Currently reading...

I'm currently reading a lot of old stuff that's out there critising digg and other sites for their influence on news stories, e.g. here and here. 

It's interesting to look at the differences, at the same point in time, in the top urls at digg, del.icio.us and reddit (below). It's as different as reading the FT, the BBC or The Daily Mail. Obviously the digg urls reflect the site's tech focus and reddit is newsy, but del.icio.us is the most interesting to me because it's the only one of these three where users don't vote on others submissions, so the community effect is diluted. 

I dip in and out of digg, reddit and a bunch of similar sites (who's top urls you can check out at popurls), but I'd never really considered until today that chosing one of these sites as your main source is really the same as picking your daily newspaper.  Each has its own bias and emphasis to attract a certain audience, and major contributors/participants have as much influence in shaping the content as newpaper editors. Plus ca change....