Is Digg the future of news?
"Anyone who reads this blog knows my position on Digg, where users pick what news makes it to the home page. It’s the future of news, and the most disruptive force to mainstream media since blogs were born."
In “Digg 3.0, Who needs The New York Times?” in June, I discussed Arrington’s assertions that Digg is “looking more and more like the newspaper of the web, and is challenging even the New York Times on page views.”
In September, I asked Digg founder Kevin Rose: “Will Digg displace The New York Times?”
ROSE: We have a symbiotic relationship with traditional media sites. We can’t survive unless bloggers blog and The New York Times writes stories. We create a level playing field, good content gets found and recognized.
Rose’s response reflects that the Digg-mainstream media relationship is one of mutual dependency. Digg does not produce news and it does not seek to displace producers of news; Digg needs mainstream media to fuel Digg and mainstream media looks to Digg to drive traffic.
Digg users may “pick what news makes it to the home page,” but they do not produce the news that “makes it to the homepage,” unless they are self-submitting their own blog posts or mainstream media stories!
In “Can Digg go mainstream?” I underscore the omnipresence of Digg in the online tech community but note that Digg’s formula may not be successfully transferable to mainstream news.