I dugg digg.com, I did. I joined, dugg stories, and submitted stories.
Digg is a website for user submitted technology stories. You find a link to a news story or something else you think is interesting and you submit it to the site. Then, your story goes into an “upcoming” pool of stories, where other users vote on, or digg, the story. If enough users digg your story, it gets promoted to the front page.
I’ve been using digg for a long time. Loading digg’s front page and opening interesting stories and their comment pages into news tabs was a staple of my online browsing habits. Somewhere along the line, the RSS Revolution occurred. I offloaded my web comic, news, and other readings habits to Google Reader.
Really Simple Syndication, RSS, is a technology to change the way you browse websites. Rather than checking different websites for new content, the websites notifies your RSS Reader (either an application or a website) and you can quickly browse through them. RSS revolutionizes the way we consume online content.
For some reason, I didn’t give up going to digg.com. Every morning, afternoon, and evening, I quickly went through dozens of websites using Google Reader while deliberately loading digg stories one by one. It recently hit me, what’s the point? All of the technology stories I need to know about show up on Buzz Out Loud, the wonderful technology podcast, and going to digg is such a time-sink.
I’m glad to say that I’m off of digg and don’t think that I’ll go back. It used to be fun, really. I used to submit tons of stories from the OSx86 Project and got 19 of them on the front page. I even made it on Diggnation episode 13 with the story Jobs Says Pirates Will “Burn in Hell”. It took me far too long to realize it, but digg is only a vehicle for self-promotion and Ron Paul/Barack Obama spam.
Are you using RSS for your content consumption? Is there a site that you’re still going back to daily? Get started with Google Reader and see how you can change your browsing lifestyle. Here’s a great article about getting started. Good luck!