Top 40 social news sites
The idea behind social news or social media websites is that users submit news items so that they can be shared with other users.In some cases the site’s users vote on which stories make it to the front page, while in other cases, editors decide which stories are featured.The concept was pioneered by the likes of Slashdot and Fark, but it was with the advent of Digg, that social news sites found a wider audience.
Here’s the top 40 social news sites, listed in alphabetical order. The list also includes social book marking sites, which allow users to store, organise, search, manage and share interesting web pages or websites.
Previously run by volunteers, Backflip is now a privately-owned company that lets you save and share important things you encounter on the Web. It offers a Yahoo-like directory to organize your saved pages.
This is a system for sharing bookmarks and literature lists, which you store on its server and tag it for easy retrieval.
Dubbed the iTunes of Web pages, Blinklits allows you to sort pages through an iTunes interface to find specific pages.
This is a social bookmarking sites, which lets you keep your bookmarks private of public.
This is a user driven political news site with a progressive bent. The site lets users submit stories that can be reviewed by all visitors. Submitted news stories remain on queue until they generates enough votes to appear on the front page.
This allows you to store, organize and share the scholarly papers you are reading. It automatically extracts the citation details of stuff you find on the Web when you save them.
The site works as a scrapbook of Web content and URLs. Instead of just saving the links to these sites, you can save a part of a site.
When you save online reference sources, this site automatically gathers the complete bibliographic information. You can then share your saved references with friends and colleagues.
This site lets you create Web sites where you can save and share interesting sites with people you deem sources. These sources can vote on sites you save to your coRank front pages.
Yahoo’s social bookmarking site lives on despite the adversity plaguing its parent company. Delicious uses a non-hierarchical keyword categorization system in which users can tag each of their bookmarks with keywords they choose.
11.Digg.com -
Everybody’s favorite social bookmarking site still manages to pack a punch and remains a top site for gathering online news, blogs, information sites and more. Digg is among the most popular spots to discover and share content from around the Web.
12.Diigo.com -
As a personal research tool and a collaborative research platform, Diigo can be a valuable program. It provides a browser add-on, which you can use not just to bookmark a site but highlight a portion of the content and append sticky notes. Diigo stands for Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other Stuff.
13.Fark.com –
Fark is better labelled as a social networking news site.
14.Folkd.com -
If you visit Folkd, you’ll immediately see its resemblance in style and function to Digg. Essential, it’s a Digg-clone that also saves your bookmarks online to share them with your friends.
15.Furl.net –
This site allows you to easily save and share Web pages and explore the Web for new content using the Furl Bookmarklet, which you install on your Web browser.
As the name suggests, this is your one-stop shop for interesting news to stave off boredom. News items are updated daily.
This site is a user-moderated and link filtering weblog. It lets users post links, vote on others’ links, comment on links and chat.
This community weblog contains useful links submitted by members. New members can only post links one week after registering to the site.
Don’t mind the weird name. This site is a useful bookmarking/news site available in six languages - German, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and French.
20.Mixx.com -
As the name implies, Mixx lets you mix up various links to interesting sites.
This site offers an easy drag-and-drop interface for bookmarking, rearranging and categorizing your saved links.
This site aims to provide a spectrum of must read stories, opinion and breaking news. You can vote on upcoming stories, choose stories from the newswire and post stories from other news sites using newscloud’s bookmarklet.
Newsvine had a pretty good start and has grown into a full-blown social news/bookmarking site. Microsoft recently acquired it. You can add news stories, comment or even write a column. It features both user-submitted news items called the Vine and a steady stream of news items called the Wire.
24.Plime.com –
This site describes itself as an editable Wiki community where you add and edit weird and interesting links. Users build karmic voting power as they vote for other people’s links and saved favorites.
Operated by AOL-Netscape, this service was previously called Netscape.com. It’s similar to Digg with its own social voting features.
26.Reddit.com –
This site boasts a large user base with user-generated news links covering topics like programming, science, politics and business. Stories are promoted to the front page through user voting.
This highly scalable “social search” platform showcases expertise, allows collaboration and instantly captures knowledge indexes. Searchles is a hybrid of social bookmarking and social networking technology combined with “social search” capability. It lets you discover content with personalized filtering features.
This site lets you submit and review online news and content by either “shouting” or bashing it. It works and looks like Digg.
29.Simpy.com –
This is another social bookmarking/social news sites, which pretty much gives you the same functionality as Delicious. It allows you to find like-minded people, discover new and interesting sites and publish your bookmarks.
This is another social bookmarking site, which pretty much does what other social bookmarking services do. It works with Firefox, IE, Opera and most other Web platforms.
What can we say, Slashdot is among the most respected social news sites on the Web for tech information. It started out as the ultimate source for technology related news with a heavy slant towards Linux and Open Source issues. It’s now a general tech news aggregator.
This site features a powerful and highly organized social submitter tool, which lets you submit up to 160 social and bookmark sites at once. The site supports most popular social networks and boomarking sites including Digg, propeller and more.
33.Sphinn.com –
This is another Digg rival where you “Sphinn” news stories rather than “Digg-ing” then. However, where Digg promotes general news, Sphinn is heavy on SEO and Internet Marketing-related sites.
This social bookmarking, site-rating and news site lets you recommend relevant content. It uses a personalized rating system, which uses collaborative filtering and aggregated knowledge technologies.
35.Spurl.net –
This is a bookmarking service and search engine rolled into one. This site lets you store and quickly access interesting pages you encounter on the Web. Saved links and notes are searchable and you can upload your saved bookmarks to your computer. It also features recommendations and hot lists.
This is a network of user-generated lenses - Web pages that highlight one person’s point of view, recommendations, or expertise. It lets you find people who share your interests.
This site lets you make a custom homepage where you can save all your bookmarks and have access to them from anywhere. It uses a powerful Ajax interface that helps you easily manage your bookmarks.
Despite entering the social news arena fairly late, SU has managed to sustain itself. For the record, it is not really a social bookmarking site per say, but rather a browser-based social networking service allowing users to submit Web pages to be rated by other users.
Despite a rocky start, Technorati has managed to hang-on. We can all still use its real-time search for user-generated media (including weblogs) by tag or keyword.
40.Uvouch.com -
Although this site emphasizes online videos, Uvouch users can also “vouch” for saving general Web sites. It features one-click video importing, link importing, custom playlists, customizable tags, a user-driven search engine and more.
Have I left out your favorite social news site? Feel free to add it in the comments.
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Tags: Backflip, Bibsonomy, Blinklist, Buddymarks, Buzzflash, Citeulike, Clipclip, Connotea, Corank, Delicious, Digg, Diigo, Fark, Folkd, Furl, Linkfilter, Metafilter, Mixx, NewsCloud, Newsvine, Plime, Propeller, Reddit, Searchles, Shoutwire, Simpy, Sitebar, Slashdot, Socialogs, Sphinn, Spotback, Spurl, Squidoo, Startaid, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Uvouch.
