Bob Caswell

For an introduction to the concept behind Digg, see A Beginner’s Guide to Community Driven Web Content. This post assumes you know what “Digg-like” means and will dive into the pros and cons / advantages and disadvantages of the top 5 Digg-like sites (read: community driven web content sites; it’s just easier to say Digg-like). The sites to be compared are Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Newsvine, and Shoutwire.

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Back in the day (like two years ago), “browsing” the Internet for news and information was usually limited to using search engines for finding something specific you needed or checking out your favorite sources for the latest news and stories. But that was/is problematic for two reasons: 1) search engines are calculated and cold and don’t always lead you to what you want 2) sticking to a few favorite sources narrows your exposure to what’s really happening around the world both on and offline.

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The well respected Economist.com (subscription required) released an article today called Going Pro with a subtitle of More people are quitting their day jobs to blog for a living. The article claims that there used to be only two types of blogs: personal diaries with tiny audiences (and no interest in advertising) and niche magazines explicitly run as businesses, quoting Jason Calacanis (the Engadget / Weblogs Inc. guy) claiming such blogs are “the most profitable media business today.” But the Economist explains that a third category is on the rise: “mom-and-pop” blogs.

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ReviewMe is a new online service that is in the business of paying bloggers (like myself) to review products or services. The company is owned by Text Links Ads, which was recently acquired by MediaWhiz. I only mention this because both companies are fairly well respected and give the automatically-labeled-as-controversial new business ReviewMe some much needed support.

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Is it just me, or did these two giants start adopting each other’s more classic tactics?

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A friend of mine was explaining how he wasn’t impressed with a certain Canon camera he had purchased from Costco months earlier. There was a problem with the focus that he was hoping would just go away. Otherwise, it was a great camera for a great price. In fact, the original price was greatly reduced by a $100 mail-in rebate. After finding out from other owners that this focus problem was not unique to his particular camera, he decided it was time:

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