Social News Websites

By Daniel Wood

One of the categories of social media sites are social news web sites. Different from news portals which just syndicate from news companies, social news web sites allow their users to submit news stories, articles and media such as photos, audio and video and share them within their communities. Depending on the tools within the sites, such as user votes, these articles will be ranked and therefore have varying levels of visibility. Some of these social news web sites also employ editors to determine the visibility, and highly relevant and newsworthy items are given very good exposure.

Many people are now using such web sites to get information as well as web traffic. Perhaps the problem for new users is to find a good social news web site, as there are many out there. Most have now become dormant, partly due to poor marketing, but mainly because they failed to obtain an active community of users.

A good social news site will give fresh news on specific topics, sends your own web site prospects and traffic, while also branding yourself or your business. The following are some of the best and most popular social news sites available on the Internet. They are all in English (except one), and are not social bookmarking sites, nor social network sites such as Delicious and Facebook.

• Digg.com – The latest news headlines, videos and images

Currently the largest and most popular social news site now, this site pioneered the voting up or down of submissions (digging or burying posts). Ranked 99^th globally on Alexa, this site has been criticised for putting too much control in the user’s hand, allowing for sensationalisation of news stories. Contradictary to that, Digg operators have been known to ban users who posted comments that conflicted with their own.

Digg also includes a video and image section.

• Reddit.com – What’s new online!

Established in 2005, this social news site has a very large and active user base and covers a wide range of news. Subreddits cover topical sections which focus on specific topics such as programming and science.

Its visibility tool is based on user votes, where you can vote up or down to affect prominence.

Propeller.com – Look it up! I bet we have it!

More similar to Digg in structure, Propeller used to be hosted under Internet veteran Netscape, until its decline in the mid-2000s. Unlike Digg, however, Propeller also uses “anchors” in addition to votes as their visibility tool, who also maintain the site and feature stories.

• Fark.com – It’s not news! It’s Fark!

Probably the most “mature” social news site, it was originally launched in 1999 as a site that posted news about everything that “was NOT news”. It even linked to pornography until it went for a child-safe rating (moving all its pornography to its sister site foobies.com).

Users also need to submit posts for approval, unlike Digg, so it’s possible your link may never be shown if the moderators don’t like it. It also has a paid subscription. Fark also is known for dark humour (it once posted a featured post that pointed to a Digg post, which in turn pointed back to Fark, sparking a Fark versus Digg war for a while), so while it may not be the most popular news site, it certainly is a very fun place to look for humourous news items.

• Slashdot.org – News for nerds. Stuff that matters

Although primarily a technology news site, Slashdot also covers topics like books, games, politics and entertainment – though they can be quite nerdy, as the tagline suggests. Editors need to approve user-submitted stories before they are posted. This site remains popular, even though it may be eclipsed by Digg now, because it still has a strong influence and can send a large amount of traffic through good entries.

• I-am-bored.com – Sites for when you’re bored

As the name suggests, this social news site has a strong focus on the weird and offbeat headlines. It has been criticised for its very poor quality control, however, as there are many fake links with misleading headlines. Also allows you to chat with other site visitors.

• Shoutwire.com – Internet news for the masses

With an estimated base of about 60,000 users, it is certainly one of the smaller social news sites but its users are quite active and vocal. Wikipedia clashed with this site when it deleted the Shoutwire page in September 2007, filing the entry about Shoutwire as spam.

• Indianpad.com

This social news site gets a worthy mention as it seems to be one of the few (that are active and have a substantial user base) on the Internet that is focused on regional/country specific content. It even has a section in Hindi, and features Indian music as well.