Dustin's+Social+Media+Tour

=**4/17/2010**=

**Scoping the field of social news websites.**
After discussing a topic change with Liz, I've decided to dive head first into social media. I want to look at how different websites structure their content, the hierarchies that evolve, the design, the aspects of community, and any other important things that contribute to the popularity of social media websites. I've been an long time lurker at three websites in particular, and having some engagement with them is useful to know that they are different enough to compare and contrast. At the same time, I have to try and start fresh, forget all of my preferences and interact with the sites as if it was all new. Below is a brief description of the websites and rationale for why I chose them.

The first website I'm going to join is Mixx.com. Mixx combines popular user-submitted stories, photos, websites, and articles on their front page. Users can also personalize their preferences to show relevant stories in health, technology, business, or other topics. One distinguishing factor of Mixx is that it has partnered with mainstream media outlets such as CNN.com, Reuters, the LA Times, USA Today, and the Weather Channel. It is ranked 802 worldwide traffic according to Alexa.com. I chose Mixx because it has some very powerful people behind it, but not necessarily tech savvy folks. Founder and CEO Chris McGill is former general manager of Yahoo! News and head of strategy at USA Today. I thought it would be interesting to see how a news insider, but not necessarily a programming or technology insider, would fare in social news aggregation.

The second website is Reddit.com, another social news website that allows users to submit and collectively vote on different submissions. The most "upvoted" stories make it onto the front page, and each of these is categorized into a "reddit," or "subreddit" as it is commonly referred to. Subreddits can range anywhere from growing marijuana to political news to general questions for the community. Reddit is owned by Conde Naste Digital, a worldwide magazine publisher. It is currently ranked 300 in worldwide traffic and 143 in U.S. traffic according to Alexa.com. Reddit is fascinating because of the community, discussion, debate, and content are uniquely personal. Educated, articulate answers to questions seem to be preferred, although a sense of humor is never far removed. It will interesting to engage and study with this group of people.

The last website is Digg.com, where submitted stories, articles, photos, and links are upvoted ("dugg") and downvoted ("buried") in a similar way to Reddit. Digg has been active in searching to popularize and market its website, launching a Facebook connect to link articles to peoples social habits and Digg dialog to submit questions to famous people. Digg was ranked 103 in worldwide traffic and 49 in US traffic according to Alexa.com. Digg will make for an interesting contrast to Reddit and Mixx, because it maintains the grassroots upbringing of Reddit, but involves more of the corporatization of Mixx.

All in all I'm excited to accelerate this project, as if I didn't have any more reasons to surf the internet, at least this one's for credit!

Next Post: Joining Reddit, Digg, and Mixx.com

=**4/17/2010**=

**Signing up for accounts: the first interaction.**

 * I just signed up three accounts to Mixx, Reddit, and Digg respectively. My Mixx and Digg username is LeButtersStotch (from the popular South Park Character Leopold "Butters" Stotch) and for Reddit it is AwesomeO4000 (referring to an episode where Cartman dresses up as a robot to fool Butters into giving him an embarassing video back). Below are some screenshots of the registration pages for Mixx, Reddit, and Digg.

Mixx.com

Mixx was interesting in that it required an e-mail address, and then on the next page you can personalize, enter your zip code for local news, and even upload in icon or avatar to symbolize yourself as a user. **

Reddit's signup page was the simplest of the three, only requiring a username, password, and verification of being human. Even e-mail was optional, and they had no links to hookup a user account with other digital media or social websites such as Facebook. **
 * Reddit.com


 * Digg** **.com

I found it very interesting that the first thing on the signup page is to connect with Facebook for info to be taken. Also unique, on the right side of the page is interesting articles for those who may have cold feet about joining up.

All three of these websites have slightly different signup criteria and layout. Now that I have a username on each website, I plan on starting to explore them and get a feel for their different structures. Then, I will try uploading content, stories, and articles to see what happens in each.

Next Post: The layout and design of these three social news websites. **

= **4/18/2010** = = =

**Front pages: the faces of Mixx, Reddit, and Digg.**
Looking at the front pages of these three websites is very informative. The layout and design gives subtle hints to the purposes of each website, including their revenue strategy, type of user-generated content, and community values.

