What? MySpace and Digg Rock! … Right? Well, in my opinion, this belief could not be farther from the truth. Yep, I said it; MySpace and Digg Suck! If I haven’t pissed you off by now, and you are still here, let me explain.

In its youth, MySpace served its purpose. It was one of the great founders of the Social Networking Web 2.0 style sites and opened up a whole world of interaction and socialization that man had never experienced. My experience with MySpace was just the occasional run-in with it during searches or trying to find someone. Never more than a casual walk through, but now that my career has taken another turn (blogging) I now nearly live on the internet; I have, of course, joined the experience with all the other MySpace’ers. Here is what I noticed:

As I was building my page, I could not help but notice how its usability was poor and functionality was clunky. Even though I was quite disappointed, I kept trucking along with my designing and writing. After about an hour or so, I was done, yeah! Now what? I tried to write some articles in the blog section, but ended up completely frustrated with the lack of control, horrifying aesthetic results and constant freezing of the server. Well okay, so I then tried to find some people that may have something in common with me. I go to the search page and find millions of peoples’ thumbnail with… well, nothing to say, just a visual clusterfu*king of stuff. Everything was flashy, over dramatic, busy, superficial and immature (see image here).

I was immediately turned off, so I gave up on it for a little while. I then got a friend request! Oh, boy, who wants to be my friend?! But, it was a another special style of spam; “Look at my sexy pictures!”, the friend request said. When I visited a couple of people that I knew beforehand, I noticed that the comments were nothing but animated gifs doing pointless motions, meaningless pictures that gave nothing positive to the site and some were even spamming in the comments section. Overall I thought to myself, “People actually enjoy this? This is what people are “wowing” about?”

Now that you know how I feel about MySpace, let me share my experience with Digg. As a blogger I wanted to get my articles out there and get some traffic. One of the best ways is posting writings on sites like Digg, Reddit, and Netscape. I thought okay, I will do it. So I post article after article on Digg. This is what I observed:

I received some votes and some traffic, but things just didn’t seem right. I was posting very original, unique news, out-of-the-box perspectives, quality content and interesting subject matter, but I never got more than just a couple of votes. I look at what is making the front page, and it is crap, flooded with techy stuff, meaningless garbage and moronic eBay items. Oh, and don’t bring up comments. Wow, if anyone commented it was the worst, most negative, most idiotic string of “words” I have ever seen.

I then did some research and found out some dark secrets about Digg, and the like. Everything from Digg Gangs to paying users to vote for them, it was crazy. Digg had its own conspiracy theories, and it was a definite far cry from its original mission.

Then I found Newsvine, and wow! Here is a site that functions socially like MySpace but has news and articles like Digg. Can I say it is a refreshing breath of fresh virtual air? This site was well laid out, well designed, well constructed with a smooth ease of use, wonderful mixture of professional journalist’s articles as well as member written and submitted referral articles.

This started to ignite my fancy, and I wanted more! I wanted to sign up, so I hit the “How Do I Use Newsvine Button” and went from there. Everything was explained and easy to navigate. After 10 minutes I had my profile up, page done, and I was already at a running start getting involved in groups and commenting on articles. Within 3 days, I had more friends than I knew what to do with and was involved in a handful of groups commenting away.

The biggest amazement was how there was little to no negativity and only intellectual commentary. People were actually discussing issues! What?! A real discussion on the internet?! Yes, and I may know why. Newsvine has what they call a Code of Honor and a step by step process that all members have to do to earn certain rights. There is no, “You’re here, do whatever you want!” — you know like America. At Newsvine, unlike America in general, you have to earn your wings and there are consequences for your actions. Here is what they say:

Newsvine Code of Honor

1. Above all else, respect others. If you see disrespectful behavior, report it, rather than further inflamming
   the situation.
2. Before you write, seed, or comment, ask yourself if your contribution increases the strength and virtue of the community.
3. Newsvine is for collaborative discovery and discussion of the news, not self-promotion. Posting full articles which
   also appear on your blog is acceptable but seeding your own stuff is not.
4. Keep your headlines accurate and free of sensationalistic language. For instance, if you’re writing a satirical piece,
   please follow the form: “Satire: [Headline]”; if you’re seeding a story about a rumor, “Rumor: Yahoo to Buy ___” is appropriate
   whereas “Yahoo Buys ___” or “WTF! Oh my God!” are not.
5. Although full internationalization is important to Newsvine, please keep all articles and seeds in English until the
   system can properly sort multiple languages.
6. Keep Newsvine tidy by tagging for accuracy rather than for readership, editing headlines and lead-ins to be
   compact and descriptive, and seeding as close to the original source as possible.

It seems quality is the first priority and a shear mass of memberships is second. Unlike the horrible other sites that I have mentioned: MySpace, Digg, Netscape, Reddit… ummm who else? To further integrate the Code of Honor they have an insignia that goes up right next to your picture. As you follow the codes, you gain authority and recognition within the society. They go about rewarding this great achievement by using a term called Vineacity. Here is what they say about it:

Well, by now you should have gotten the memo. Yes, I am a fan of Newsvine. It incorporates everything that I believe in; positive feedback/influence, regulation through an honor system, steps to attaining rights and privileges and encourages community and group success, rather than individual popularity and fame. There is a plethora of other wonderments going on over at Newsvine, but then again, maybe you should just venture over there and see for yourself. Tell them I sent ya!