WP: Online News With a New Angle: You're the anchor

[DeepModem Mom]

Online News With a New Angle
By Leslie Walker
Thursday, June 22, 2006; Page D01

....You and millions of other readers are being cast as Internet news anchors by a fresh crop of Web sites that may well represent the future of news.

Chief among them is Digg, a technology news site where story position is determined entirely by readers who submit links to articles and vote on them. Digg's computers use special formulas to analyze which stories readers are voting for and commenting on the most and then elevate those to its home page. What's displayed on Digg are summaries and links to articles on other news sites and blogs, not the actual stories....

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Digg ( http://www.digg.com ), which launched in September 2004, draws 8.5 million monthly visitors, who make 2,000 daily story submissions. Yesterday, top entries included a review of the Opera 9 browser and a story about MySpace adding restrictions....Digg plans to announce a makeover that will expand its repertoire beyond computing and into general news categories and add customization features to go live next week....

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In a nod to its popularity, Digg got a well-heeled competitor last week -- AOL's Netscape.com, a general Web portal being transformed into a Digg clone with a few twists. Netscape's and Digg's news summaries are free and will be supported by advertising. The new Netscape site is in preview mode ( http://www.beta.netscape.com ) and will officially launch July 1.

Its key differentiator is the human touch -- real, live reporters and editors. In addition to letting visitors vote on stories to determine their play, Netscape is hiring eight full-time and 15 part-time journalists to add an editorial sensibility on top of its popularity-based layouts....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/21/AR2006062101864.html