**Mixx**.com

The front page of Mixx.com is organized with links on the top such as "Popular," "Science," "News," "Health," "Business," etc. These represent the categories to which someone can submit material. Underneath that is a slideshow of the most popular photos, inluding nature photography, political cartoons, and journalistic photography. Below this is a list of most popular news stories, business, and entertainment. Sports and Videos line the side of the page. Within these categories they give you the option to sort according to most Popular, On Deck, Recent, and recent Comments. Advertisements consist of one box in the upper right corner of the page. This one in the screenshot happens to be for NHL Tweetmix. Browsing through the topic links, for instance clicking on "Business," brings up an array of subtopics such as Career, Personal Finance, Stock Market, Business News, and Economy. Below is a screenshot of my front page.




 * Reddit**.com

Reddit employs a more simplistic design than Mixx, as the front page is just a list of the top stories. The topmost bar of the website has the most popular subreddits, such as pics, atheism, worldnews, politics, todayIlearned, comics, business, and other categories. On the side of the page there is a search bar, place to submit a link, place to create a subreddit, and an advertising box. The rest of the page, going from top to bottom, shows the most upvoted submissions relative to time. There are 25 stories per page, and navigation is available via the next/previous buttons at the bottom. Finally, you can filter what shows up on the front page with buttons that organize content by "What's hot," "new," "controversial," "top," and "saved." Interesting to note is the white space on the right side of the page, something that Mixx and Digg seem to try and minimize.


 * Digg**.com

Digg employs more advertisements than both Mixx and Reddit, but has a slightly simpler design than Mixx. On the very top Digg combines the three elements in each of these websites. First, there is a bar for signing in, submitting a post, and editing profile. Under that are the categories such as Business, Science, Gaming, Lifestyle, etc. Lastly, you can then sort by Popular or Upcoming and even by virtue of news, images, or video. Inbetween where the top starts and the front page submissions begin, there is a horizontal bar ad. There is another ad space to the right part of the screen, much like on Mixx and Reddit. The middle of the page is then the most recent submissions, which can be sorted by top in 24 hr/week/month/year. On the righthand side there is a list of the top ten submissions in any area. There is another ad underneath this area, and another horizontal bar shaped ad underneath the front page. I think that the emphasis on advertising is really unique on Digg, in stark contrast to Reddit whose only ad is pretty inconspicuous.



I think that the layout of these three respective sites gives some insight to what kind of community they are trying to maintain. In order to elaborate on this, I want to take a look into how the communities are regulated, either externally by software and moderators, and internally by users and etiquette.

Next post: Interaction and regulation on Mixx, Reddit, and Digg.

=4/18/2010= = =


 * Mixx**.com

On Mixx.com the only thing that people will know about you is what's listed on one's personal profile, however you can set preferences to reveal geographic location and other details. The site also allows for the use of an avatar, or personal icon to represent a user. Mixx offers a personal page where users can organize content preferences based on what they want to see. Users can submit almost any content, however Mixx employs a third party content filter that blocks certain submissions. Once a post is submitted, the community will judge it by "recommending," or upvoting it. Comments added after the story is submitted are either marked with "kudos" or as "fighting words." Fighting words makes the comment invisible and is a regulatory measure for inflammatory remarks or trolling. Alternatively, users have the choice of befriending one another as well as blocking certain people. Content can be upmodded, but ultimately removing content is up to the people who are behind the scenes. These people can also put users on "Timeout," suspending their accounts. These users can no longer leave comments, recommend content, or participate. For an example of a typical submission, I've included this screenshot below. The red "311" in the top left corresponds to how many recommendations the story has received. Then by the reply button there is the option to give kudos or mark as fighting words. I gave a kudos to the top submission by mmwine, and a message came up saying "you have 9 kudos left to give today."




 * Reddit**.com

Reddit is more loosely regulated than Mixx, however they do have much in common. Stories are upvoted and downvoted in a similar manner, and users accumulate "karma" scores according to how well liked their submissions are. Reddit's policy is not to remove inflammatory content, but rather to let the community police it as it sees fit. This seems to be a theme that runs throughout the entire site. There still exists users termed "moderators," who have the ability to ban people, remove links and comments, configure parameters for the community, and add other users as moderators at their discretion. It is important to note that moderators only wield power within their particular sub-community, and if a user creates a community they are automatically a moderator. They do employ an automatic filtering program, and on top of that users can "report" certain posts to be doublechecked by moderators if it is suspiciously like spam. Moreover, there is an informal set of guidelines that rules user behavior. Colloquially referred to as "Reddiquette," these behaviors constitute socially acceptable and socially unacceptable participation on the site. Below is a screenshot of the official "Reddiquette" rules.

