Voting Icons
What does it mean when I see icons and a request to post to “del.icio.us” or “slashdot” or even “digg this”?
When you see links asking you to “digg this”, it’s referring to Digg.com, a popular Web site, where the users determine the content, and vote for stories they think are more important, more interesting or more entertaining. This is called “digging” a story. As stories get dugg, they rise in rank and get more attention because they move closer and closer to the front page. When a story gets dugg enough to make it to the front page, Web servers often get overwhelmed and the Web site goes down for awhile. That increase in traffic is called the “digg effect.”
Del.icio.us is a site where users post stories to their account. A lot of people use it as their own personal bookmarking site. When you come across an article that interests you, you can post it to your del.icio.us account from any computer you might be using. At any given time, you can see what links are most popular (hot), by visiting the del.icio.us home page.
At Slashdot, readers also post stories, and editors moderate them before they’re publicly posted. It’s been around for a long time, since 1997, and it has more of a blog feel than a social news sites like Digg.
When you see one of those little icons at the bottom of an article, or a request from a writer to “digg” the story, they’re asking you to help them promote the article or blog post. If you’re of a mind and have the time to digg or slashdot or del.icio.us or sphere (the list goes on and on) a post you like, it’s always a nice thing to do. It helps the piece get more attention.
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