Digg is dead! Long live digg!

Well that might not be entirely true, but it sure seems like the era of social sharing where digg was king, has evolved to something new.

Present Social Media:

Before exploring where social media is going, it’s important to explain what’s going on right now.

It’s understood that digg is the premier social media site, followed by reddit and stumbleupon.

Digg and reddit make up the big names in news aggregation; while the field is also cluttered with the multiple clones (Propeller, and Mixx), and niche sites like Sphinn.

The system follows a model where users submit news stories to the site. Once submitted other site users can vote up or down the story. When the story receives enough votes it’s promoted to the front-page, where it becomes a “featured” story.

The major problem with the system is that it requires a reader to vote for the story. The action, no matter how well created, will never be absolutely intuitive, it can be missed, and isn’t part of the reader work-flow.

Another pitfall with the current social media model is the site’s failure on a social level. Profiles and interactions are secondary, and even though it’s social media, the only interaction I have with other users is from voting on a story.

New Social Media:

The new age social media includes Twitter, Plurk, and Social Browse. These sites add an emphasis on social interaction, and create a clear, easy way to share media across the web.

These micro-blogging platforms, allow you to update your friends and followers with what you’re doing, reading, viewing, or even thinking. They have taken the idea that media must be a concrete article, and instead made it abstract, allowing the easy share of ideas as well.

But we still have to consider the question of how does one “vote” for media? What makes something stand out more than the others?

Here enters the idea of a re-tweet or re-plurk. As users come across an article and share it with their friends, that article just received a social vote. More interesting articles are re-tweeted more often, and with the help of an API, these links can be tracked.

New age social media has taken the bottleneck action of voting and made it social. No longer is the vote something you do solo, but it now requires a social connection.

Where is It Going?

Needless to say micro-blogging is still an infant, and yes, digg will be king for some time. But social connection has been proven to be addictive (Facebook and MySpace) and with micro-blogging’s emphasis on friends and sharing media, Twitter and Plurk offer something above and beyond current Social Media sites.

Whether or not micro-blogging will become the new king is something to be seen, but never the less, it will change how we think about social media.

Have something to add? Disagree with me? Leave a comment.