Interestingly enough these rules aren't enforced with any tactics such as "Timeouts" employed by Mixx, but rather generally accepted practice for most users interacting with the site. Comments that are unsavory can just be downvoted into oblivion, and the relevant, thought-provoking, and well articulated responses are allowed to rise to the top (in theory!). For example, in this thread concerning the legalization of marijuana, a user named bcos4life submitted a response that garnered 276 points. After submitting a comment, there is the option to reply specifically to that comment, and users can have an ongoing dialogue with one another. Below is an example of some of the responses from bcos4life's post: The conversation is an interesting exchange of points and counterpoints.Comparing that to comments that contribute less to the discussion we see that they tend not to be upvoted, such as this comment by fluba: So as far as external regulation goes, it is really to a minimum after the automatic content filter and moderators. Thereafter, the community decides which content to favor and regulates itself.


 * Digg**.com

Regulation on Digg is kind of the intermediary between Reddit and Mixx. They proactively block sites that continuously violate their Terms of Use, They don't allow any kind of porn submissions, these result in immediate ban or deletion of an account. Digg, like the other sites, employs an algorithm to decide which submissions get promoted. Alternatively to Reddit, Digg does not tolerate inflammatory content of certain sorts. This is not well defined, but includes hate speech, racism, and other derogatory forms of conversation. Like Reddit, Digg has an informal set of site guidelines, however they are less explicit:

Also similar to Reddit, users can regulate content with these loose guidelines in mind. Below is a discussion about school bullying, and it is evident that the positive, proactive comments have surfaced to the top whereas negative comments have drifted toward the bottom. The last post, by 2balls1cup, is controversial and received -3 diggs.



Building a community:

As is evident by the type of responses and uses of these three websites, external and internal regulation have a lot to do with the type of personality that the community of a website develops. Mixx tends to be more informal, closer to mainstream media in it's application. Sure, interesting content surfaces, but the personality of the community is wrapped up in the traditional top-down hierarchy. Perhaps as a result, there is less interaction between users in the comments section, as evidenced by this comment concerning a sexting article. Similarly, many comments reflect the values of a more traditional audience, as opposed to younger, more liberal audiences. Digg, on the other hand, derives its personality from the type of user that tends to frequent the site. Discussions tend to be less intellectual and more reactionary, while trolling and inflammatory comments are more typical than on Mixx or Reddit. Many users prefer to comment for comedic effect as opposed to enlightened discussion. These are the Digg comments after an article about a suicide bombing at a police station in Pakistan that killed 7 people.

Reddit has its identity weaned from a programming/college educated/liberal user base that values thoughtful and interesting submissions from the community. Here is a response to a post that asks, "Does anyone else feel that something catastrophic will happen in our lifetime?"

The larger the number of human beings there are the larger the potential for a catastrophe. However, the paradox is that the more people there are the better economy and the more luxuries we can have. We continue to increase both the size of the population and the expansiveness of our luxuries. The uneasiness that I think you feel (and I feel it too) is that there is a fragility to the system that supports the vast majority of people. We are, for the most part, removed by many steps from the food and energy that we consume. Food does appear and so does energy but it seems to happen as if by magic...behind the scenes, hidden from view. This is a unique state for the human animal to be in. For most of our history we knew exactly where our food and energy came from...now we don't. You've probably heard the oft quoted statistic that a century ago 90% of people worked on farms and now it is 2-3%. The rest of us, for the most part, push buttons. It is almost as if the Jetsons actually came to be and we push random buttons, get in our space age cars, and go to our space age homes with AC, heat, refrig, washers, dryers, computers, big screen televisions, DVD, alarms, etc. But life isn't supposed to be like a cartoon. That was supposed to be a joke but is is a joke that somehow came true. And, personally, I think lots of us are waiting for it to blow up. Kinda like the first Matrix that the subjects would not accept because it was too perfect. I'm not suggesting the world it perfect--quite the contrary. I'm suggesting that the world does not match up with what our reptile brain expects. So we live in a constant state of dissonance while awaiting disaster.
 * [|Karmachode]** 122 points 6 hours ago[|[-]]

