Newsvine Beats Digg To Punch
Looks like Newsvine's users beat Digg's users in promoting the tragic mass shooting at Virginia Tech to the front page. It was just about 1 p.m., and I was just finishing up lunch when I decided to take a gander at how the social news sites were handling this story. I decided this was probably pretty popular since MSNBC's servers were taxed and when you could get through they reported no press were allowed into the campus.
To my surprise it was Newsvine that had the story already as the most active out on their front page. Digg, for all its fame around "fast" news, didn't have it on the first two pages. Netscape & Reddit were both minus the story as well at the time of this posting either. Below is some screen captures.
Social news is fast - but it isn't always Digg that's the fastest!
update/clarification: this post was only meant to show the comparison among the social news sites, not social news as a substitute for main stream media, that would just be plain silly. Also, as noted by Vicki (which I should have pointed out more clearly) it was actually Killfile's story that made it to the front page first, it's just that the AP story was more prominent. Killfile's story about the VT incident is right below the AP Story with the picture.
Your screenshot of Digg is only for the Technology subsection.
Posted by: Muhammad Saleem | April 17, 2007 at 03:44 AM
Newsvine got the story early because user generated content is only half their content; they also have a full Associated Press feed.
Carl
Posted by: Carl Howe | April 17, 2007 at 05:04 AM
Muhammad - Good catch! :) I was surfing all around Digg at that time to see if it was anywhere I checked out all the tabs to see if I could find if it was popular anywhere (to be fair), and I couldn't find it. I must've thought I was on the home page when I grabbed the screenshot - apologies about that. Still Newsvine had it to their front page first. :)
Carl - yes, they do get their news that way, and that is the first thing I noticed. However the activity on the story at the time I was looking was incredibly more than what was on Digg at the time, and thus why it was on their front page.
I wouldn't have posted this if it was just their feed of the associated press story. :)
Posted by: Li Evans | April 17, 2007 at 06:44 AM
fyi, the VT story was broken on Newsvine before the AP feed appeared, by user Killfile, who was on campus at the time. That story was active on the front page for quite a while before the AP story was so prominently featured, as you show in your screen cap.
http://killfile.newsvine.com/_news/2007/04/16/666369-shootings-on-virginia-techs-campus-at-least-33-dead
Thanks!
Posted by: Viki | April 17, 2007 at 08:30 AM