As fellow contributor Mac Slocum noted yesterday, news aggregation site Digg is on the rise. Digg aggregates stories on the basis of recommendations from people who… er… “digg” those stories. And the more people digg them, the higher they climb and the longer they stay.
The thing about staying longer in focus seems to be a typical trait with elements that are subject to public taste and decision. I reminds me of my favorite radio show of my teen years, “Ti i skuddet,” a chart show where the studio audience decided which songs they liked the most. The show was on Norway’s national public service radio, so it had no commercial ties and was not influenced by record sales. The result was that the songs on that show were notoriously old. But kids liked the songs, so they stayed on.
It also reminds me of what Norwegian journalism legend (and film director) Arne Skouen said when he visited my journalism school while I was a student: “Look at how long stuff remains story,” he said. His point was that modern journalism lets go of stories too fast, even though there’s more to be told, more angles to be covered, more minds to be changed.
Now I’m not sure Skouen would advocate citizen journalism and other user-generated content, but I am pretty sure he would recognize that stories nowadays have a fair chance of surviving if someone picks up on it.
That’s what happened to a great package from The Daily Show about
Myspace that apparently aired in February 2006, almost half a year ago. I just saw that clip today, and if it wasn’t for Digg’s social recommendation system, I never would have seen it. And I would never had that good laugh. Because it’s very funny.
You can see that MySpace video on YouTube — another social recommendation site. So this recommendation Tidbit is oh-so-meta. If you want more meta than this, you’ll have to name your daughter Meta.