I think that the type of input and interaction that users generate with the website is indicative of the external regulation and informal guidelines that really propel the sites. Users ultimately decide what gets to the front page, and what submissions and comments are valued by the community. The only difference between the sites is the amount of regulation involved by the "higher-ups" and ultimately the collective conscience of the users. There is a delicate balance between the type of audience the owners of the sites want to draw and the regulation that is enforced. Also unique is the feuds that arise because of the different community personalities. Below is a link to an interesting symbolization (submitted on Reddit) that sums up how users of different communities perceive each other. This is a great prelude to the Reddit/Digg wars that I will discuss later.

[|Reddit vs. Digg vs. 4Chan]

Next Post: User hierarchies on social news websites. How are they developed, reinforced, and relevant?

= 4/19/2010 =

Power and influence: how hierarchies are formed/reinforced on social news websites.

 * Mixx**.com

Mixx employs a variety of strategies in order to rank and reward users that participate with the community. First, they have an algorithm that decides after at least 30 days, and according to karma points and submissions, whether a user can be promoted to being a "SuperMixxer." SuperMixxers have special privileges, they can flag content as Breaking News, they get 40 kudos to hand out, and sites they endorse are marked by Mixx to guarantee good content. They even get a special badge. The rank of "Power Mixxer" is like half of a SuperMixxer. They can gain that rank after a minimum of 15 days, only get 20 kudos, and are determined by the same criteria. Mixxologists are the ultimate authority, as they are the programmers and people behind the site.

In addition to these titles, Mixx has a variety of badges that users can attain. Here is the list on their FAQ page:



These badges and titles seem to be a kind of reward system for positive interaction with the site. I'm not really sure if anyone takes these seriously, but I think the site employs them in order to keep participation high, as the content-generation relies on users.


 * Reddit**.com

The hierarchy on Reddit is very simple. Users accumulate karma points from posts and comments (aside from self posts) that get upvoted and downvoted. Their karma score is determined by the summation of upvotes and downvotes. Moderators rule each subreddit and have the ability to screen certain content. Above that is the programmers and site owners. That's really all there is to it. For an example, here is one of the most successful user accounts on Reddit.com: karmanaut. karmanaut has an astounding 4,200 link karma, and nearly 200,000 comment karma. This means that his submissions in the from of content and comments have been overwhelmingly positive.




 * Digg**.com

Digg doesn't have any explicit information available on privileges, although through a good ol' google search I was able to uncover some controversy about Digg "power users." According to SEOmoz, content on the site is controlled by a niche group of people. Link: [|Top 100 Digg users control 56% of homepage content] Some people seem to be angry about this, considering the supposedly democratic nature of these sites, but most users don't seem to mind. Diversity of submissions doesn't necessarily have to come from a wide user base, although questions do arise as to the system being stacked. Similar issues have been raised on Reddit relating to heavy users and front page bias.

Essentially, the breakdown of hierarchy is like this:

Mixx: by titles, badges, and other site-appointed awards. These awards come with special priveleges.

Reddit: karma scores earn respect

Digg: becoming a power-user, network of friends earns respect.

Next Post: I'm going to try submitting something to these three sites! Also, I'm going to try and friend someone on each site. Finally, I'm going to modify my front page according to interest, and join a subreddit/digg/mixx on each site.

=4/19/2010=

Interesting article I just came across on Digg. Wisconsin has become the first state to have a state "microbe." Ours is "lactococcus lactis," the cheese-making bacterium. Link: [|Wisconsin first to have state microbe]

=4/20/2010=

(Edit: Score! I finally finished this post and the wiki pooped out on me, but the autosaved draft recovered my work!)
= =


 * Mixx**.com

So I submitted my first thing to the site! Exciting. It is actually a picture I discovered through Reddit of a diver high-fiving a humpback whale. I titled the submission "High Fiving on the High Seas," sweet title, right? Here it is below:

When you submit something, they give you the option to label any keywords. I used some like "diving, swimming, high-five, whale, funny" etc. Similarly, they allow you to submit it to certain sub-categories such as "Humor" and then even sub-sub-categories like "wild and crazy" or other specific descriptions.

