Newsvine vs. Digg 3.0

Not a bad article but I'd say Digg will always be the more popular, despite being the weaker of the two, in my opinion. Sad but true.

Also that poll is gonna be sooooo one sided.

This vote is going to be one sided. I think the likes of the new netscape.com should be in there somewhere. It's like NV but with a professional that can check research into the top stories. Personally I do like the new layout and functions of Digg 3.0 although I still won't use it as much as NV and do not think anything other than tech will ever take off on it.

Actually I am on both Digg and Newsvine for different reasons.

Digg because I get the top tech news - as voted by the members. But agree that some stories are lost, although the V3 does address it.

Newsvine : AP feature is great, it balances things what the users vote/seed. However due to the nature of "general news" certain topics dominate. As many of the Viners have said - certain topics will always always generate a lot of ups/comments - no I will not say what the "magic words" are because we all know it.

Conclusion : Digg and Vine have a different role to play, and I will stay on both. Actually I am on Slashdot, Fark etc.. as well, but that is going off topic.

I find that there are more articles on digg that get my immediate attention - I'm more of a tech person than a politics person, for example, but I would never, ever consider becoming an active part of their community.

That finds me on Newsvine far more than digg. I would never comment on an article on digg with my opinion on something, if I say anything there it's straight in, drop some facts, get out again.

They're really is no comparison. Digg is a site where people vote on what they like in the news. Newsvine is a site where you vote about the news as well as vote for it. They are not comparable.

I voted Newspaper.

Newsvine is an excellent site, not just because it holds great news and articles, but because it holds equality between writers. I (being a 19 year old student) was able to write an article about Football (Soccer) and have loads of people read it, vote on it and comment it. That alone is a better feeling than just reading the news. The fact that you're actually making it. However, the 'news' is the problem with Newsvine. Yesterday I could find about 5 articles on the front page that begun with the word "Bush" and finished by saying something bad about him.

If Newsvine could filter these articles to display one popular article about one sub-subject, then I'd probably vote Newsvine, but I'm still doomed to be looking at stories about the war, the president, and the same old stuff we always see when we go to newsvine.com

Digg is a great concept. I love the vast amount of tech news that hits the site, and a lot of the times I visit (which isn't actually that frequently) I can find an article or site that I enjoy. However, the community is lacking, and there are way too many kids with their flame wars for my taste.

Newspaper wins hands down for me. Valid news about varied subjects. If I don't want to read a page, I just skip right past and read the next. Also, I'm going to obviously be bias about it because obviously, being British, I read British Newspapers. I get my good hit of relevant news.

TV news definitely has it's place, but I really can't be bothered to stick to a channel serving news, even though sometimes it can be nice. Also, news shows can get dull or tedious as the Internet can.

Affiliated News Internet Sites? I don't see much difference between them and other news sites. Just some have more fancy articles and features.

Other may have got my vote, but I felt that the Newspaper deserved its mention. If I were to vote for other it'd be Google News hands down. Always relevant news, and Google UK News caters perfectly for me.

Digg and Newsvine are two different communities with two different athmospheres (I discussed that in my Recent article). I use both, but I tend to use Newsvine more, because it's more mature.

I have to admit that once I got used to Newsvine, I left Digg and rarely went back. Newsvine is definitely more my style. However, I did go back this week to see the new 3.0 and there are a lot of great improvements. I will stay with Newsvine but I did put Digg back into my rss reader.

As to relative popularity and user base. I made an interesting observation last night.

We can now see many of the same stories on both sites. One example is this story --

Bush Ignores Laws He Inks, Vexing Congress

around 7:00pm (est) I saw this story on both sites. On Digg is had 530+ Diggs and 50 comments, on Newsvine it had 52 votes and 79 comments.

To my surprise, the comments on Digg, although a bit more casual, were not the flame-bait and trolling that caused me to leave the site. I was glad to see this and wish Digg the best of luck. I don't think there is any conflict here as there will be plenty of the new-journalistic-era for everyone. :)

I like newsvine for no other reason than you cant mod down. Any view that is not liberal extremist, Alex Jones loving, Michael Moore loving, etc, is immediately modded so far down you never get seen.

At least here you all have to endure it, or scroll down :P

One thing that makes me irritated about digg is how the same 10 people are always on the front page. They just have so many friends that they automatically get on the front page no matter what they submit. Often there is alot of boring stuff on the front page.

Newsvine has similar characteristics but its just not as extreme as digg.

At the risk of repeating myself...

Digg is not democratic.

