I saw that comment from Cmdrtaco the other day and thought that it was a real good summary of several "news" aggregator sites.
My slashdot user # is like 32000-something. It would have been lower, but I lurked for a year before actually signing up. Then when digg and reddit came around I sort of abandoned /., the news on these new sites was NOW, and it was voted on by The People, not decided by The Editors.
And then a couple of funny pics made the top stories, and that was a nice break from just news. And then another funny pic, and then one I had just seen the other day, and then one from 1985, and then...
I think the algorithms behind Digg and reddit, or the stories being promoted, show that as a whole society is pretty basic and easily entertained. Hackers, BizDev folks, Founders - we are the minority out there.
When these progressive, techy, news-aggregator sites first emerged, they held "our" news, because "we" ran them. Then, they were diluted as more (I'll call them "normal") people globbed on to the concept.
Soon, LOLCat pictures and videos of stupid stunts out rank a security flaw in FF, or news of a software project being acquired.
This is where I think /. has the edge again, geeky-hacky-founder-types select the stories and weed out the LOLCat pics from the submissions. It's not perfect, but it's good for now. Combine that with Hacker News, and some other "underground" news sites, and I guess we come to the conclusion that just as "we" stay on the leading edge of technology, "we" will have to stay on the leading edge of news sites as well.
My slashdot user # is like 32000-something. It would have been lower, but I lurked for a year before actually signing up. Then when digg and reddit came around I sort of abandoned /., the news on these new sites was NOW, and it was voted on by The People, not decided by The Editors.
And then a couple of funny pics made the top stories, and that was a nice break from just news. And then another funny pic, and then one I had just seen the other day, and then one from 1985, and then...
I think the algorithms behind Digg and reddit, or the stories being promoted, show that as a whole society is pretty basic and easily entertained. Hackers, BizDev folks, Founders - we are the minority out there.
When these progressive, techy, news-aggregator sites first emerged, they held "our" news, because "we" ran them. Then, they were diluted as more (I'll call them "normal") people globbed on to the concept.
Soon, LOLCat pictures and videos of stupid stunts out rank a security flaw in FF, or news of a software project being acquired.
This is where I think /. has the edge again, geeky-hacky-founder-types select the stories and weed out the LOLCat pics from the submissions. It's not perfect, but it's good for now. Combine that with Hacker News, and some other "underground" news sites, and I guess we come to the conclusion that just as "we" stay on the leading edge of technology, "we" will have to stay on the leading edge of news sites as well.