I also decided to follow a guy named "Splinter09," who looks like a surfer and posts all sorts of great articles on European soccer (which I like to follow). By just following him I became his Mixxfriend, didn't need to accept a friend request or anything. So one has the potential to become very popular on this site.

I also customized my Mixxpage by putting Sports topics at the very top, then popular photos, news, business, etc. I also switched popular stories to the righthand side above popular videos. It's kind of neat because you can completely customize how you want your page to be set up.

Finally, I added Science to my Mixx, and then was able to customize Science into my Mixxpage wherever I wanted. They give you the option to do stories, photos, videos, or other media related to the subcommunity. I chose to do Science stories.


 * Reddit**.com

For Reddit I submitted a self post, which can be a question or idea just put out there for people to respond to. After navigating the site, I realized that there are a lot of internet "memes," or references to specific cultural phenomenon, that I'm not familiar with. My self post is an attempt to get people to explain the memes that pervade the site.

This is the submission page for my post:



This is the final product:

I also got the chance to befriend Hugs42, who submitted a popular post titled "What's the best documentary you've seen."

Also, to edit preferences is very simple, there is a "preferences" button next to ones username in the top right corner. I didn't change anything, but here is a picture of the page.

I also joined the Biology subreddit, just because I'm interested in that kind of thing, and now stories from /r/Biology will show up on my frontpage.

=
I ended up submitting a research article I had read on ScienceDaily.com concerning a protein fragment known as amyloid-beta and its role in potentia Alzheimer's treatment. Here is my submission, the link to the article is here [|ScienceDaily Article]: =====

=
In addition to making new friends, I customized my page so certain things wouldn't show up on my front page such as very technical progamming stuff. This differs from Mixx and Reddit which give you the ability to add content to your front page, while Digg just gives you everything and lets you choose what not to go on.=====

Next Post: Responses to my submission posts and friend requests after 24 hours, as well as a case study regarding current events.
=4/24/2010=

Responses to my submissions, and a case study of the South Park fiasco.
Context surrounding the controversy over South park episodes "200" and "201":

The creators of South Park have always pushed the boundaries of taste and censorship on television. Most recently, they aired in episode where Tom Cruise and celebrities sue the town of South Park unless they deliver the holy prophet Muhammad to them. Modern fundamentalist interpretations of Islamic text suggest that it is unholy to show an image of Muhammad in holy form, lest he be worshipped along with Allah (Quran claims that Allah alone should be worshipped). This clashes with Western ideologies of free speech, and in last weeks episode South Park utilized clever alternatives to get around this censorship.

They showed Muhammad in a U-Haul truck, a bear suit, and with a censorship bar covering his body (this last one was Comedy Central's doing). Their argument was that intimidation and fear in relation to censorship does not trump the values of free speech. In response to the episodes, an extreme group in New York called Revolution Muslim posted a response saying that the creators should fear for their safety in lieu of showing Muhammad. They included veiled threats that they would end up like Theo Van Gogh, a Danish cartoonist that was murdered after drawing an image of Muhammad. Violent retribution was suggested.

My idea was to use this as a case study, and gauge the reactions on the online communities Mixx, Reddit, and Digg. Would they turn to mainstream media to deliver the information, or rely on members of their own community to weigh in? Similarly, what kind of attitudes would they adopt to the culture clash, and what kind of arguments would be valued in the discussion? In order to conduct my informal study, I tried to visit each website at least once or twice per day for the week following, and also used the search functions to uncover different posts. This issue touches on the very nature of free speech, and it was interesting to see how a democratic forum like the internet would be used to discuss it. The seriousness should also not be underrated, as Comedy Central has taken steps to protect their employees with added security: [|Security Stepped Up at Comedy Central Following Threats Against 'South Park']


 * Mixx.com**

Unfortunately my submission to Mixx of the diver high-fiving the whale only got one upvote. My Mixxfeed has been updated three times, though, since my new friend Splinter09 has submitted three stories.

