Online Media Cultist

Sure, I understand that “useful” is a general and sometimes useless term. It’s relative and subjective; what’s useful to someone may not be to someone else.

But I pose the question nonetheless about social news sites, Digg being the grand daddy of the lot: are they useful anymore?

To be sure, Digg continues to be popular, clocking in at a stellar 113 in Alexa’s ranking system these days. But as some have noted, its expansion has caused it to include an increasing burden of non-tech articles. Going non-tech doesn’t necessarily translate to less useful stories, but I believe that Digg and other social news sites are trending toward factoid stories, “weird news,” and shock value headlines and less toward news that may be truly useful to an online media consumer.

Flashy headers with no substance, in other words.

Let’s take an anecdotal look at the front pages of Digg and Reddit – two of the leading social news sites – and then contrast it against meme-trackers Techmeme and Memeorandum.

Digg
The top three Digg stories – or the hottest stories burning up the huge Digg community and therefore blasting to the top of the front page – as of this writing are:

* Vaccines do not cause autism!
* 60 Photography Links You Can’t Live Without
* When burning gas is good for the planet

Scanning down the rest of the page, we do find some headline tech news (HP’s purchase of EDS) mixed in with stories about Albert Einstein’s religious beliefs and “coffin tables.”

So, you could argue that the Digg community is stronger than ever and that these are the stories that the community chooses to vote for and showcase on its famous front page.

However, I’d argue that Digg is increasingly becoming a place to browse idly as you’re about to glaze over at your work desk and you’re desperate for a few seconds of distraction.

But don’t we already have Fark for this?

Moving on…

Reddit
Top three stories:

* Does this girl Ever close her Mouth? [Pics]
* One Dollar [pic]
* US confession: Weapons were not made in Iran after all

I actually used to visit Reddit on a fairly regular basis, but I don’t anymore. If you dig (pardon the pun) hard enough you’ll find some interesting stories, but I don’t have the time or energy to do that when I can find more useful ways to get news elsewhere.

Now let’s look at Techmeme, with its focus on Internet and tech stories, and the political and general news tracker Memeorandum.

Techmeme
Leading off, we again get the story about HP’s acquisition of EDS for $13.9 billion. In this case though we get 35+ publications covering the story, nicely grouped and easy-to-read in a cluster format. We get the original source story from HP as the lead, and a bevy of traditional media (NYT), heavy hitter blogs (GigaOM), and lesser knowns to give a wide array of coverage.

We then have stories about new Apple technology and HBO’s entry into the iTunes store, again with the same cluster format and surrounding conversations on the web.

Memeorandum
Memeorandum is set up in the same format as Techmeme: story clusters with the most important story as the headline. Right now there’s a large cluster fronted by a USA Today piece called Democrats say let the contest continue. Following that are stories about racist incidents and the possible effect on the Obama campaign, and James Carville comments about Obama likely winning the Democratic nomination for president.

No, it’s not completely fair to compare Digg and Reddit directly against Techmeme and Memeorandum. They are different kinds of sites with different purposes.

And my argument is not necessarily a scientific one. That said, my sense is that a year or two ago, I felt that Digg and Reddit were pretty good places to visit to find out what’s going on in the world, or at least to discover interesting stories. I just don’t feel that way anymore, and I know a number of people who feel the same.

I’ve long felt that social news sites are great but could probably use a helpful dose of editorial curation, which means having site editors choose “featured stories” or some such to help seed conversations and set the tone for the site. Propeller does a pretty good job of this, but I believe there will eventually be a new wave of sites that will come around that will improve upon this model.