Social Bookmarking versus Social News

Is there a fundamental difference between sites like del.icio.us and digg?

They are often lumped together in the same category of social bookmarking. However, del.icio.us, spurl and their cousins are true social bookmarking services. Sites like Digg and Newsvine are more social news services.

Socialbookmarking provides benefits for the bookmarker and for the community of bookmarkers. When an item is bookmarked, I can tag and categorize it anyway I want. I can use my bookmarks for my own personal reference whether I care about the social aspect of it or not. The community gets to see my bookmarks, can find new and interesting sites/pages for themselves that they can then add to their bookmarks. The more an item is bookmarked the more “authority” it seems to carry.

Social News tends to focus namely on that: news. The news changes by the hour if not by the minute. Social News sites such as Digg tend to primarily serve the community with little emphasis on the actual digger. That to me is the largest difference. At least in social bookmarking I have a mechanism that can organize my information in a way that is meaningful to me.

I prefer getting my news either from the major news sites or from blogs. If I want to read up on what is going on with technology, I would rather pop over to a technology website like Wired, than visit Digg. Digg in some ways is no different than Wired. Both have a relatively small editorial and writing staff. When I read Wired, I get the perspective of a small group of people. When I read Digg I read the choices of a small group of people. In reality, Digg is not the social news of THE community but “a” community.

While “dugg” items tend to carry “authority” as in bookmarking services, these are truly news stories as opposed to sites I would want to visit again and often. Maybe it just me, but I simply bookmark items that 1) are a helpful resource 2) say something important I want to read again or 3) something I would want to recommend. Of the 15 items at the top of the Digg technology topic right, 13 are news items. In a week, most won’t matter. Whereas I find items that get bookmarked via del.icio.us and others tend to have a lasting permanence of importance.

For me, I don’t find Digg to be a tool that helps me keep my information organized. Nor do I find that it is worth my time to find out what is Hot this second. While I do visit del.icio.us to find out what people are bookmarking, more often than not I am using it to organize my links. Which, by the way, they could still go a long way in improving.

[tags]bookmarking, social+bookmarking, digg, newsvine[/tags]