Digg killer? coRank

Read on VentureBeat about a new Digg killer/competitor called coRank that launched today. The idea here is that it's hard to game the system since your front page is built from news stories that your friends or trusted stories rank and comment on. I like the UI, takes a minute to get used to, but the white space is very friendly.

The problem is that I'm not sure my friends are really pro-active enough to post stories that I'm interested in. So will this work?? Digg works (I think) because it has a small yet dedicated group of users that do a lot of tagging/commenting that everyone benefits from. This coming on the news that Digg now has 1M registered users. Smaller than we all thought, right?

UPDATE:  More on social media from this week
- GigaOm: Is Social News the New Trend
- Mashable: MySpace News: The Digg Killer?

Comments

[Rex Dixon]

Zaw Thet,

I just want to make sure it is clear to all your readers that it was another blog that referred to coRank as a "Digg Killer". I did not refer to it as such in my blog post for VentureBeat.

Other then that, at least the internet is talking about this right? :) Keep up the great blogging you have going on here.

Rex

[RBA]

Thanks for the post Zaw.. Here's the thing. If your friends aren't the "submit and/or vote" type, you could still use coRank by selecting active users that either you've identified as people you know (even if they're not your friends), or that you've found to have similar interests to yours - either by looking at the type of stories they're submitting/voting or via the "Like-minded" page under your account (Network tab).

Sure thing, there is no "power of the default" here. It takes some effort to personalize it, and that might slow growth, etc. but again, it's a service for those who feel comfortable spending some time in it.

Also, I'm not sure that conceptually is a Digg killer (certainly not in practice), because if you think about it, its principle is the opposite of Digg's. Digg is about the "wisdom of crowds", and coRank somehow advocates "crowds aren't wise - go for what you know". So in a way, it's the anti-Digg :-)

BTW I'm not trying to convince you to use coRank, just giving you my point of view regarding what you said, that's all :-)