diggit

A new verb in the Internet world

by MALIN GURUNG

FROM ISSUE # 156 (December 2008) | IN THIS ISSUE
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The internet has come a long way since its heydays. Most of us are probably a part of the chat frenzy that took over the 90's or even the immensely popular blogging fad of the early 2000's. But even as the internet ages, new concepts and ideas are always trickling in, making our online experience novel per kpbs. One such innovative idea comes in the form of digg.com.

Digg is a social book-marking site where users can submit stories or digg stories from all over the internet. The most dug (voted) stories appear on the front-page of the website. It is a great way to discover and share content from anywhere in the internet. So, how is this helpful? Well, first off you get an idea about what the billions of other internet users are reading. Secondly, it makes it easy to sort out content in the seemingly endless world of the World Wide Web. It makes it easy to discover interesting stories from all over the web that you may have missed. It also acts as a news aggregator much like your RSS feed but only the most voted stories appears in the front-page. Apart from digging stories, users can also vote against it in a process called burying. With digging and burying, the users have total control over what appears on the website.

To get digging, you only need to register a username to the website - it is that simple. Then look for a small 'digg it' tab or the 'digger' icon at the end of the articles and start digging. You can also submit the link of the website directly to digg it. You can also digg interesting videos or images that you may come across.

All the dug stories are summed up in digg.com's weekly podcast called 'Diggnation'. The podcast is hosted by the man Kevin Rose himself (see below). The podcast discusses some of the interesting and the most dug-up stories over the week. The weekly podcast contains somewhat blatant or even vulgar humour throughout its runtime, but users seem to love this very aspect of the show. The podcast is available from iTunes in both video and audio format and is rated 'explicit'.

Geek turned millionaire
When Kevin Rose started digg.com as an experiment in 2004, no one would've thought that one day it would be worth millions. Kevin started the website with only $1000 which he was supposed to deposit for a house he was to share with his girlfriend. As a result, their relationship ended but digg.com came into being.

Now Kevin Rose is one of the most well known names in the technology world. The brand digg has become a valuable asset and the website itself is now worth millions. Potential merger with the likes of Google.com is also in the offing.