why i don’t dig Digg

It’s very uncool to not be into Digg if you believe in the importance of Web 2.0 — which i do.

And I love the idea of Digg – users set the news agenda by rating stories, with the higher-rated stories displaying “higher” in the queue. A virtuous spiral kicks in, with higher rated stories getting more attention, leading potentially to even more “Diggs” etc. etc.

I love that Digg is something you can ask your community to do, instead of the increasingly thread-bare “send your congressman an email” actions.

The catch is that Digg is hard to use and takes a lot of work. You have to decide on the story you want to Digg. Then you have to write something about it. Then, and only then, Digg tells you someone else has already Dugg that story and gives you a bunch of links. Sometimes Digg is right, sometimes not, but in many cases you have just wasted your time drafting a blurb for a story that’s already in the hopper. Very annoying and tedious.
So advice to activists — and maybe this is obvious — post the dang story first, and then alert your community to Digg it. Otherwise it’s a big PIA.