digg - Out Slashdotting Slashdot

I don't know why I resisted checking out Digg for as long as I did. Slashdot has been getting slower and slower, and the comments have been becoming more and more biased towards open-source and against all things Microsoft/Google.

In a nutshell, Digg is a news aggregator, but completely user-run. User's submit stories, user's vote for stories by "digging" them, and when a certain threshold is crossed, the story is promoted to the frontpage. That is where they're kicking Slashdot in the ass ... Digg has a response time far faster and less dictatorial than Slashdot, which gives complete freedom for comments, but the process of getting a story on the site is run by an internal staff.

Digg links into popular blogging sites (including Blogger), so you can see who blogged about a story (but apparently, only if they used the "blog this" link in Digg), and you can comment (with ratings).

For the voyeur in you, check out digg spy. You can see what other users are "digging", and it auto-refreshes (with a cool animation) rapidly. Great way to find out instantly what other people are interested in.