As far as the South Park fiasco, Mixx.com has somewhat ignored the news surrounding it. Two stories examining the controversy got 47 and 56 upvotes respectively, and the top story with 56 had 15 comments. A search for "South Park 200" yielded mostly results with only 1 upvote, the most had three. Most of the [|comments] argued that people shouldn't take the satire so seriously, and that Muslims have no right to be offended because South Park ridicules all religions. I don't think it was the most intellectual of discussions, as most people were expressing their opinions, as opposed to engaging with arguments surrounding both sides of the issue. For example,




 * Reddit.com**

My submission to Reddit got four comments and 0 upvotes, namely because there is a website that already seeks to explain internet memes: [|Internet Meme Database] Other than that, I had the opportunity to comment on several different posts, including "The deepest thing you've ever head anyone say," "Why are some people so afraid of silence," "I'm already graduating a year early. If I really step it up, I can make it a year +1 quarter early. What to do?" and "How many of you would grow your own weed instead of buying it off the black market if it was legalized?"

The South Park/Muhammad scandal gained a lot more attention and response from the Reddit community. There were posts from Muslim redditors asking for more tolerance, there were posts from Muslim redditors exclaiming that they could care less, and there were posts of all varieties from the community at large arguing different viewpoints. This post was especially interesting, as it had seven different points on the issue for people to respond to, [|Reddit, I am a 25 y/o Muslim man. Here is my opinion of the Muhammad image scandal.]

There were other posts, including, [|As a moderate Muslim, all these Muhammad-bashing comments are very offensive. Reddit users usually show maturity in these matters of race and religion. Those hateful Muslim extremists are making you hate the whole religion. All I ask is that you guys be more respectful to us moderate Muslims.]

Ironically, despite the distaste for some memes (this one is known colloquially as "reddit-talk"), I made a comment that mimicked this poster's language but switched out particular parts to illustrate a point. This is the post and what ensued, it got 18 upvotes (my all time high for awesomeO4000.)

To be honest, "ohmnomnom" raises an excellent point, that whereas extremists Muslims tend to be on the fringe of the religion, offensive posts on Reddit are being upvoted by the entire community. Very interesting, but there was far more activity on the site that day.

Responses included one that said, [|For all of those that want us to stop showing images of Muhammad because it offends the "good" Muslims.]

But the posts didn't just include debate. There were many different reactions. Some decided that putting up images of Muhammad to the website and upvoting them would be the best retaliation toward censorship. [|Mohammed 1]Others pointed out that South Park showed Muhammad in 2002 during the "Super Best Friends" episode and there was no outrage: [|Muhammad 2]This redditor contacted Comedy Central to see if the episode was censored by Matt & Trey (creators) or higher ups in Comedy Central. [|South Park Deliberately Censored... believe me.. I inquired and got an e-mail from the VP of comedy central.]Further still, one redditor investigated the historical accuracy of claims that Muhammad hasn't been produced in images. He gave a link to an archive that had historical images of Muhammad delivered from Imams, muslim scholars, laymen, and others. [|Mohammed image archive]Alternatively, they showed a link to a hacked site of Revolutionmuslim.com, [|Hacked Site Revolutionmuslim.com]Finally, there were upvotes for the official response by Matt & Trey which said,

"In the 14 years we've been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn't stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn't some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle's customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn't mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We'll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we'll see what happens to it."

[|Lastly, there was this clarified response by the fringe group, Second Response by RevolutionMuslim]


 * Digg.com**

On Digg, Alientalkradio accepted my friend request. My post from ScienceDaily regarding Alzheimer's only got one digg and no comments.

Digg also had a lot of responses to the South Park image scandal. With 3728 diggs, the story [|'South Park' airs 'censored' episode after threat]was most upvoted. It is interesting, however, to note that the most upvoted stories on digg were most likely to be from large news places such as Reuters, instead of self posts or obscure blogs. In fact, the top ten were all from yahoo, Reuters, FoxNews, or the HollywoodReporter.

Next Post: Fallout from the Muhammad image scandal and wrapping up social news websites: where do they stand in new media, and where will they be in 20 years?

