Again, I was pleased to learn about these popular media news resources. As I was exploring them, yes, I did get sucked in to reading many of the articles. There is something very democratic about this process.
On the other hand, it wouldn't take much for someone with a specific story to encourage a lot of people to "digg it" and move it to the top. I think of the Rah Rah Rochester branding phrase. The creator of this phrase logged into the web set and gave it a lot of favorable comments/reviews. I'm sure we all have heard of something like this in our lives.
As far as how it applies to library service etc... Well I'm not yet convinced of its usefulness. I personally found it a bit of a time waster. The public will continue to astound us with their wide range of questions -- I doubt this will give us much of an edge. But it is a great resource for people who are inspired by a story and want to share their interest with others. I see these resources as much more value in other areas of my life.
Now that I have a Digg account (I Dug the article about hacking) will I use it? Doubtful. I'm kind of lazy when it come to my news. I have a number of headlines pushed at me -- from the sources I chose for my "My Yahoo" home page, to my Google news banner that sits on my desk-top and my frequent forays into the local news sources, cnn, and msnbc.
That being said, I firmly support any tool that helps to promote democracy and a way for the average person to find their voice. These tools do an excellent job of that.
Every year there is a publication that I enjoy that highlights the stories that were essentially censored because they were not picked up by the major news media. I wonder if these social media sites will have an influence on this and/or if editors are paying attention to what the public is interested in. We certainly live in interesting times.
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