Jan

30

VoteOften: A Better Digg for Politics

January 30, 2008 |

VoteOften.usVery few Digg clones manage to impress me these days. They mostly stand out because of their complete lack of innovation.

VoteOften.us, however, which is still in private beta (see last paragraph for how to get an invite), is doing some innovating things, with a focus on politics. With the US presidential election heating up, I hope they will open up for a broader beta soon, as their site looks like its ready for prime time.

What makes VoteOften different? Every social news site that focused on news always suffered from the political bias of its most vocal users. You can’t think of reddit and not think Ron Paul at the same time, for example. On VoteOften, you can not only give an article a thumbs-up or thumbs-down vote, but you can also rate how far the story is biased to the left or right. It’s a simple, yet innovative idea, and, as Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins points out, it makes sure that an article doesn’t just get buried because of its political bias, while still allowing users to express their opinion.

 

bias-graphic

Besides this, the site features all the tools you expect from a Digg clone: the ability to submit stories and write comments; there is a social network where you can follow your friends activity on the site; you can tagging your stories; and there is an ‘upcoming’ section. All very standard stuff.

While people seem to be quite actively voting on stories, comments are still a bit rare, but that’s to be expected for a new site. It also seems to be worth pointing out that even though the sites focus is on U.S. news, there is a Foreign Issues section (I guess that name shows the geographical bias already) and a ‘More Topics’ section for items about ‘abortion,’ ‘torture’ etc.

It looks like I can send an invite or two, so if you leave a comment and put your email address in the appropriate field, I will send it to you as long as it works (no idea how many I can send).


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. chantelle on January 31, 2008 9:51 am

    hi…I’d love an invite.
    I wrote on this topic for Walrus Magazine Canada.

    http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/01/24/the-heath-ledger-marykate-algorithim-or-why-i-cant-get-dugg/

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