Digg, a news website that ranks links according to user votes, may be ready to shake things up a little more.
A friend familiar with the matter tells me that the self-proclaimed "user driven social content website" has plans to start featuring user-generated content. Presently all listings on Digg point to external sites.
What would this mean? More momentum in the citizen or ‘open’ journalism trend. The online space is already getting crowded. So far, South Korea’s OhmyNews has been the industry success-story, with tens of thousands of contributors. Startups Newsvine (hybrid citizen/syndicated news) and GroundReport (solely citizen news) share advertising revenues with contributors. Academic projects, such as the NYU-affiliated NewAssignment venture led by Jay Rosen, are in the works.
The timing would make sense. The current Economist explores what they call "social news" and the Digg phenomenon, suggesting Digg may be overvalued at $200m:
Though their news values might horrify a conventional editor,
social-news sites have been feted as the future of media-Digg has even
been called the “New New York Times“. Of course, much of this
hoopla is ridiculous. Digg creates no original content, instead relying
heavily on the traditional media to provide its stories.
Wherever it’s coming from, that "New New York Times" may not be so far off.