I know I’ve ranted and raved about Digg and Reddit a lot lately, but some really exciting things are happening in the social news aggregation space. Unfortunately, we still don’t have a better name for this stuff than “social news aggregation,” but the term “digg-clone” is becoming more frequently used. What it really boils down to is this: Voting up the good stuff and voting down the bad stuff.
Isn’t that what democracy is all about? The open sourcing of Reddit has opened the door to a new way to create a quick ‘n’ dirty aggregator: Slinkset. Slinkset allows you to create your own reddit-clone in just a few seconds.
LockerGnome.com launched a Slinkset-powered reddit-clone for iPhone applications. The success of Apple’s iPhone development platform has proved almost too much of a good thing; with so many apps out there, which should you choose to install? This site lets you vote iPhone apps up or down — allowing you to make sure crappy apps aren’t widely installed and finding new apps that don’t have the promotional power of Facebook.
Aggregation works when a community exists to support it. The best aggregators are there to simplify and crowd-source a solution to a problem, like how to find the most relevant news stories or decide which applications are worthy.
Is there a need for social media news and community to support it? I’m about to find out: I went to Slinkset and created my own. Check it out: Social Studies’ Story Aggregator! It’s easy to sign up, vote and submit your own stories. It only requires a username & password (you don’t even need an email address). The site is in your hands now.
Is this useful? You decide.