Here comes the Long Tail of Reddit (and Digg…)
It had to happen, and it’s happening all at once.
Several sites (a few links at end of the post) are launching very focused, very vertical Digg-like features. My favorite is probably Squidoo (of course) because we’ve been working on it for a few months and I think you’ll like some of the features.
As you know, making the front page of Reddit is worth three bucketfulls of clicks. The thing is, there’s only one front page. Even as these sites split into multiple front pages (Digg now has seven front pages), there’s never going to be enough front pages to satisfy everyone. The irony is that Chris Anderson (author of the Long Tail) is at Wired, new owner of Reddit…
Digg and Reddit are groundbreaking and they are not going away. The power of the audience they aggregate is huge–putting all those seekers in one place makes it irresistible.
Now, though, instead of aggregating to one much seen page, Squidoo now permits you to build your own list (and syndicate it), on whatever topic you can imagine.
Examples I built by using some lists I found around the web:
Fred Wilson’s Top 10 Albums of 2006
Which Broadway Show?
Doc Searls’ Top Blogs
Seth Godin’s List of Books About Spreading Ideas
Here are some that are better than mine:
Videogames for toddlers, John Williams soundtracks, sci-fi movies and essentials. So what’s missing? Stuff that’s focused on current affairs within a field. The best posts on architecture, for example.
Like Digg and Reddit, you can add your own entries to (some of) the lists, and the lists change in real time. You can also syndicate them, posting the sharable ones on your blog or your website.
What this means is that there’s a new group of sites coming along, sites that reward people for being curators.
Addressing one of the issues I had been fretting about, each list has a human editor and each list has a doorman–if the person building a list desires, she can screen what’s posted to maintain list quality.
PlugIM is doing something Reddit-like with news about web marketing.
Stumbleupon just did it with videos (sort of)
and Wikia is using a less elegant voting mechanism to highlight the best posts or entire wikis.
Bet you money there will be more soon!