Thing 12 - Social Media Sites

I just successfully "dugg" an article to Digg! I feel so empowered! (she said, a little sarcastically)

After visiting all four of the social media sites listed in this Thing, I registered with Digg. I liked the looks of the Digg website; the site seemed well-designed, and visually appealing to me.

Once registered, I decided to give this "digging" a try. I read an article on the npr.org website called "Beyond Recycling: Getting to 'Zero Waste'". I chose the "share" icon provided on the site, and then, after providing some direction to Digg about how to present the article (and assuring them that this was a new article, and hadn't already been "dugg"), voila! The article was posted. I doubt the article will ever get more than my vote, but I consider that the exercise was a success.

As interesting as the exercise was, I just don't think that I'll use this much, either personally, or in the library. In the first place, it seems to me that variety in reading material is lost when you get this focused in on what you want to see. Would you ever read an article that challenged your thinking, or that gave you a new way to look at something if you rely on a social media site?

One of the "Blog Prompts" for this Thing was to decide if social media sites enhanced, or detracted from, productivity. I guess it would depend on your definition of productivity. On the one hand, from what I could tell, you would see articles from a variety of sources. Other people have done the selection, so that's one less thing for you to do. You could just read the most popular articles, and probably feel that you were increasing your knowledge of the world around you.

On the other hand, I think you'd lose the sense of self-discovery; there's almost a feeling of group-think going on here. I'm not sure who benefits from sites like Digg. I think that you could use up a lot of time messing around with it.