My son just sent me email that said only, “it happened.” Digg.com passed Slashdot in Alexa (probably getting Alexa some new users along the way as well).
5 responses to “And new champeen!”
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Power to the People!
Good catch.
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I plan on writing a longer piece on this – and I will probably get slammed for it – but oh well –
I see no competition between Digg and Slashdot. The real competitors for Digg – a closed community tagged/votted on/promoted content – are del.icio.us, furl, my web 2.0, and maybe sites like kuro5hin, plastic, mydd, and others.
Slashdot runs a different model, more like that of your own weblog – a select group or singular person decides what goes on the home page. A huge difference in methodology. The comparison between the two just doesn’t make sense.
So that’s two different ways to aggregate news:
1. Content selected by a closed community (you must be a member to effect content) of users who vote.
2. Content selected by an editorial team or single editor (you must be an editor to effect content).There are two more:
3. Your aggregator – Content via your personally selected RSS feeds.
4. Algorithmically enabled aggregator – Memeorandum and Google News – Content selected via algorithm.There is room for all four approaches on the web. The ultimate would be a service that combines them all in a way that makes sense.
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They’re not really comparable – Alexa’s penetration among geek users (firefox and anything linux, which is a much higher proportion of digg and slashdot) is not great, therefore the real stats aren’t known
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You could say that the difference between the first kind of news site vs. the second is mainly in the numbers of editorial staff – slashdot has a select few – a typical blog usually has less – and digg has thousands – but the difference is crucial I think. I still need to be a member in order to post – I still need to be a member to promote my news item. Another site that oft gets overlooked in these discussions is Metafilter. No editorial fiat there – no voting. If you are a member – you can get on the home page. The high level of quality at Metafilter has always blown my mind.
I don’t trust Alexa either James. In fact, I know of no one using their toolbar. Do you? Does anyone here?
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I agree with Karl on this, two very different models, but they are going for a similar audience who reads the sites and follows the front paged posts.
And I always laugh when Alexa ratings are lauded. It’s something that you want to get rid of, not want on your browser.
