SorBor

Top Social News Site

If you haven’t been using social bookmarking, you are out of the loop.  This is now my favorite way to get unbiased news, usually faster than any television news.  I like to impress all of my friends by knowing news that no one else does, I usually check these websites at least once a day. It is a good way to pass the time while gaining the latest information about almost any topic.  While first started for mainly tech geeks, social bookmarking sites such as Digg have gained mainstream attention.  You can find the latest world news, funny images, the best the web has to offer, useful online resources, and anything else.  Here is a list of my favorite social bookmarking sites.

Digg - The most popular of all the social book marking sites.  This site has gained mainstream attention, being added to multiple mainstream news sites so you can digg their articles.  Apparently you the owner has been having trouble gaining revenue from their ads.  This website has the most activity, and the biggest user base.  When sites hit the front page they can get the ‘digg effect’ which basically kills their hosting plan.  Although I first started my social bookmarking on this website, I have since left.  People tend to agree that digg has grown too mainstream, filled with a bunch of idiots and morons.  Digg also seems to be on the end of the loop, getting most of the news later than the rest of the social bookmarking websites.

StumbleUpon - This social bookmarking website is good for finding useful websites, and good for the fact of finding whole websites rather than sites with only one page.  Although I hate the toolbar that it adds at the top of the browser when using the website.  It also doesnt use the actual website and uses iframes I believe, this can mess up coding and just makes it seem less professional.  I haven’t used this site as much as the others, but it is relatively popular.

Reddit - Play on the words ‘read it’.  This is my favorite of all the social bookmarking website, it is plain text so easy to load.  It seems to get all of its content ahead of any of the other websites, and you will often see reddit sites re posted on digg a couple days later.  The content base is hilarious, filled with witty sarcastic comments and in side jokes that only reddit’ers will get.  The system is also open source, meaning anyone can tweak it.  The little alien logo is always so cute to look at, and there are 100’s of different pictures with him.  The fact that it gets the news the first is what makes it the best, also the fast load times.  They also hate all digg users, kind of like some racial war or something.  Go check it out if you like social bookmarking, I wouldn’t use anything else.

Slashdot - Defiantly for the more nerdy crowd.  More news on technology, news, astronomy, and the latest gadgets.  They seem to have a good user base and a bunch of witty nerds.  Although I am not interested in this type of news as much they are defiantly respectable in the social bookmarking crowd.  They have a more rigid submission process, which tends to keep all the spam out of there, unlike digg.  No stupid sections, and defiantly not mainstream but for the more intelligent crowd.  Recommended if you are an ultra geek.

Delicious - Great for finding whole sites as well, good for finding other peoples bookmarks.  This website has a lot of gems, and is less about news and more about the actual bookmarks.  I would recommend going here if you are looking for useful websites that many people have bookmarked.  When you sign up you can upload all of your bookmarks which is a handy feature.  Great for finding some of the best online resources on the web.

Fark - Fark has been more successful than its  competitors in terms of generated revenue, it also ranks better.  Fark has been often used in television comedy programs to find good material.  Fark is great for finding anything funny the internet.  It offers a paid premium membership which allows the members to get all of the links submitted.  It is different in other social news sites in that it is less democratic, administrators choose the sites that get posted on the main page rather than a voting system.

And the winner is..*drumroll*…Reddit.   The fact that it loads so fast due to it being all text based, its great user base, and that it gets the latest news on the Internet makes it the cream of the crop.  You will find information here that you cannot on any other bookmarking website.  Once you go there you will never want to come back.  The post to self features makes for funny commentary and makes it feel kind of like a forum, in a good way.  It seems that all of the ‘elite’ members of digg and other social news sites have migrated to reddit.  My only complaint with reddit is that they need to fix their search feature, it seems to be broken.  They will defiantly have to fix this if they want to compete with Digg.