Digg

Today we’re introducing the next step in finding the best news– Digg Newsrooms.

The online world is flooded with information. The volume of news published on a daily basis has grown exponentially. Many of us visit several different sites each day to get the most relevant or entertaining information on the topics we care about. There has never been a better time to separate the news from the noise.

Enter Digg Newsrooms. When you visit a Newsroom you’ll find the best news for a given topic as measured by popular opinion and ranked by top contributors on Digg. Topics as broad as technology or as specific as Lady Gaga. We’ve built a three-step algorithm to help the most meaningful stories rise to the top – leveraging our greatest asset, the Digg community. Here’s how it works:

- Sourcing: We locate great content for each topic and display in a real-time feed called “Newswire.”
- Signals: Stories are ranked automatically by an algorithm that looks at recency and popularity including Likes on Facebook, Tweets and LinkedIn sharing, to name a few.
- Curation: The news is then filtered by the Diggs and Comments of passionate users who have gained reputation as top influencers in each Newsroom topic.

Recommendations by users is certainly not new for Digg or for the Internet. Since the inception of Digg, an entire industry of social signals has been born. Many are measuring news coverage by how many times a story is shared by a reader with their friends and followers.

But is the most popular story also the most meaningful? Not necessarily. Just ask music fans about Rebecca Black, or political junkies about Weinergate. Newsrooms are designed to find the most meaningful news for a given topic – to separate valuable from popular.

A key factor in finding the most meaningful news is you-- the Digg user. Now all your reading, Digging, and Burying activity is shown transparently in a real-time activity feed within each Newsroom. And we've built a way to measure and reward how influential that activity is for other users. We've created a series of badges to reward those who are the most active and influential in the Newsroom. So whether you are an Ace reporter (First story promoted to that Newsroom Front Page) or “Trendsetter” ( 25 stories or more), you are making a difference in what people read.

Sifting out the most relevant and meaningful news each day is a hard problem to solve. Creating the best experience for every topic is a long road. Today’s launch is an important first step toward making it easier to discover the news you care about most. Digg Newsrooms are available starting today, by invitation only, and will be available soon to the public. Request an invite here.

Special thanks to all the Digg users who provided input and feedback along the way and a big congratulations to the entire team at Digg – great work!

See you in the Newsroom.