The quality of stories on Digg has eroded from cutting edge news to “newly found” old video footage of Family Guy or an old story about how Apple should change from 1997.
However, it does still have great news and links. It all depends on the time of day. In the afternoon (Eastern Time in the US) there’s pretty much garbage on the front page. By 8 or 9PM Eastern actual news stories make their way to the front page.
Thanks to Digg, I’ve found a way to see all the news I could ever want with OriginalSignal.com and Spotback.com. They are news aggregator sites which display the news from various sites in a grid. Original Signal is good for lots of different sources – however it lacks customizability.
For customizability, I go to Spotback. I threw on the feeds that OriginalSignal.com lack. No need to recreate what has been done well on other sites. My schedule is pretty tight these days, and to get all my news in one or two sites is excellent. I’ve never really liked RSS Readers because they look like e-mail programs. The grid format is excellent for people who want their info on one page like me.
If you’re tired of Digg having lousy stories in the afternoon, go over to OriginalSignal and Spotback. Plus they load quickly.
Hi Iyaz,
Thank you for the great post. I wanted to add a few quick facts about Spotback that may be useful for your readers:
1. Spotback offers a new kind of personalization service. Our news service is designed to learn what every user is interested in based on the way each user rate the stories he/she reads. Then, it is designed to offer each users a personalized edition of the news that focuses on stories that are relevant to the specific user. This saves a lot of irrelevant reading;
2. The RSS news aggregation that was mentioned in the post is just one feature inside Spotback. We call this feature NewsSnacks (this should help readers find it inside the Spotback website);
3. The benefit of using NewsSnacks — aside for the customization features — is that you can rate the stories that you read by clicking on their title. Rating stories contributes to your profile and ensures that you will receive more relevant stories in the future on the front page of Spotback.
Thanks again for the great post.
Micha.
Just to be fair to my readers, Micha apparently works at SpotBack. That being said – what she says is absolutely true.
Rating the stories operates kind of like digg, and they keep track of your stuff that way.
The personalized news section reminds me of a slicker Google News page that is extremely customized.
Thanks for the post. I am just wondering how the stories on the first page or those with high rankings can be of bad quality?
I will try your recommendations!
I don’t care for spotback.com but I really like the originalsignal.com. It is the first time I’ve heard from it. So tired of Digg users pushing their liberal agenda to the point it’s difficult to find the news anymore.