After looking at all four of the sites listed, Digg, Mixx, Reddit and Newsvine, I can’t say that I’m a fan. They seemed to be much more of a productivity detractor than an enhancer. Of the four, I liked Newsvine best. It seemed to be more “newsy” and had an attractive feature that allowed you to view regional stories...in my case, Jacksonville. Digg and Mixx I felt were pretty similar. They seemed to be a mix of some newsy-type stories and many more that were just “interesting” things that people had happened across. There were lots of things there that I would never have found on my own, but their usefulness was marginal at best. Reddit seemed like it was virtually no news and almost completely random stuff, and the comments that people made on this site seemed much less relevant and pertinent than on other sites and more like the comments of people just trying hard to be funny (an in my humble opinion, usually not succeeding).
I had not, until today, ever even visited any of these sites. I did read a couple of stories that I saw featured, my favorite being a link to opencongress.org that described a bill introduced in the House in January and co-sponsored by 44 Representatives that advocates doing away with federal income tax in favor of a national sales tax. Of course, I’ve heard a lot of talk of this, but I hadn’t read or seen anywhere that there had been an actual bill introduced, so I thought it was interesting.
There’s so much information out there, we can’t possibly keep up with everything, but I don’t think these social media sites are the answer. They’re something I might spend a few idle minutes perusing on a Saturday afternoon just to see what’s out there, but overall I prefer the RSS feeds.
I also shared this link on Digg.
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