=4/26/2010= = =

It's almost more useful to talk about the lack of fallout from the Muhammad image scandal than any severe repercussions...yet. I say that tentatively, because it takes a while for this information to be circulated, and it doesn't mean that something can't still happen. However, for the moment, there have been no major events in response. The social news websites had their respective reactions in the wake of the censorship, a lot of debate was spurred, and no one has been hurt. I think this is precisely the idea that the creators of South Park had in mind, to stir the pot a little bit and encourage discussions of free speech, censorship, and religion. I also think my case study followed accordingly to my perceptions of the websites in general. Mixx adopted a particularly mainstream approach, and didn't focus too much attention to the issue. Reddit was more user-focused, using self-posts, pic submissions, and other means of argumentation and questioning in order to illuminate the issue. Digg also focused on the MSM, although they decidedly took the side of the South Park creators.

Future of social news websites:

Social news relies on communities. It relies on communities to actually, physically submit the content to the site and upvote/downvote. But in a greater sense it relies on communities to establish their identities. Social news websites are exciting in that they allow for this kind of variation. Reddit is well known for having a programming, liberal, atheist, young male dynamic, but isn't tied to those labels. Similarly, Digg and Mixx can't screen members for anything besides spamming, so the sites come closer to democratic participation. But that is just how they exist at the moment, how they evolve is of more interest.

Mixx:

Mixx is a lot smaller than Reddit and Digg, in terms of traffic, advertising potential, and submissions. That said, Mixx is tied much closer to mainstream media than Reddit or Digg, and I think in the future they will seek to capitalize on this relationship. The major news networks such as Fox, CNN, NBC, and others all have their own particular websites. If Mixx could devise a way to aggregate news from these sources, I think they would have an easier time monetizing their site with ads. It will be interesting to see if Mixx continues to keep a relatively tight hold on regulation of the website (compared to Digg/Reddit), considering that expansion seems to be in order.

Reddit:

I think Reddit is happy where it is now. There is no impending disaster looming for the site and it continues to see a steady stream of traffic and submissions. The idea of the subreddit has been key to their success, as news/links can be sorted accordingly and users can focus on particular areas of interest. One problem I see in the future, however, is that expansion of users and subreddits seems inevitable. The site prides itself on certain attributes, like intellectual discussion, social critique, and humor. These three combined have recently taken a turn on the community itself, with many posts lamenting the quality of reddit submissions and expressing a fear of change within the site. Many argue that the site is falling victim to it's own qualities, like focusing too much on humorous, yet irrelevant replies and becoming a meme machine like 4chan. There is even a subreddit now for /r/circlejerk, which pokes fun at some of the posts that hit the front page and the complaints/attitudes of redditors. Regardless, this attitude is increasing, as evidenced by this post with 1000 upvotes: [|I've lost faith in the intelligence of reddit as a community. Here's why. (self.politics)] I think that Reddit will expand some, but I'm not sure if it will ever go completely mainstream, because there is a constant struggle between preserving the qualities of the community and the introduction of new members.

Digg:

Digg to me has the greatest likelihood of becoming very profitable and expanding even more. After talks with Google to sell the site for $200 million evaporated, Digg became ever more focused on making the site profitable. With FacebookConnect, DiggBar, DiggDialog, and DiggAPI, the site is fervently seeking out profitable avenues of development. They have also experimented with new ad systems, including a page wide ad that was the target of community backlash and subsequently removed. Sponsored links are present within regular posts, although this is also prevalent on Reddit. Since the community has a less cemented identity than reddit, but includes a young, tech-interested, relatively educated user base the possibilities for advertising are huge. Not only can companies set up their own sponsored links with this demographic in mind, but they can filter their advertising toward specific sub-categories that users are subscribed to. This economic model combined with the malleable community identity (less backlash toward change) could be gangbusters for Digg if they find the right balance.

In Summary:

Not only do I think social news websites will become more important, but there will be more of them in the future. Sites like Reddit and Digg were first on the scene because of their knowledge of programming and technology, but those barriers are coming down every day. Different communities will spring up that favor different types of content. Furthermore, and seemingly counterintuitive, the importance of each individual site may lessen in the future. This is due to Social News Aggregators, like [|popurls], which combine the very top stories from several different social media and social news websites. In this case popurls uses Twitter, delicious, Reddit, Digg, and top stories, however as more websites emerge users could potentially customize which social media show up on their aggregators (in a meta fashion). So I believe that the social news website train is only getting started, while technological developments and new ways of structuring information are constantly influencing the existing structure. It will be interesting to see what the future holds.