5 Websites That Could Rival Digg

Digg.com is one of the Web’s most popular social media sites for people to discover, select, share and discuss content such as images, videos and newsworthy material. The website operates around a user-generated ranking system where community members are the ones with the power to decide which submissions deserve to climb to the top of the list (however many can argue that it is hardly democratic when it comes to this). Digg.com also offers an outlet for users to engage in conversation about the topics they are passionate about and to determine the value of the content found on the site. However, Digg.com is not the only website currently offering these types of services to community members. Below are five social media sites that are rising in popularity and could arguably rival Digg.com.

1. WhosYourChampion – The Internet phenomenon known as “Who’s Your Champion?” is an extension of the infamous and ever popular “Wall of Champions” that was created some time ago. According to legend, the Wall of Champions began one late summer evening in the basement of a man’s house when he stumbled upon a powerful cover photo of Ted Danson from the weekly TV Guide. The man saw something so deep in the eyes of the former bartender from “Cheers” that he was left with no choice but to take that photo and turn it into something spectacular. The original Wall of Champions, once held together by thumbtacks and Scotch tape, covered walls upon walls, and is now sweeping the Web. Since it was founded in 2006, the “Who’s Your Champion” website has become the ultimate place for fans to submit photos and videos of their favorite Champions. The founding fathers of the WhosYourChampion.com, who remain anonymous, stand behind their motto that “if you don’t know what a Champion is, you may be one!” The creators of the site also believe that users will be able to figure out the qualities a true Champion possesses just by visiting the site. Champion fanatics have the freedom to submit photos and videos of their favorite champs from a variety of categories including athletic Champions, celebrities, local Champions, “Champs of the Day” and the legendary “mustache” category. Users can then help their favorite Champions rise to the top or fall in despair through a voting and rating system, with the option of commenting on other user’s picks and interacting with the rest of the “Who’s Your Champ?” community. Users can also search for Champions or other users, explore “Champion News Links” and vote on the “Who’s Your Champion?” “Weekly Poll.”

2. Reddit – Reddit.com is another source for users to discover what is new and popular on the Web. The website gives users a chance to review links submitted by other users and vote for whether they thought the content was “hot” or “cold.” Users can click the “up arrow” to help the submission get closer to the “front page” and the “down arrow” will bring it further down. Users are free to submit interesting links for other community members to read while gaining karma and impressing their friends in the process. The theory behind Reddit.com is to “democratize” the traditional model of obtaining newsworthy material by “giving editorial control to the people who use the site” and not the ones who run it. Therefore, all of the content on the site comes from users who are rewarded for submitting “good content” and punished (by their peers) for “bad content” by a system of promotions and demotions. “Redditors” are not only presented with the newest and most popular material on the Web but all of the material on the “front page” will be a personalized page that is both filtered for quality by fellow Redditors and filtered for relevance by you!

3. Yahoo! Buzz – The mere fact that Yahoo! Buzz is an extension of Yahoo!, “the Web’s most popular starting point,” makes it an automatic Digg competitor with some serious potential. The website reveals some of the hottest and most timely content from across the Internet covering everything from politics and breaking news to entertainment, viral videos and personal blogs. All of the content found on Yahoo! Buzz is ranked according to a unique voting (or “buzzing”) system where, like Digg, users become the “editors” with the freedom to submit content , engage in conversations via commenting and “buzz” content up or down on the rankings based on relevance and importance . Buzz with higher rankings (also known as “Top Buzz”) shows up more prominently on the website and reaches this status in relation to the number of votes and comments the buzz receives, the popularity of related search terms on Yahoo! Search and the number of times users share the buzz with friends over email from Yahoo! Buzz. The top searches and stories on the site update every hour providing users a fast, simple way to keep up with their fast-paced worlds.

4. Plime –Plime.com is an editable Wiki-like news aggregator that also relies on community members to add and edit the weird and interesting links found throughout the site. Each individual user can rate any post or comment based on its value to the community, hence the philosophy behind this Digg-esque link forum that it is “controlled by everyone and no one.” Plime is also a great place for people to meet other members who share similar interests, otherwise referred to as “Plimates” in the Plime community, or a group of people commonly believed to be “very cool, ultra-attractive and extremely intellectual.” The key responsibility of each Plimate is to submit a variety of posts containing links to news stories, images and videos that are “interesting, funny or otherwise entertaining,” in which other Plimates can “upvote,” “downvote,” comment on or edit, assuming they have reached the required “karma” level. Plimates earn karma points when other users vote on their actions, adding or subtracting points based on the feedback and level the commenter is on. Higher levels give Plimates the option of editing other member’s posts as well as features of the site including categories, subcategories and color schemes with the added ability to change user’s access levels. To put it simply, the more karma you have in Plime, the more power you possess.

5. FMyLife.com – FMYLife.com provides users an often much-needed opportunity to vent their daily frustrations by speaking out about the pivotal moment that really “ruined their day.” FMyLife aims to prove that misfortunes and uncomfortable circumstances happen to everyone every day and gives people something that is fun to read and enjoyable on a daily basis. Each post on the site begins with “Today,” and ends with “FML,” allowing the user to fill in the space in between and contribute their “unfortunate experience” to a user-generated blog. FMyLife posts climb or fall down the “Top and Flop” charts according to two methods of visitor voting. Posts found on the “Top FML” list contain stories where other users agreed the event was bad enough to screw with someone’s day. The “Flop FML” list, on the other hand, contains posts about people who also had a bad experience but users in this category believed the person probably had it coming. Topics of interest, themes and categories found on the site include love, money, kids, work, health and sex, where users are encouraged to share their misfortunes with a sense of irony and self-depreciation. While this website does not contain "top news stories" as Digg does, it's substantial growth in popularity could result in a grab of some of Digg's market share.