Part 1
In the epic cyberwars between social bookmarking titans Digg and Reddit, each has carved a specific market niche and has managed to garner a massive following of those looking for the latest news fix. Both social networking services have their own major strengths, but with regards to at least one very important quality indicator, Reddit takes the clear lead.
Most of us in the industry know that Digg commands nearly 20 million daily visits, so much so that the firm struggles to pay for its bandwidth. Those in the know who frequent both boorkmarking sites know that while Digg follows a young, more populist crowd, Reddit draws in more of the self-proclaimed intellectuals of the Intertubes.
However, with regards to sheer speed of news item acquisition, Reddit beats Digg by far. Redditors – as Reddit users prefer to call themselves – have an undeniable knack for identifying and upvoting important news items that more often than not appear on Digg later on in the day. Yes, Reddit posts the same URLs first, and Digg takes hours to get the same news up on the home page. Some may argue that Digg’s larger user base and the system’s algorithms may account for the delay in news popularity.
What is more probable, however, is that Digg users, even power diggers, are copying news off of Reddit’s home page and then submitting it to Digg. This has happened on multiple instances and continues to occur regularly. We’ll be covering various aspects of Reddit’s social bookmarking lead in subsequent articles so watch this space!
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