First, there is no anti-digg. You cannot vote down an article. There are reporting options, but they only apply to special circumstances. In any case, voting down of an article is distinct from reporting a problem article. Perhaps an article is not spam or inappropriate, but has several facts incorrect or shows a serious bias. Of course those who share the bias are going to vote it up, but rational thinkers and those holding the opposite bias have no recourse.

Second, the owners have removed comments based on their own personal politics. That is simply not appropriate in a democratic system. When challenged, their basic response was that there are censorship situations where "everyone agrees" with the censorship, even though it was quite evident that there were those of us who did not agree.

Third, the method for stories appearing on the home page is linked to number of diggs (which is different from popularity), but some stories seem to be editorially selected. This ties in with the first problem because once a story appears on the front page, it is guaranteed to see an increase in diggs, since there are no anti-diggs. Hence, the politics/agenda of the owners are reaffirmed. I have seen the same spam end up on the front page more than once (despite being reported).

None of these things is wrong, per se. However, in the context of Digg being promoted as some kind of democratic system, these things become wrong. Digg needs to either admit it is not a democratic system or it needs to actually become one.

Newsvine has some of these problems (e.g. an inability to moderate down), but makes no claim to be a democratic process. Newsvine also has a problem of rewarding posters which prompt debate regardless of the quality of the debate. Quality debate does not involve huge amounts of rhetoric on both sides, but rather rational arguments perhaps with a touch of rhetoric. In part this is due, I think, to a lack of clear purpose (or perhaps a lack of critical thinking skills) on the part of Newsvine. In part this is due to the current state of our society. We (as a society) think that "fair and balanced" means counter-acting the opposite extreme a la Fox News, rather than actually presenting reasoned arguments from all sides of an issue.

On the whole, Newsvine is a fantastic place for editorials and news commentary. There are many insightful comments on a broad range of subjects, and - for whatever reason - Newsvine seems mostly devoid of trolls.

I moved from Digg to Newsvine because while I like tech news, I am huge on Foreign Affairs.

Digg may have a nifty version 3.0, but it does not change the fact that pretty much anybody who can use a keyboard can join Digg, meaning the userbase has been infected with crazy monkeys.

Now I usually don't mind crazy monkeys, because bananas will appease them, but when they venture in topics where they are completely clueless and then have the audacity to yell "no you're wrong, because my dad said so" or other @!$%# of that nature, you start pondering.

Now, I still like Digg for its tech news, and Diggnation is fun to watch. Alas, for everything besides tech news, I follow Newsvine, because at least here, people read books and do research on a regular basis, as opposed to read a few 1-2 pages articles then refer themselves as experts on whatever topic they encounter (when initiating a debate).

I am so bringing a NewsvineWorld videopodcast someday...if only I had a sidekick. Although it may just enrage all the neocons...maybe we'd need two new podcasts....NewsvineWorld Blue (more Liberal) and NewsvineWorld Red (more BushyWushy).

The problem with the new version of Digg is that they added NON-TECH topics...now the front page is polluted with what teenage technies think passes for forigen policy, politics etc...

At least with Newsvine, while it leans much futher to the left than I would like, it is still MUCH MUCH MUCH more adult in its non-tech content and I appreaciate this.

Personally I think that DIGG just jumped the shark because they should have just stuck to being tech oriented, the non-tech stuff is making it more trouble to weed through the crap to get to the good stuff. I think I am going back to slashdot for my tech news, and staying here to get my non-tech world/us/politics/etc news.

It seems to me that one of the major differences between Newsvine and Digg that has been overlooked is that Newsvine users can create their own content (i.e., their own news stories, editorials, what have you) within Newsvine. Does Digg do that? No. For me, that makes Newsvine much more interesting. The user-generated articles by Newsviners are a fantastic resource.

The one thing I find really annoying right now and hopefully it gets fixed later. It's that if I go to Digg to read an article or view a video and I'm not logged on I can't view it. I know it's probably safe practice but it's really annoying if I just want to casually browse without having to log on.

Newsvine has a better design, a better layout, better useability, better stories, better core idea - end of.

Well, I can expand on that a little. Personally, I think Digg seems messy and unorginised, things are hard to find, and the news is all tech-based.

I think that Newsvine is already starting to take a large amount of the Digg user base and the tech stories here will soon be just as good as they are at Digg.

Also the scaleability of Newsvine is better than that of Digg, hence the reason why Digg has become such a mess. Newsvine is rather empty at the moment, which is a shame. But once people start using the chat more often, and writting more of their own articles and filling in and customizing their columns Newsvine will outshine not only Digg but a whole host of other news websites.

It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

But that's just my opinion.