than these websites. The best way to describe them is a "news feed" style format constantly updating based on what users post or deem funny.
Since I have joined the website Digg, I have had about 15 followers. I have no idea who these people are and I'm still trying to figure out exactly what they are following, but it is interesting to know there are actually people who will add random people without concern for who they are dealing with on the other side of the computer. Digg is more focused on actual news stories that circulate on the internet about funny or weird news.
So far, I have mostly been dealing with Digg and Reddit. Reddit is slightly different than Digg because it is not limited to just news articles but also posts photoshopped funny pictures, advertisements and internet memes. Reddit does post some news articles about interesting topics but the order in which it is displayed is where reddit is special. There is an upward or downward button which users can use to push a post higher or lower on the front page. The more "likes" an article gets, the higher up it moves on the front page and vice versa.
On both sites I needed to create a user name with a password which allows me to save articles or photos which I like and of course on all three websites there is the classic "share" menu which puts Facebook and Twitter logos next to any article. Moving forward, I will delve more into Delicious and continue to gain exposure to Digg and Reddit. Fortunately, having to use these websites has made me more aware of general news stories and keeps me up to date on internet trends. I look forward to more research of these sites.
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